End of an Era

 Yesterday, the last US military plane with the last load of military members and Afghan civilians left Kabul.  Our mission there is officially done after 20 years.  So why am I so down?  I think it's because leaving was the right thing to do, but it was done in the worst possible way.

As I stated in a previous posting, we were propping up a government that was doomed to fail no matter what we did.  The Afghan government was a kleptocracy that did not have much support from its people, who were ambivalent about it at best.  Despite all the assistance, training, and funding that we and the international community provided, we couldn't get it to do the right thing.  

Individual people, both within and outside the government, were wonderful.  Brave women stood up to advance the cause of women.  The Afghan Army and police forces took unbelievable losses in their fight against the Taliban and individual soldiers were as brave and effective as any US soldier.  I saw that myself in Kandahar.  There were people inside the government doing their best to do what was right: provide services, root out corruption, and make Afghanistan a better place.  Local leaders, despite being uneducated, could negotiate contracts as well as any Fortune 500 executive.  

But there was no leadership glue to hold the country together.  The Taliban, however, had a mission and thousands of loyal adherents. After Trump signed the withdrawal agreement, it was only a matter of time.  Everybody knew it.  The speed of the government's collapse, though, took everybody by surprise.  In my last post on this topic, the "experts" were thinking it would take 90 days.  I said it would be less than 30.  In reality, it was about 48 hours.  

The US military response was truly amazing.  From nothing, our military created a humanitarian airlift that pulled over 123,000 people out of the country in just over two weeks.  It was ugly in the beginning, but our troops quickly stood up an efficient, effective, multi-national effort.  

Parts of the State Department did a fantastic job as well.  All those Afghan evacuees had to go somewhere, and the State Department found nations in the region and elsewhere that agreed to take them.  That's not a small accomplishment.  

Other parts of this story are really ugly.  The ISIS-K attack on the airport that killed 13 of our troops and 170 Afghans, as well as wounding over 200 more, was the low point.  Another low point is the State Department's handling of the Special Immigrant Visas for those Afghans who worked with us over the past 20 years.  As I've said for years, the State Department never wanted to do SIVs and slow-rolled them from the outset.  The rationale was that rewarding capable Afghans for their service by bringing them out of Afghanistan undermined the mission.  Essentially, we were showing that we had no faith that the Afghan government would succeed.  I understand that rationale, but don't like it.  And by continuing to slow-roll visa processing even after Trump signed the withdrawal agreement, the State Department consular service left thousands of people to fend for themselves.  I'd like to take the whole State Department Consular Service, dump them in Kandahar, and let them find their own way home.

Today there's a photo making the rounds on Facebook of a bunch of military working dogs who were left in their cages at the Kabul airport.  Leaving our dogs in the airport is horrifying.  But I wouldn't want to be the individual who had to make that decision.  You've got one last plane, so do you take a bunch of Afghan women and children, or dogs?  There's no room for both.  It's a bad decision, either way.

So now we're out.  The Taliban has what they wanted: control of the country.  Now it's their turn to run it.  I don't think the Taliban will be quite as brutal as before.  Afghanistan is a "Go Fund Me" country that survives on international donations, which will be hard to come by if they don't pay at least some attention to international norms.  Well, that's the hope, anyway.  The Taliban will do what they damn well please.  And one of the things they'll have to deal with is ISIS-K.  Good luck with that.

Was it worth it?  Was it worth 20 years, thousands of lives, trillions of dollars?  Damned if I know.

Terror in Afghanistan

 Over the past couple of weeks, the Taliban has been on a roll, seizing more and more territory from the Afghan government.  They have almost all the provincial capitols now.  Today, Herat and Ghazni fell and Kandahar is falling.  The civilian population is in a panic.  Those that can, are fleeing to Kabul, but that may just be delaying the inevitable.  The US Embassy is sending almost everybody home as fast as possible.  They're not calling it an "emergency evacuation" yet, but that's what it really is.  They're moving diplomatic operations to a US-controlled area at the Kabul airport.  And the Pentagon is bringing in 3,000 troops to ensure the safety of the evacuation.  I saw a report that many diplomats expect Kabul to fall within 90 days.  Personally, I think it will be much quicker, probably not even a month.

I'm of two minds about this.  On the one hand, we've been propping up the government for twenty years now.  We screwed up early on when we took our eye off the Afghan ball and decided it would be great to invade Iraq.  The Taliban saw that we weren't really all that interested in Afghanistan and decided to get their band back together.  Meanwhile, anyone in any Afghan position of power used it to enrich themselves as much as possible.  Graft was built into the system.  If there's one thing the Afghans learned, it was to grab as much as possible when you could because you never knew when the Americans' largesse would end.

