Hearts and Minds

Paul Salopek (tx, Nigel): IN THE AFAR TRIANGLE, Djibouti – The desert is a war.

U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Cynthia Ramirez roared through it in an unmarked Land Cruiser, projecting the awesome might of the U.S. military into a wasteland little seen, much less penetrated, by outsiders. The landscape was like a slap—an eye-stinging waste of salt pans and glass-blue mountains that was still inhabited by Muslim warrior-nomads, the Afar, tough customers who long ago had swapped their traditional spears for Kalashnikovs.

Behind Ramirez, in an expanding cone of dust, bucked three more Toyotas, an Army truck loaded with corrugated metal sheeting, and 14 armed, sweating American soldiers and sailors. Their improbable objective: reroof a school at a fly-speck nomad camp called Lahossa.

"Hearts and minds," Ramirez, a voluble and shaven-headed Texan, hollered over the engine. "And we're showing the bad guys we can go anywhere."