Lone Survivor_ The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10 ( PDFDrive )

air brake on violence. According to the learned Charles Lindhorn, a professor of
anthropology at Boston University, homicide rates among the Pashtun tribes are
way lower than homicide rates in urban areas of the United States. I am grateful
to the professor for his teachings on this subject.
The Taliban creed comes right out of the Pashtun handbook: women are the
wombs of patrilineage, the fountainheads of tribal honor and continuity. Their
security and chaste way of life is the only guarantee of the purity of the lineage.
This seclusion of women is known as purdah, and it is designed to keep women
concealed, maintaining the household, and it gives them a high sense of honor.
Purdah represents the status of belonging. A woman’s husband can go fight
the invaders while she controls the household, enjoying the love and respect of
her sons, expecting one day to rule as matriarch over her daughters-in-law and
their children. That’s the basis of the Taliban view of women. And I guess it
works fine up in the Hindu Kush, but it might not go over too well in downtown
Houston.
Anyway, there’s been a lot of terrible fighting on the Pashtuns’ lands, mostly
by outsiders. But the ole Pashtunwalai has kept them intact. Their tradition of
generous hospitality, perhaps their finest virtue, includes the concept of lokhay
warkawal. It means “giving of a pot.” It implies protection for an individual,
particularly in a situation where the tribe might be weaker than its enemies.
When a tribe accepts lokhay, it undertakes to safeguard and protect that
individual from an enemy at all costs.
I, perhaps above all other Western visitors, have reason to be eternally
grateful for it.
We were on our final approach to the enormous U.S. base at Bagram. Everyone
was awake now, seven hours after we left Bahrain. It was daylight, and down
below we could see at last the mountains we had heard so much about and
among which we would be operational in the coming weeks.
There was still snow on the high peaks, glittering white in the rising sun.
And below the snow line, the escarpments looked very steep. We were too high
to pick up villages on the middle slopes, but we knew they were there, and that’s
where we were probably going in the not too distant future.
The huge runway at Bagram runs right down the side of the complex, past
hundreds and hundreds of bee huts, lines and lines of them. On the ground we
could see parked aircraft and a whole lot of Chinook helicopters. We didn’t
worry about whom we’d have to share with. SEALs are always billeted together,