They had a reason to feel that way.  Bush and Obama didn't really seem to know what they wanted.  They'd engage and ramp up, then announce they were ramping down and would soon be out, only to ramp up again.  Those of us who went there did our best to try to make it work.  However, when I left in 2012, I was not optimistic.  A government built on graft was not a good bet for longevity.  Still, we poured a lot of money and a lot of effort into giving the Afghan government the tools we believed were necessary in a modern world.  The one thing we couldn't give them was a sense of mission, a common purpose.  And the government we propped up didn't have that.

The Taliban did.  As other insurgent operations over the centuries have proven (see U.S. War of Independence, Viet Nam, and the Cuban Revolution, for examples), a few guys with substandard weapons and a commitment to a cause can beat established powers.  So when Donald Trump announced that we were pulling out for good, and damn the consequences, the Taliban saw their opening.  Although negotiations continued, the announcement that we weren't going to play anymore signaled the Taliban to just wait us out.  Then Biden confirmed the pullout.  So the Taliban stepped up their game and now they're on a deadly roll.  The government we have propped up for 20 years was never strong enough to hold their own, would never be strong enough, and this result was inevitable.

So: on the one hand, if this was inevitable, it's time to cut our losses and let the inevitable happen, right?  We can't impose our way of government on another country if it's not a good fit.  It's an Afghan problem and can only be solved by Afghans.

Then there's the other hand.  The Taliban is as brutal, inhumane, animalistic, and criminal as any pariah regime that has ever existed.  They're even more brutal than the Nazis.  Beheadings, rape, kidnapping, and destruction of lives and property are the standard way of doing business.  People are dying, right now, as I write this, and probably as you read this.  

I have a friend who is an Afghan.  He served with the Special Forces and Navy SEALS as an interpreter in some brutal fights.  He earned a Special Immigrant Visa and came to the United States, then earned a Masters degree from Georgetown University.  He went to Afghanistan earlier this year to get married, then returned to the US to work and begin the paperwork to bring his bride.  She, his family, and her family are in Herat.  And Herat was just taken by the Taliban today.

That's the "other hand": the personal cost that our pullout is inflicting on real people.  Right now.

Muscatatuck

My last post was about the sorry state of affairs regarding the surface Navy, with a particular focus on the non-existent training of new surface warfare officers.  This post is about a bright spot in training.  Last week, I went to the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center to train another group of civilians who are headed to Afghanistan for a year.  (Muscatatuck, by the way, is pronounced "mus-CAT-a-tuck").  This is something I've been very fortunate to be involved with since my return from Kandahar five years ago.  I've written about this training several times and you can click on the "Muscatatuck" label on the right for photos of the place and comments about previous classes.

There was an interesting twist to this group of students.  Of the seven in my group, two are heading out to support our goals in Syria.  They won't spend their entire tours in Syria; rather, they'll be based in one of the neighboring countries and will go into Syria when and as needed.  Both of these individuals have tremendous experience.  Both were a lot of fun to work with as well.  Neither came in with the attitude of "I've been there, you don't have anything to tell me" - no, they came to learn.

One of the key things that I try to stress with students is working as a team.  No single member has all the answers, and success in each of these training scenarios requires all the team members to be present, in the game, and ready to jump in with the appropriate question, answer, or suggestion at any moment.  The Lone Rangers will fail downrange.  Fortunately, with this group, there were no super egos.  Everybody pulled together.  The two with the most experience did something even better: they deliberately played supporting roles, rather than leading roles.  This gave the students with less real-world experience the chance to be the team leaders.  As one who was in that situation six years ago, learning by doing is the best way to internalize the lessons.

So my team did a super job.  The mistakes that were made were due to breakdowns in communication by those outside the team, and they learned from the experiences.  The last scenario is the most complex of all and the young lady serving as team leader was the quietest and most reserved of the group.  But she knocked it out of the park.  I couldn't have been more proud.

So to those who complain about "government bureacrats" being lazy, I say stuff it.  You haven't seen them do what I've seen them do.  And to those seven who are, as I write this, on their way to war zones, I say well done, work hard, and come home safe!

Training Again

This past week, I was up at the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center in Indiana to train another group of Defense Department civilians who are heading to Afghanistan.  My part of the training program was to serve as a mentor to a team of ten people as they went through several days of increasingly complex immersive scenarios.  We put them into situations where they have to put their classroom training into practice.  They coordinate movements with their military security team, go to meetings with Afghan officials, try to establish relationships, try to figure out the underlying issues, respond to rapidly changing circumstances, get shot at, and report what they learned back to the senior military officer in charge.

