Koran-Burning Incident

By now, you've heard on the news about the Koran-burning incident at Bagram.  It's been a hot topic of conversation around here, and we're all on a heightened state of alert.  The story, from what we've seen in the news, is that somebody in Bagram tried to burn a bunch of Korans.  Some Afghans saw what was happening, pulled them out, and told a bunch of their friends.  All hell broke loose,

Reality is a bit more complex than that.  These particular Korans came from the detention facility.  The prisoners used them to write messages to each other.  When this was discovered, all the Korans were confiscated and stored somewhere.  There they sat until somebody decided they had to go.  What we figure is that some major told some lieutenant, who told some sergeant, who told some private, to move all the books.  Somewhere along the line, somebody who knew what these Korans were, and how they were supposed to be handled, told somebody who didn't know, to "get rid of this stuff".  Here in Afghanistan, that usually means to burn it.  So, probably, some 18-year-old private just thought he was doing what he was told.

The rest you know.  As of last evening, about four were dead in rioting and lots of people injured.  US and ISAF units all over Afghanistan are pretty much on lockdown, including here in the south.  But down here, things have been much quieter, probably because news travels slowly.  The officials we've spoken to understand that accidents happen, but have all cautioned that this is taken very seriously by the general Afghan public.  We've sure seen that up north and hope it won't play out the same way down here.

Some people have been very dismissive of the the Afghan reaction.  After all, they're just a bunch of books, right?  No.  To Muslims, it's the Word.  It's not that they're symbols (which they are as well), but they are literally the word of God.  And here is an infidel destroying the word of God.  Blasphemous.  We in the west are not immune to this sort of thing.  Years ago, an artwork titled "Piss Christ" was shown in New York.  It was a photo of a Catholic crucifix submerged in a urine-filled toilet.  The country was scandalized, Rudy Giuliani tried to close it down, and the clamor lasted for months.  Nobody died, however; a key difference between there and here.  But the underlying sentiment was the same: somebody had deeply affronted somebody else's religion.  Here it was accidental; in New York, deliberate.

So it will be interesting to see what happens over the next week.  Will southern Afghanistan erupt the same way that the north did?  We don't know.  But we're ready.

Working with Really Good People

In my last post, I wrote about an example of dealing with people who are walking problems.  There are a lot of them here.  There are also a lot of really sharp people here, people who have been places and done things that most folks on Main Street can only imagine.  One of the things I like to do is to sit in the DFAC over a plate of Mystery Special and ask them some kind of leading question, like, "so, how did you come to be in the State Department?"  The responses will often just blow you away.

I was talking with one guy about the Mohammad and Mohammad trip (see previous post) when I asked that question.  It led to an hour and a half discussion.  He had done security for the Peace Corps for years, covering third-world countries over a huge area.  He'd also been involved in border security operations in Texas and New Mexico.  Before that, he'd been in Special Forces, and had been a Ranger in Vietnam.  (I had to drag that last bit out of him - guys who brag about being in a group like that are often making it up.)

I talked with a young woman who's covering education development in the province.  She was a teacher for two years before joining the Peace Corps and spending five years in Africa.  She worked in rural villages for a couple of years before managing logistical support for Peace Corps volunteers over a wide area.

Speaking of the Peace Corps, we have a lot of former volunteers who are now with USAID and working throughout Afghanistan.  They've been stationed everywhere: Central America, Southeast Asia, Africa, you name it.  The stories they can tell about the people they worked with, and villages they lived in, are amazing.  And very human, too: on a one-to-one level, people are basically people, everywhere you go.  It's how they do their "people-ness" that differs and makes things interesting, frustrating, funny, counter-productive, dumb, and innovative.

There's a retired Marine Gunnery Sergeant in my office.  The guy's a ball of fire.  He used to run the Silent Drill Team at the Marine Barracks in DC.  If you've never seen the Silent Drill Team, it is a world-class performance: complex, close order drill with impeccable precision, carried out in silence.  The hard work and discipline that goes into it is unbelievable.  Our work is not nearly that intense, and he doesn't have to drive himself that hard anymore, but he's still on top of everything.  Don't cross the Gunny!

