KABUL: Three days after the American soldier Bowe Bergdahl was released by the Taliban in exchange of five senior Taliban leaders held in Guantanamo Bay, the reports emerging are pejorative and puzzling, suggesting that there is more to Sergeant Bergdahlss story than the world knew.
If reports are to be believed, Sergeant Bergdahl, the only U.S. soldier ever to be captured by insurgents in Afghanistan, did not lag behind in a patrol as he said in a video released by Taliban a month after his capture. He was also not caught in a latrine as the classified military report made public by whistle blowing site WikiLeaks suggested.
According to reports, he had willingly and knowingly left his base in eastern Kunar province on June 30, 2009, hours before he was picked up by the Taliban, who held him for five long years until his release a few days back in exchange for five veteran Taliban leaders.
In his last email to his parents sent just hours before he walked off his base on June 30, 2009, he launches a scathing attack at his forces. He seems distraught and disappointed. The US army is the biggest joke the world has to laugh at, wrote Sergeant Bergdahl, later published by Rolling Stone magazine.
It is the army of liars, backstabbers, fools, and bullies. The few good SGTs [sergeants] are getting out as soon as they can, and they are telling us privates to do the same, reads the email. He complained that three good Sergeants had been moved to another company and some undeserving officer was made in charge of the team, who he called one of the biggest shit bags. He termed the commander of his battalion the conceited old fool. In the US army you are cut down for being honest, but if you are a conceited brown-nosing shit bag you will be allowed to do whatever you want, and you will be handed your higher rank, he wrote in the email, which was kept under wraps for many years. Sergeant Bergdahl, much to his chagrin, found out that the American mission in Afghanistan was not designed to win the hearts and minds of Afghans. He felt the Afghans were treated wrongly by the U.S. forces stationed in Afghanistan. I am sorry for everything here. These people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid, that they have no idea how to live, reads the email. He recalls an incident in which he saw an Afghan child trampled over by an American heavy-armored truck, an incident his parents believe might have impacted him psychologically and forced him to leave his base. In the last email, his father asks him to obey your conscience.
The exchange of 5 Taliban leaders for Sergeant Berhdahl has raised many eyebrows in his country. Many questions are being raised, mostly by his fellow soldiers, about the circumstances under which he suddenly disappeared from the battlefield in 2009. Some of his former colleagues accuse him of betrayal. Nathan Bradley Bethea, a U.S. soldier who served in the same battalion in Afghanistan and was part of the operation to trace his whereabouts in the summer of 2009, in a recent article for The Daily Beast called Bergdahl a deserter.
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