It's always rewarding to see the teams develop, and this one was no exception.  Their approach to their first event was pretty lackadaisical - they thought of it as just another class and showed up late.  By the end of the event,  though, we were beginning to get their attention.  During the next day's events, they weren't quite on board yet and I would've only given them a C or a C-.  But after that, they understood what was going on and they dove into it.  One student told me "I was convinced I wasn't in Indiana, I was in Afghanistan!"  They played it for real and they did a great job.  At the end of the last event, the senior Afghan told them that they were fully ready to be advisors.  I've never heard him tell a team that before.

This photo shows part of the training.  The team had to go to a bazaar and talk to some local Afghan merchants about the local issues.  There was a lot to hear, learn, and respond to.  Then they had to get out of the bazaar when things went bad.  

I love doing this training.  It's so rewarding to see the light come on in their eyes, to see how far they come in just a short period of time, and to help them internalize concepts that will enable them to fully understand their role and possibly save their lives.  It's rewarding to know that I have the background and skill set to help them through this period.  I'll keep doing this as long as I possibly can.

Muscatatuck

I spent last week up at the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center in Indiana.  I was part of the team that trained a group of US government civilians heading to Afghanistan for a year.  Last month, my role was as a mentor for a team of students.  This time, I was what we call a "subject matter expert".  This meant that I worked with our Afghan role-players to ensure that the training events were well coordinated, the role-players had an idea as to how the students might react, and the events went off on schedule.  It can be a nerve-wracking job, but it's a lot of fun.

You could think of my role as the director and stage manager of a play in which only half the participants know what the script is.  Yes, there is a script: we have very definite goals in mind for each event.  These goals are increasingly complex as the training progresses and build on previous events.  In the first event, the student teams meet a local Afghan official.  It's a basic meet-and-greet.  The students are informed on very short notice of the meeting and have to learn something about the official, try to figure out what his interests are, prepare the meeting room as best they can, and determine which team member is going to fill each role.  Then they have to do the meeting.  It usually goes well, but it can go south in a hurry.  Last month, the official asked my student team about Donald Trump's veracity (a very realistic question as many Afghans watch American politics).  One of the students replied that "all politicians are liars".  This, to an Afghan politician.  Ooops!  Fortunately, the other team members helped the guy recover from his faux pas.  That's why we do this training: put the students in a safe environment where they have to put their training into practical use, and where mistakes aren't going to result in permanent damage.

Our Afghan role-players are wonderful people.  Many of them were driven out of their homes by the Soviets, or warlords, or the Taliban, and are eager to help the US rebuild the country.  Some were diplomats, some were officers or soldiers in the Army or Air Force, several were police officers, others were businessmen, teachers, village elders, scholars, and farmers.  One was a smuggler.  One has gone back to Afghanistan and put his life on the line three times as an interpreter with US forces.  Most have lost family members - wives, husbands, parents, sons, daughters, or other close relative - to the fighting that has raged in the country for 30 years.  Many still have family in Afghanistan.  I won't post any photos of them as that might endanger their family members still in-country.  But they have an amazing dedication to this job.  They bring insight, intelligence, and wit to their interactions with our students.  And, as one who was trained by these very same people five years ago, I can tell you from first-hand knowledge that their efforts are invaluable.

Outside of Muscatatuck, these men and women get little respect.  They are treated with suspicion because they're Muslims and Afghans.  They get told to "go home" way too often, even though many of them are now US citizens.  Extra attention and pat-downs in airports are a given.  Yet they still continue to show up, every time, to train people heading to Afghanistan.

So the next time you hear some idiot condemning all Muslims and Afghans as terrorists or worse, tell them to sit on it.  I work with Muslims and Afghans.  We are damned lucky to have them!

Abandoning our Friends

Fuck you US embassy dick suckers

Fuck US States department
You guys are fucking playing games with our feeling son of bitches.

                                       - Najeeb Ahmadzi

That came from somebody who has earned the right to rant: one of the thousands of Afghans and Iraqis who put their lives on the line for the American efforts in their countries.  Men and women who served as interpreters, advisors, office staff, engineers, expediters, and the hundred and one other positions of trust that could only be done by locals.  These were people who believed in what we were doing, who supported our efforts, who often defied threats, family ostracism, extreme danger, and poor treatment, in order to do their jobs.  All they asked in return was that we hold up our end of the bargain.  Many of those bargains included the promise of special immigrant visas (SIV's), which allowed them to resettle in the United States when their service was over and their lives were in danger.  