Actually, there are quite a few retired military guys out here.  They're all guys - haven't met any retired military women in this area.  They come from a variety of backgrounds: Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force; officer and enlisted.  One guy in my office was on the same Navy ship that I was on when we did the exercise Teamwork 84 and "invaded" Norway in winter of 1984.

I could go on.  There are a lot of people out here with incredible backgrounds and abilities.  Most of them are a lot of fun to work with.  A few are dickheads and a couple are way out of their depth.  But that's life, isn't it?  On balance, I've got a really good crew.  Can't ask for much more than that.

Oh, and to follow up on my last entry.  Either Mohammad or Mohammad called Abdullah and they agreed to meet at a place that the handlers, Bob and Alice, hadn't planned for.  Then Abdullah blew off the meeting.  Meanwhile, Bob and Alice discovered that their office in Kabul had a branch down here in Kandahar, so they used their branch office to make the trip arrangements.  Which is what they should have been doing from Day 1.  You still can't make this stuff up.

Dealing With Idiots

When I was going through training, quite a few of the instructors said that working with the Afghans was easy and fun, but working with Americans was a pain the royal keister.  This past week, I've really come to appreciate those remarks.  It has continually amazed me how people who should know better do things that just make no sense.

For example, early this week some Americans in Kabul decided that they needed to come down to our area with some senior Afghans to visit a particular location.  To keep my own butt out of the wringer, I'll call the Americans "Bob" and "Alice", and the Afghans will be "Mohammad" and "Mohammad".  Not their real names, of course, but real names give away organizations, which causes embarrassment, which would come down on Your Trusty Correspondent.  And embarrassing organizations is not my goal in this post; rather, I just want to highlight the kind of things we tend to do to ourselves.

Anyway, the real issue is that Mohammad and Mohammad needed to come down to resolve an issue that is essentially an Afghan problem.  Bob and Alice are there to "facilitate".  In practice, "facilitate" too often means "do it all" and that's what was happening here.  Instead of Afghans solving their own problems, we have Americans arranging schedules, transportation, setting up meetings, yadda yadda yadda.  I have seen that, when Afghans decide to resolve a problem, they're pretty good at it; but if they think we'll do it all for them, they'll let us.  Bob and Alice haven't seen that yet.

So Bob and Alice are now doing Mohammad and Mohammad's grunt work for them.  That's bad enough, but they're not doing it the right way.  For example, if you're going to take a couple of senior Afghans and their entourage somewhere, particularly into a hot zone like southern Afghanistan, you need to coordinate with the local military forces.  Did they do that?  Well, if they did, would I be writing about it?  Instead, Bob contacted a mid-level staffer at my shop (not military) and asked him to make a few arrangements, like getting somebody to drive them from one spot on the base to another.  Simple stuff, really, so the staffer started taking care of it, until we realized what was happening.  Whoops!  Time to slam on the brakes and start asking questions.  When we did, we realized that Mohammad and Mohammad needed to talk to Abdullah (another pseudonym) while they were down here.  Abdullah has some say over what's going on in the area, but has been ignored, and is not happy about it.  So we tell Bob and Alice that we want these three Afghans to meet, and by the way, here's the ISAF guy ("Fred"; yes, another pseudonym) that you need to talk to in order to grease the skids for the visit.

It's now four days later and time is getting short.  Bob and Alice have now been told four times what they have to do.  They have yet to do any of it.  And it's not hard.  They just need to tell Fred what their travel arrangements are and what kind of assistance they need.  That way Fred can coordinate with the guys in the field and let the appropriate people know about the visit.  Simple.  But apparently it's too hard for them.  All we know right now is the intended date and the intended place of the visit.  And Abdullah isn't included.  Abdullah's sitting back in his office going "WTF?"  Abdullah can be a real pain in the ass to Mohammad and Mohammad if he wants to.  He might want to after this is all over.

So I sent out another note to Bob and Alice tonight saying that they need to delay the trip a few days to allow time for the proper coordination (translation: "if you idiots had called Fred four days ago, we'd have it done by now") and you need to schedule a meeting with Abdullah.  We'll see what happens.  Or doesn't.