Our country, unfortunately, is breaking its promises.

Ahmadzi is hardly alone.  There are literally thousands of Iraqis and Afghans who have had their SIV applications denied or indefinitely delayed for any multitude of reasons.  My own interpreter from Afghanistan has been trying for three years to get his promised SIV.  His application has been denied three times, with no explanation as to why.  He is somewhat fortunate, in that he has a support team made up of the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP, an organization working to help Iraqi and Afghans with their visas and other issues) as well as those of us who worked with him in Kandahar.  After a lot of investigating, and with no help at all from the US State Department, we eventually learned the reason.  And it's not something that will change easily.

A bit of context first.  I worked for the State Department in both Iraq and Afghanistan.  My experience was not very positive.  I found it to be an extremely bureaucratic organization whose culture was based on avoiding decisions and responsibility.  As a retired military guy, from a culture in which making decisions and taking responsibility were valued, I found this to be jarring.  Individual people in the State Department were often wonderful, but the culture of the organization as a whole was dangerous and disturbing.

When the SIV program was first proposed, our then-Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, was against it.  He thought it would drain Afghanistan of its best and brightest.  Unstated in his emails, but certainly an issue in the background, was the idea that helping Afghans leave the country would be the equivalent of admitting that our efforts at building the country had failed.  Despite his objections, Congress approved the program and ordered the State Department to implement it.

The State Department leaders handled it in the perfectly bureaucratic manner that they have mastered when told to do something they don’t want to do.  First, they had their lawyers review every word and punctuation mark that Congress had provided.  Then they drafted their own interpretations of what the laws said and devised a byzantine process to follow these interpretations.  Finally, they hired a non-US contractor to implement the program.  This allowed the State Department to create a process that was guaranteed to fail, while at the same time providing cover and deniability for those responsible.  And they were brilliantly successful.  In 2011, the State Department issued three SIV visas.  That's all: three.  In the course of the whole year.  In 2012, that rose to 63.  Public outcry resulted in pressure on Secretary of State John Kerry to review the process, and in 2014 they processed 3,441.  Still, there are over 6,000 applicants in various stages of the process in Afghanistan.  In Iraq, there are over 57,000.  

So here’s what the State Department’s application process entails:

1.  File an application online.  This includes the DS157 form, copy of a national ID card, copy of a passport, proof of employment (including both an employment verification letter from any contractors, badges used on bases, and so on), a letter of recommendation from a direct supervisor, and a statement of any dangers being faced.  If you’re missing any of those things, for instance if you don’t know how to get in touch with your former supervisor, you’re out of luck: no visa for you.

2.  If the first step is successful, the applicant has to file an application for a visa.  It requires much of the same information for the applicant and every member of the family.  The applicant also has to get a physical.  There is only one clinic in Afghanistan authorized to do the physicals, and they cost $500 for each individual, including the kids.  The physicals are only good for a period of time, so if the Embassy drags its heels on approval (which it usually does), then they have to get the physicals done again, at the same cost of $500 per person.  The visa process is completely separate from the SIV application process, and there are many cases of a person getting approved for an SIV and then having the actual visa denied based on the same information.

3.  If the applicant gets through the first two stages, he or she gets an interview at the U.S. Embassy.  This includes a polygraph test and a background investigation.  Ever taken a polygraph test?  There’s a reason that poly’s are not admissible in court: they’re error-prone.  They do not detect whether a person is lying, they just detect whether a person has an involuntary reaction to a question, and they have a very high number of false alarms.  If the interviewer doesn’t like your answers, or if you react on the poly, you’re out of luck.

At the same time, there are many hidden traps that the Embassy does not tell you about.  For example, the State Department’s original instructions said that the program applied to those people who had been employed “by, or on behalf of, the US Government”, for a period of at least 12 months.  My interpreter had spent 27 months working exclusively with US Special Forces, US Army units, and the State Department.  Sounds like a slam dunk, right?  No.  The State Department refused to recognize all but four of those months.  They never once explained why, despite repeated requests from both my interpreter, myself, and IRAP.  We eventually discovered that the company my interpreter worked with was paid on an ISAF contract.  Since that wasn’t a US contract, his time there didn’t count.  Despite minor changes to the program since then, his time there still doesn’t count.

Another trap is that the Embassy has set up a special, anonymous hotline, where people can phone in allegations against anybody working for the US, past or present.  That will derail an application.  The Taliban knows this and makes use of it.  So, in effect, the State Department has to have the Taliban’s approval before issuing an SIV.  If the Taliban wants the individual to stay in Afghanistan so they can be killed, they just have to call in an allegation and the State Department is happy to oblige.  