I have to say, this is the worst-coordinated event that I've seen so far in my time here in Kandahar.  Well, maybe not ... there was that time ... no, better not go there.  Anyway, sometimes dealing with Americans is the hardest part of my job.  Working in Afghanistan is walking a fine line.  You want to get the mission done, and you want to build Afghan capability, and sometimes those two goals collide.  And when they do, people sometimes go for the expedient solution rather than the right one.

And the funny thing is, if Mohammad and Mohammad just picked up a phone and called Abdullah, a lot of the issues would be solved.

You can't make this stuff up.

Title Sequence: The Pacific

There have been several very powerful movies made about war over the past decade and a half.  Saving Private Ryan was the first in the new breed that honestly showed the brutality of combat.  That continued with the television mini-series Band of Brothers and, more recently, The Pacific.  My wife won't watch those kinds of shows.  I don't blame her.  But when the shows are well done, I'm riveted.

The title sequence for The Pacific was particularly meaningful for me.  This one featured charcoal drawings of soldiers in combat, blended into brief clips from the show, along with close-ups of charcoal being dragged over the paper, disintegrating as it went.  As an artist, and as a military vet, these are powerful images.  I watched the sequence closely every time it played.

A friend sent me a link last night to a site that described how this title sequence was created.  It's on the website ArtoftheTitle.com, a well-put-together site that discusses how movie and TV title sequences are conceived, developed, and executed.  For The Pacific, they had about 2 1/2 minutes to set the stage, establish the idea of ordinary guys caught up in a unbelievably violent world, and create an emotional involvement with the viewer.  That's a hard task.

Their use of "combat art" was unusual and very effective.  The rough charcoal drawings are exactly the kind of drawings that a combat artist would make - quick, unfinished, capturing a split-second in a violent world, or observing a soldier in a quiet moment.  I'm as moved by those drawings now as when I saw them on TV.

What is so valuable about this article is the description of how they put it all together.  Part was a team effort: lots of talented people bouncing ideas off each other.  Part of it was putting together an "inspiration sheet" with lots of images - photos, drawings, prints, materials, some from war, some not - of things that they thought might be included.  This, I think, is a wonderful idea.  When I'm working on a new painting, I put lots of ideas into my head and let them percolate; often I'll do a lot of drawings, or collect some images on my computer or mark pages in a book.  But I haven't actually put them all up on a board to look at all day long.  This is something that I'm going to have to try, whenever I get a studio again.  (That day is coming ... )

From the inspiration sheet they came up with three alternative approaches.  Once they and the producers (Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg - you don't get much heavier than that) decided which to pursue, they went to work: drawing, drawing, drawing, photographing, drawing, combining, recombining, and drawing some more.  Hundreds of drawings and photos.  In the middle of it, they made some posters as a way to look at it from a different angle, and in the process came up with the iconic image of the soldier carrying his buddy.  They combined the drawings with video clips, reworked them to flow with the music, drew some more, and finally locked down the sequence and put it into final production.  Just the description of it sounded like a dream assignment.  Man, I would love to be involved in something like that!

The site has similar pages for title sequences for lots of other movies and TV shows: Batman, Fight Club, Mad Men, Soylent Green, The Naked Gun, and Zombieland, to name but a very few.  I haven't looked at any of them yet because I'm still fascinated by the whole process of making the sequence for The Pacific.

Go take a look.  If you're any kind of a visual artist, you'll find something here of value.

Panetta and the "End of Combat Operations"

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta is in the news for his comments on the future of Afghanistan.  The news media have screaming headlines about the "end of combat operations" in 2013 and a full pullout in 2014.  Pundits on both sides have jumped into the fray with their opinions, which appear to be wildly exaggerated no matter which side they're on.

Panetta's remarks shouldn't be much of a surprise.  All he's saying is basically what we've been working towards for a couple of years now.  We have been building up the Afghan security forces with the intent that they take over responsibility for the security of their own country by the end of 2014.  To do that, we're doing a gradual, phased transition, in which we step back as Afghans step up.  Some provinces have already been turned over to Afghan control.  This strategy allows them to lead the fight, with ISAF forces in support for a while, until it's all theirs.

Looking forward, there are three more fighting seasons (June to October) before that happens: 2012, 2013, and 2014.  For 2012, we're still leading the fight, at least in the south and east, but the Afghan forces are taking more responsibility.  In 2013, it'll be Afghans leading most of the fighting with ISAF providing support.  In 2014, the Afghans will have it all, while ISAF forces draw down from support to an advisory and training role by the end of the year.

The dumbest thing in the world would be to have ISAF forces leading the fight right up until the end of 2014, then turning to the Afghans and saying, "Okay, it's all yours, have fun."  That's a guaranteed formula for failure.  The phased approach allows Afghans to gain experience while still having a backstop - in other words, it allows them to fail (and learn) without jeopardizing the entire country.

So what Panetta was doing was just describing how our previously-announced strategy is going to be implemented.  Whether you agree with the strategy and timelines is a different matter.  Personally, I think the timelines are a bit ambitious - I think it would be safer for the mission to extend it by a year or two.  But I'm not at all convinced that the mission is worth the additional cost.

Kabul Conference

Winter has definitely settled over Kandahar.  It's been cold, windy, sometimes rainy, and occasionally snowy.  The other day, soldiers were taking pictures of each other over at the Boardwalk, which had a light dusting of very slippery snow.  I may regret saying this in about six months, when the temperatures are well over 100, but I could do with some warmer weather.

I was getting a bit too shaggy last week, so I headed over to the Boardwalk to get a haircut.  I was hoping to get the sexy blonde Russian girl, but instead got the chubby Uzbek guy.  Oh, well, with my glasses off, I can't see, anyway, and the guy gave me a better haircut than the girl did, so I'm happy.  

There was a dance tune that came out about 1990, that had a woman hollering "everybody DANCE now" ... remember that one?  Yeah.  Well, this barbershop is staffed by Russians, so they were playing Russian music, and one of the tunes was a remake of "everybody dance now".  Only it sounded like it was cut by a platoon of Russian soldiers, who had all the rhythm and soul of a rhinoceros on vodka.  Heavily-accented Russian guys would chant "everybody dance now" with a beat like stamping around in the snow in heavy boots.  Then one of 'em would go into a drugged-out Russian rap.  Like a nightmare that wouldn't end.  I could hardly keep myself from laughing the whole time it was playing.

A couple of days ago, two of us went up to Kabul for a conference, along with several military staff guys.  We'd asked for a flight in the afternoon, so we could get some work done here, then fly up, settle in, and attend the conference the next day.  Nope.  Military Air is a logic unto themselves.  Instead of an afternoon flight, we had to show up at 4:30 am for a 6:30 am flight.  Ugh!  I like my beauty rest, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do.  Let me tell you, a flight line at 6 am on a cold winter morning, with a stiff wind blowing across the field, is no fun.  But our flight left more or less on time and the plane warmed up quickly.  We flew in a C-27, which is a new addition to our inventory and a nice little cargo plane.  Unlike the bigger C-130, there's plenty of room for passengers to stretch their legs.  

We arrived in Kabul in mid-morning and quickly got settled into our plush 5-star accommodations at the NATO base at the airport.  This turned out to be a tent with a dozen bunk beds built out of 2x4's and old wooden pallets, with the heater set on "fry" and the bathroom in a converted container about 50 yards away.  A couple of us then went exploring, which didn't take long, and we found ways to keep ourselves sorta busy and entertained for the rest of the day.  That evening, our whole group got together and went over to what turned out to be a really good Thai restaurant on the base.  Yes, I said "really good".  Definitely the surprise of the trip.

The conference went pretty well.  We made some good contacts, especially with the Marines from Helmand Province next door, and swapped a lot of ideas.  The Marines are doing some things that we could/should do, and we're doing some things that they should be doing, so we had some good discussions.  As usual in a conference, there were a couple of speakers that I just wanted to hit the "Delete" button on, but that's to be expected.

Coming home worked out pretty well.  Military Air told us to be at the terminal at 7 pm for an 8:30 flight and the plane showed up an hour early.  I was back in my own little room in Kandahar by 10 pm. 

So now it's back to the office so I can catch up on emails, write a trip report, and find out what has hit the fan.  I've been out of the office for two days, so I know something did!