Another trap is that of any bureaucracy: slow-rolling the process.  This delays applications until the program expires, when they don’t have to worry about it anymore.  The State Department did this in Iraq, resulting (as noted above) in over 57,000 applications being stalled in the pipeline when the deadline passed.  That’s 57,000 decisions the State Department didn’t have to make.  Except, thanks to a lawsuit filed by IRAP on behalf of some of those Iraqis, the State Department was forced to re-open the pipeline.  But as we’ve seen, having the pipeline open, and actually getting people through it, are two very different things.

There have been many articles this month about the fall of Saigon 40 years ago.  Many focused on “Operation Frequent Wind”, in which over 7,000 people were evacuated in two days, and “Operation Babylift”, in which over 3,300 young children were evacuated in three weeks.  The differences between those two programs and the State Department  processes in Iraq and Afghanistan are immense.  The Vietnam operations were run by the military.  Under chaotic conditions, young soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines evacuated more people in three weeks than the State Department has processed in four years.  Unlike the State Department, they didn’t demand that application forms be filled out, proof of citizenship be provided, physicals taken, or polygraphs be passed.  No, they saw people in immediate danger and did their best to get them to safety.  

The State Department, though, couldn’t care less.    

But the Taliban does.  They have a pretty good idea of who worked for the US and they’re picking them off at the rate of about one every 36 hours.  My interpreter has been attacked twice.  The first time, they shot him off his motorcycle and left him for dead in Kandahar City.  The second time, they missed him, but blew his mother’s brains all over the back seat of his car.  His best friend, also an interpreter, was recently killed.  He and his family are now in hiding.  They have to move frequently and change phone numbers because the Taliban keep finding out where they are.  His family has disowned him because of the danger brought on them.  There are literally thousands of others in the exact same situation.

Lest you think that these are just the rants of one crazy old man, here are a few sample articles on the problem that have appeared recently.  Google “Afghan interpreters”, “Iraqi interpreters”, “interpreters killed”, or similar topics, or go to the Iraq Refugee Assistance Project and read more.

False Promises: How We Are Failing Our Afghan Allies

(Huffington Post, Apr 8, 2015)

No One Left Behind

(Kennedy School Review, Harvard)

The Horrifying Story Of What Is Happening To Former US Interpreters In Afghanistan

(Business Insider)

So what can you do?  Contact your Senators and Congressman and urge them to do two things.  First, hold hearings and force the State Department to own up to their abysmal performance.  Second, urge them to revise the language of the laws governing the program to make it easier to understand, more transparent, more responsive, and much, much faster.  Lives depend on it.

Until it’s fixed, thousands of people who were our friends and allies will be saying the same things that Ahmadzi said:

Fuck you US embassy dick suckers

Fuck US States department
You guys are fucking playing games with our feeling son of bitches.

Preps for an Upcoming Exhibition

I've been asked to be a part of an exhibition opening next week in Asheville.  The show is titled "Thought-Provoking Art by Six UNCA Alumni".  When Robert Tynes, the curator, asked me to be in it, I had nothing on hand that hadn't already been exhibited in town.  So I said, "Sure, I'll participate!"  This was a way to get my ass in gear and paint something.

But the pressure is on.  Not only does it have to be exhibition-ready, but it has to be thought-provoking as well.  That's a pretty high bar in my book.  So what to do?  I thought of maybe doing something about the current disaster of North Carolina's idiot governor and state legislature, but I really don't want to go back to satirical political paintings again.  Thinking of politics just makes my blood boil.  I then thought about doing the first of my intended new series on "Survivors".  The problem is that I don't yet have a survivor to work with, and I'm not about to just make stuff up.  Eventually, I decided to do a painting based on my experiences in Afghanistan.  I went back through my photos, thought about how they might be used, came up with some ideas, and finally whittled them down to two.  Of those, one is now underway.

The painting is tentatively titled "Negotiation".  Three Afghan men are sitting cross-legged on the ground, looking directly at the viewer.  One is a white-bearded elder who is carrying on the conversation, one is an adult, and one is maybe a teenager.  An AK-47 leans against the wall behind them, while a plate of treats and cups of tea sit between the viewer and the Afghans.  I'm trying to make the setting ambiguous: are they a threat? friendly? what's the viewer's role? what might happen?  In other words, it's typical of most any negotiation with Afghans, particularly villagers.

I'm posting photos of the development of the new painting on my website in the "Development of a Painting" (duhh) section.  Normally, I'd do this after the painting is done just to make sure (a) the finished work is something worth looking at and (b) I can make it look like I knew what I was doing all along.  This time, though, all that's out the window.  I don't know what it'll be like, whether it'll be worth a look, and it's showing how everything keeps changing.  So in addition to the pressure to make a "thought-provoking work", I'm upping the pressure on myself, showing you the ugly side of the sausage-making process.

One last note.  I mentioned photos.  I much prefer to work from life, but that's impossible in this case, so I have to use what's available.  This painting is not a copy of one photo, it's being put together from parts of many.  At least 12 photos have contributed something so far: an expression here, the position of a hand there, the shape of an AK-47 from two others.  The overall idea and composition, though, is straight out of my head.  There is no way I could have taken a photo like this.

So go take a look and let me know what you think.  I can still change it.  Next week at this time, though, it'll be too late!

Afghanistan ... Inbound and Outbound ...

So I spent last week training a group of military guys who are heading to Afghanistan.  As mentioned in my last post, my role was to mentor a team of four as they went through our immersive training course.  They spent a good bit of time in classroom training and, more importantly, a lot in role-playing scenarios.  Each of these scenarios is very much like what they'll encounter downrange.

My team were four very sharp guys and they did very well.  Throughout the week, the scenarios that we put them in got more complex and nuanced, with surprises that could trip them up if they didn't keep their heads on straight.  Which they did.  It was very rewarding to watch them develop throughout the week, to learn from their (minor) mistakes, and to become comfortable in dealing with Afghans in an Afghan world.

The role of a mentor is a complex one.  I was there to guide them through the maze of classes, preparations, and scenarios.  Some mentors have "taught the exam" - in other words, they told the students what was going to happen so that the students would know the "right" answers.  I don't subscribe to that theory.  My approach was the Socratic method, to try to guide by asking questions.  "Okay, so you're going to meet with the Provincial Governor tomorrow.  What do you know about him?  Where would you find information about him?  Who do you know that has dealt with him?  What do you want to get out of this meeting?  What will be the roles for each team member?  Will using your sketchy Pashto language skills be good, or will you stick with English and use your interpreter?  Who else might be there?  Will you try for a group photo?"  In Afghanistan, there are a very few things that are black, a very few that are white, and a whole lot of shades of gray in between.  In other words,there is no one "right" answer, so they need to be able to think for themselves as to which course of action is appropriate for them.

One of the other trainers this week used a great word to describe our mission: compelling.  For me, this is very compelling.  It's a national mission.  People's lives are on the line.  The success or failure of a nation is at stake.  And I have the opportunity to help train some of the people whose efforts will affect the outcome.  This work is tremendously rewarding for me.

Just how important it is was hammered home the day after training was over.  Two suicide bombers hit a convoy carrying the Zabul provincial governor and several Americans as they traveled to deliver schoolbooks.  Six Americans, including a young State Department public affairs officer, were killed.  Several others, including another young woman whom I knew in Kandahar, were wounded, some critically.  A number of Afghans were also killed and wounded, although I don't know how many.  It was a routine trip outside the wire, the kind that I had been on many times in my own area, only this time too many of them didn't come back.

The provincial governor said that he was the intended target, rather than the Americans.  Probably so.  The insurgents know that we're drawing down now and leaving soon, so there's not much reason to hit us besides the publicity value of killing infidels.  Their attention is more focused on the Afghan government officials that will be there over the long term: the governors, chiefs of police, Army officers, judges, and so on, who are picking up the fight that we're handing over.  I saw this developing in Maiwand last summer and fall.

So the next time that I go to Indiana to train Afghan-bound teams, this event will be first and foremost in my mind.  

Kabul

Kabul is half a world away from home and, at 5900+ feet, a lot higher than even Denver.  Each of these facts alone would wreck my sleep; combined, they've caused me a lot of aggravation over the past week.  But I'm finally getting adjusted.  I slept in until 3 a.m. this morning, which was a whole hour better than yesterday.  Tomorrow, I'm shooting for 3:30!

Our group of intrepid volunteers arrived in Kabul on Tuesday of last week.  We retrieved our bags in the airport terminal under an ad featuring a bearded smiling Afghan gent urging us to listen to FM 108, "For the Rock and Roll in all of us!".  Then we were herded into our armored SUVs and hustled through Kabul traffic to the Embassy.  Kabul traffic reminds me very much of, say, the Philippines, or Baghdad, or Bangkok, only with fewer rules.  "Cut-throat" doesn't even come close.  I'm glad I was in the back seat with plenty of heavy steel between me and the cars, trucks, and donkey carts outside.