A Rather Blah Week

When one day is pretty much like the previous one, it makes it hard to find something interesting to write about.  My big thing lately has been health issues.  I've had four colds since the middle of November.  Four very different colds, so they're not the same bug.  It settles in, I feel like crap for a week or so, have a few days where things are normal, and then the Dreaded Post-Nasal Drip starts again.

I felt so bad the other day that I went over to the clinic, convinced that something more insidious was at work.  (I can be a bit of a hypochondriac sometimes, and when I'm not feeling well, I'm a real wuss).  The docs checked me out and gravely informed me that it was "viral".  Translation: it's just a cold, you twit.  But they loaded me up with meds not available in the PX and I feel better today.

I'm not the only one having troubles.  Everybody, it seems, has had at least one cold, and quite a few have had ongoing sniffles or congestion.  We think it's due to the air here at KAF.  It's really dirty, loaded with the talcum-powder-like "moon dust" so prevalent in Afghanistan, as well as gravel dust, diesel exhaust, smoke from the incinerators, particles from the poop ponds, and lots of other really nasty sources.  One guy that I was talking with yesterday felt fine during several weeks out of the country, but within two days of being back at KAF, he was fighting a sore throat.  Those who have been in Iraq think that the air is generally dirtier here.  I believe it.

Things at work have been ... well, unremarkable.  What's there to say?  I go through a hundred or so emails a day.  I talk with State Department guys and military guys about this or that operation.  I research an answer to a particularly vexing question.  Then I go answer a bunch of emails based on the research and discussions with the state or military guys.  I go to the DFAC.  Periodically I go to the gym.  Once a week I'll do my laundry.  Pretty exciting stuff, huh?  And you thought I was riding around in helicopters and MRAPs all the time, meeting Afghan government officials, and drinking chai with Taliban!  No, reality is much more mundane.

But at it's core, it's still a pretty rewarding experience.  I'm playing my small role in trying to make this place functional.  Sometimes, I'm just trying to prevent yet another screwup by somebody who either doesn't know better or (worse) doesn't care.  But it's all striving toward a goal that really needs to be met.  Will we?  Don't know.  But I'm doing what I can.  Despite all these damn colds.

Getting In The Groove Again

Riding in the C-27

Graphite on paper, 5"x7"

I'm back in Kandahar again.  My trip was pretty uneventful, just long (14 hours from Dulles to Dubai alone).  Fortunately, I had a stopover in Dubai and got a room in a pretty swanky hotel.  It had a "Belgian Cafe" on the terrace outside, with really good food and outstanding draft beer.  I really enjoyed myself - thank you, American taxpayers.  Up early the next morning and over to the airport, where an amazingly long line snaked away from the ticket desk.  We're all getting on the flight to Kandahar?  As it turned out, no.  They'd over-booked the flight and a number of people were bumped to at least the next day.  Well, if you gotta get bumped, Dubai's not a bad place to spend the time.  Fortunately, my name was on the manifest.  We made it to Kandahar more or less on time.  After processing through the passenger terminal, I walked the 100 yards to our office compound and back to my little room.  "Home" again.

Since then, it's been a game of catch-up.  Catch-up on over 1300 emails (note: the "Delete" button is your friend).  Catch-up on internal discussions that don't make it into emails.  Catch-up on the gossip.  After a week, I think I'm pretty much back to speed.  Not that much has fundamentally changed, but the crises of three weeks ago are not the crises of today.  Well, one is, and it's a big one, but I have a feeling that it's going to be resolved in the next couple of days.

Two days ago, I went on a quick trip to Uruzgan.  No, this isn't a place from a J.R.R. Tolkien novel (..."darkest Uruzgan, beyond which Mordor lies ...").  It's the province north of Kandahar.  We needed to have some discussions with the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) up there, so we flew up in a C-27 in the morning and back in the afternoon.  I took along my sketchbook and did a couple of drawings during the short flights, one of which is posted above.