We arrived safely and were quickly settled into our hooches, given temporary badges, and shown around the compound, our new temporary home.  Over the next few days we went through a variety of training classes such as security precautions, medical, Embassy organization, our mission in Afghanistan, IED familiarization and so on.  Meanwhile I worked to get a lot of nitnoid admin things straightened out.  My travel account, for example, has duplicate entries for a trip I took from Iraq three years ago; one of these entries is marked "closed" and the other "open" for reasons that are impossible to discern.  Another account is to be used to arrange travel within Afghanistan and, for some reason, they aren't letting me into it yet.  A third account is to be used to arrange international travel and I have no idea where to even find that one.  Meanwhile, I need to make some changes to my pay account, but they haven't given me a user ID and password.  Ah, bureaucracy at its finest.

While in Iraq, I commented on the ubiquity of temporary buildings, especially those made out of shipping containers.  They've taken it to a new level in Afghanistan.  You would not believe the office and berthing complexes that can be built, Lego-style, with shipping containers.  They can be multi-story edifices with large decks, long single-story rows surrounded by sandbags, stand-alone units, or anything in between.  My particular hooch is a shipping container.  It sits at a slight list to starboard and down a bit in the stern, but it has air conditioning and a functioning bathroom.  We call this a "wet CHU".  I'm happy to have it right now because in a week or so, I'll be in a "dry CHU", meaning the bathroom is in another shipping container somewhere outside.  And a few days after that, I'm apparently going to be in someplace even more basic.  More on that when it develops.

Over the past two days, I've been in contact with the unit that I'm headed to.  I've talked to a couple of people who already work there (or nearby) and have learned a lot about my soon-to-be life.  And I have to say, I'm pretty excited about it.  The mission is challenging, the living arrangements extremely spartan, and the operational environment a bit more exciting than I'd prefer.  But on the whole, it's a mission that needs doing and I can do it.  

So in a few days I'll finish up the last of my training here in Kabul.  Then I'll head downrange, visit with a couple of organizations that I'll be working with, and finally arrive at my assignment.  

Maybe by that time, I'll be able to sleep the whole night.

Afghanistan Bound

I have accepted an offer from the State Department to work in Afghanistan for a year.  The current plan (subject to change) is for me to go to Washington early next month for training, and then to head down range to my new assignment at the end of September.  I'll be working on a Field Engagement Team at one of the US or NATO bases.  I don't know which team yet, and even if I did, it would probably change before I got there.  These teams are made up of representatives from State, Defense, and various other departments.  Their mission is to work with local officials and businesses to improve local conditions.

You might think I'm nuts, but I'm very excited about this opportunity.  Why would anybody be excited about going someplace that is medieval at best and a dangerously hot war zone at worst?  Well, for some of  the same reasons that people have volunteered to go to Iraq, Haiti, Somalia, or other trouble spots.  It's a chance to do something that makes an important difference to people's lives.  It's an opportunity to participate in something much bigger than my own puny concerns.  It's a national mission that has to be successful, for their sake and ours.  And it's a difficult job that not many people can or would do, but it's one that I have the skills and experience for.

To be honest, going to Afghanistan was not my first choice.  When I began my job search back in January, I focused on the US, particularly Asheville (where we now live), San Diego (where we have family and friends), and Washington, DC (which is the only place in the country with a strong economy).  I wrote about my initial thoughts in a blog post in February and then in periodic updates after that.  But while I found lots of interesting opportunities in the US, I never got so much a phone interview.  Even though I had a lot of positive comments about my resume, and even when I could show solid accomplishments in everything listed in the job qualifications, I heard nothing except the occasional "job's been filled", "we're reviewing your qualifications", or "no, thanks".  To say it was frustrating is an understatement.

But early on, I started applying for jobs in Afghanistan.  Why?  Well, frankly, I wanted to do something more important than just make money for some corporation, and while there were some great opportunities to make a contribution in the US, there weren't that many of them.  The vast majority of openings that I could reasonably apply for were to fundamentally help some company make a profit.  There's nothing wrong with that, and it could be argued that making a profit is what America is all about.  But just making a profit has never excited me, which is probably why I never did as a professional artist.  Instead, I needed something that provided a deeper meaning and purpose.  The mission in Afghanistan not only did that, but it's something that I'm qualified to do.

And it was Afghanistan that finally came through for me.  After months of hearing nothing back from my job applications, suddenly four organizations contacted me within two weeks.  Each had a very different mission in Afghanistan and all of them were very cool.  I decided to work with the Field Engagement Team in large part because it was a front-line mission.  Although the other positions paid more, they were all support roles.

I can't say Janis is excited about my going away again, but she's a trooper.  We've been through long deployments before, including my previous year and a half in Iraq, so we know what to expect.  She'll do well.

So I'm getting ready to deploy one more time.  I've filled out a ton of forms already, am fixing things around the house, making lists of things to be done in the next month and sometimes actually checking things off of it.  It feels good to have something to work toward.

Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan

Okay, I'm pissed off at the NY Times again. Today they posted an article on the use of contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. The article gives the impression that contractors are a bunch of loose cannons, running around Iraq and Afghanistan unchecked, shooting up anything that moves, with little or no accountability. I found the article to be highly misleading. While many of the basic facts seem to be okay, they are not presented accurately nor in context.

First, they use the term "contractor" loosely. From the article, you'd believe that there were tens of thousands of men running around, heavily armed, and looking for a fight. The article explicitly states that there are more contractors in Afghanistan than there are soldiers. True. However, "contractors" include truck mechanics, computer technicians, supply clerks, US post office workers, construction supervisors, and a host of other non-combatant jobs which constitute the vast majority of civilian support. Even for those in the security field, most don't go outside the bases. They're "third-country nationals" (TCN's) from places like Uganda or Nepal, who stand guard at dining facilities, maintenance shops, unit compounds, or other places. Yes, they have AK-47's and other weapons, but this is a war zone, so they damn well better. These are the sort of routine jobs with very little threat exposure (besides the occasional incoming mortar round) that need to be done but don't require a highly-trained and very expensive US soldier or Western security specialist. The actual number of heavily-armed security forces roaming the Iraqi and Afghanistan countrysides are small.

The article cites several instances of contractor security forces shooting Iraqi non-combatants, mostly in the 2004-2007 period. All these reports came from those recently posted on Wikileaks. It's easy to critique these incidents from the safety of American soil and several years, but at the time, Iraq was a very hot war zone. As the article notes, 53 security contractors were killed in 2006 alone, an average of one a week. Attacks were happening by the hundreds, all over the country, every day. US soldiers as well as security contractors had to make life-and-death decisions on the spot with insufficient evidence. Quick: a car's coming at you and isn't slowing down. Is it an attack or is it innocent? That's all the information you have, and by the time you read to the end of that question, it's too late: somebody has just died, maybe the driver, maybe you. As Donald Rumsfeld, the architect of the Iraq war, stated, "stuff happens". Nasty stuff. So, yes, you can comb through the Wikileaks documents and find examples of security contractors killing innocent Iraqis. You can also find examples of security contractors doing their job and getting their charges safely out of a trouble spot.

The Times article states "it is clear from the documents that the contractors appeared notably ineffective at keeping themselves and the people they were paid to protect from being killed." Bullshit. In my work with the State Department and the Corps of Engineers in Iraq for 20 months, our Blackwater and Aegis security contractors took us all over the country, in and out of some very dangerous areas, every day, safely and securely. During that time, there were literally thousands of trips. Sometimes they were attacked, most of the time, not. A very few resulted in injuries to those being carried. Only one of those trips, the Fallujah incident of May 2009 cited in the Times article, resulted in a loss of life for the people being carried. (Two of the three men killed were friends of mine. The two Aegis security guards in the vehicle survived. I wrote a blog post about it.) So: thousands of trips for the Embassy and Corps of Engineers, some attacks, a few injuries, one attack with fatalities. That doesn't sound "notably ineffective" to me. No, I've ridden around the country with those guys. I've seen them in action. I'd go with them again.

Normally, I find the Times to have good reporting on Iraq. They're the only US-based news organization that has maintained a permanent presence in Baghdad during the entire conflict. Their reporting is usually pretty accurate and nuanced. Unfortunately, they missed the boat on this one and produced a very misleading report.

A Good Read

David Rohde (no relation to me that I know of) is a journalist for the New York Times. Last year, he was taken hostage by the Taliban in Afghanistan and held for seven months. The Times has just published his six-part story on his captivity. It is well-written, eye-opening, and harrowing. Go read it.

Firefight in Afghanistan

I just stumbled upon a very interesting blog post.  The blog is by a military guy.  He found a video of a mortar team in a firefight in Afghanistan and posted it, along with his comments about what was going on.  This is a real-life, no-shit firefight.  The mortar team wasn't lobbing softballs, they're launching white phosphorus and high explosives.  And as you can tell from the way they're moving their mortar tube around, the bad guys are close.  The team is very composed and professional, although their language may fry some ears (hey, they're under fire, you're not).

There has been very little in the news about Afghanistan and Iraq lately, but this video is a reminder that our troops are in combat for real, right now.