Yesterday, we had a reminder that this is still a challenging area.  The district governor of Panjwai, which is just to the west of Kandahar City, was killed by a suicide bomber.  The blast also killed the governor's two young sons and two police bodyguards, and wounded a number of others.  I had never met the man, but others in my office had worked closely with him.  He was pretty good at his job, which is why the Taliban targeted him.  You can read more about the incident here.  Another attack the previous day targeted BG Raziq, the Chief of Police of Kandahar Province and one of the most powerful men in southern Afghanistan.  Fortunately, the only one who was killed in that blast was the teenage suicide bomber.  We've made a lot of gains, but the insurgents can still reach out and touch someone when they really want to.

So it's back to work.  Gotta do what I can to piss off some insurgents.

Heading Back to the Dustbowl

My R&R is over.  I'm sitting here at the coffee shop at the Asheville airport, waiting to start the long trip back to Afghanistan.  It's been a great two weeks at home, even though I had a cold for most of it (thank you, Lufthansa).  It's been an expensive two weeks, too: a top and a pair of seat covers for the truck, four new tires for the Volvo, two new pairs of glasses for me, and a new painting by our artist friend Genie Maples, plus two visits to the dentist and another to the optometrist.  But there were plenty of good times, too.  Lots of time with Janis.  Dinners with friends.  Long walks with the dogs.  Kicked back on the couch, watching some good movies (Margin Call especially).  Videochats with the grandson.  Life's been good.

Now it's time to get back to work.  I'll arrive in Kandahar on Saturday sometime (weather permitting; see previous post for what can go wrong).  I'll need to hit the ground running as there are several hot items that'll be hitting their stride just after my return.  And I know there are plenty of other things that have cropped up in the past two weeks to throw our schedule into turmoil.  But that's life on the front lines.

So for now, I'll just sit here and enjoy some quiet time.  Next post will be from Kandahar!

And Now for a Bit of R&R

I'm at home now on an R&R break.  It's been a great time to do pretty much nothing.  Just being at home with my wife, dogs, and friends is enough.  Maybe I'm getting to be an old fart (okay, I already am an old fart), but I don't need to go traipsing off around the world, looking for exciting places to go and things to do.  No, thanks; Kandahar is exciting enough for me.  I just want some normality now.

Getting home was not easy.  I was supposed to leave on Wednesday, Dec 21, on a flight from Kandahar to Dubai, then on to the US.  But a dust storm rolled in on Tuesday, and by Wednesday morning it lay thick over all of southern Afghanistan.  Visibility was down to 400-600 meters, well below the 800 meters minimum for the airline to land to pick us up.  They kept pushing the arrival time back, hoping that it would clear just enough to get the plane on the ground.  It was cold, too: sub-zero (Fahrenheit), with ice on the ground.  We milled around all morning, first outside in the freezing cold, then inside an unheated terminal, hoping against hope that the skies would clear a bit, but they didn't.  Finally, at around 4:30, they cancelled the flight.

Now we had a couple hundred people with broken flight connections.  Right at the beginning of the Christmas rush.  And all the flights out of Kandahar for several days were overbooked already.  Not a good scenario.  I got on the phone with our travel agents in Kabul.  These guys worked miracles and quickly got me rescheduled on a flight out of Dubai 24 hours later.  The flight from Kandahar was a different issue: the airline was trying to get a second airplane in to get everybody to Dubai, but that was still in the works.

Thursday morning, we woke to a slightly thinner, but still present, dust storm.  Then we discovered that the airline could not get a second airplane in, due to some issues with the airport and (presumably) Afghan government.  This was a BIG uh-oh.  One of my co-workers suggested that I try getting to Kabul on an embassy-run airplane and then flying to Dubai on an airline.  I made some calls and discovered that (a) an Embassy flight was leaving in about a half hour and (b) the miracle-workers in Kabul could indeed get me on a flight from there to Dubai.  I grabbed my backpack, found the duty driver, and made it to the flight line with minutes to spare.  On the flight to Kabul, I could see just how thick and extensive the dust cloud was: it lay like a thick fog over the ground, making any features such as runways completely invisible, and it extended for miles.

Once in Kabul, I was able to get over to the commercial terminal, again with minutes to spare, and got checked in.  Then it was on to Dubai, a 2 1/2 hour flight.  I couldn't believe it: I was finally on my way!  After landing and going through the passport control, I had a couple of hours to kill.  Dubai is a very modern city, bustling and active, with a huge expatriate presence.  Based on some recommendations, I went to the Irish Village and had my first really good meal in nearly three months, along with a fabulous draft beer.  Heaven!

Back to the airport later and onto Lufthansa for a flight to Frankfurt.  I had been happy with this, thinking that it would be good to break up the flight into two legs vice one long 14-hour marathon.  As it turned out, not so.  Lufthansa was fine, a bit better than United but nothing like, say, Air France.  The problem was Frankfurt.  I've been through this airport in years past, but this time, it was ridiculous.  Security is over-the-top: you have to go through security to get away from your gate, and go through it again to get to your next gate.  "Slow" is the operative word here.  Worse, Frankfurt is a maze without useful guidance.  If the flight you're looking for is Lufthansa, then there are signs everywhere telling you where to go.  If you're looking for another airline (and almost every international airline in the world is in Frankfurt), then you're out of luck.  No signs.  I finally stumbled over an information desk with a grumpy soul who pointed me in the right direction.  Despite a two-hour layover, I got to my gate about 15 minutes before boarding time.  My advice is to stay the hell away from Frankfurt.

After that, though, it was smooth sailing.  I was on United to Chicago, which was a piece of cake after Frankfurt.  Then the final short flight to Asheville.  Janis and the dogs were waiting for me in the terminal.  I was home, 42 hours after leaving Kandahar.  And I'd picked up a cold along the way.

So now I'm sitting here in my favorite chair.  My cold is pretty much gone (not quite).  Janis and the dogs are more or less used to me being here by now.  I've visited with some friends, taken care of some business, and had a wonderfully quiet Christmas.  Life is good.

I head back to Afghanistan next week.  There are things cooking that I need to work on.  But for now, I'm just enjoying being at home.

Trying to Go on R&R

I got up this morning, grabbed my backpack, and headed for the air terminal here at Kandahar Air Field, intending to go home on R&R.  It didn't quite work out that way.  The reason?  Dust.

Yesterday, we had a big dust cloud move in early in the day.  It looked like fog - a gritty whitish-gray mass that settled over the base and gradually got more dense as the day went on.  This morning, it was still there.  Our group of traveller wanna-be's trooped over to the KAF airfield at 8 am to get checked in for the flight.  It was cold - there was ice on the ground outside the terminal, and for some reason that only makes sense to the military, we were not allowed to go inside for over two hours.  (For all of you who gripe about United Airlines' crappy treatment of prisoners - er, customers, at least they let you stand around inside a warm terminal while they muck up your flight).  Eventually, we got inside and discovered that there wasn't really any heat inside, either, so it didn't make a lot of difference where we were kept.

But as we stood around shivering, I watched the dust cloud get thicker and thicker.  Our plane was delayed, then delayed again, in the hopes that the air would start to clear.  No luck.  Somebody explained that planes have to have a minimum of 800 meters visibility to land.  Our visibility ranged between 400-600 meters.  In other words, about a quarter of a mile, give or take.

Finally, at about 4:30, they gave up and cancelled the flight.  A group of four of us hightailed it over to our office compound and got on the phone to our travel office.  Those guys worked miracles revising our tickets.  I'm pretty happy with mine: they have me flying on Lufthansa tomorrow, which is much better than United, and it breaks my long overseas flight up into two sections.  Now if they can just get me an aisle seat ...

Those tickets still depend on tomorrow's weather.  I hear that it's supposed to be a bit clearer.  The air service (a charter group) is arranging to fly two planes in tomorrow to fly out both today's and tomorrow's passengers.  A good thing, since both flights were over-booked anyway.

So.  With a little luck, at this time tomorrow I should be in Dubai, waiting to board a flight that will take me home.  I'm ready!

Three Days in Maiwand

Two Elders

Graphite on paper, 9"x12"

Three Elders

Graphite on paper, 9"x12"

The Listener

Graphite on paper, 9"x10"

Senior Leader

Graphite on paper, 9"x9"

I spent three days earlier this week in the district of Maiwand.  Maiwand is to the west of Kandahar City, on the border with Helmand Province.  It's an agricultural area with virtually no other types of industries.  Maiwand, along with neighboring district of Zhari on one side and the province of Helmand on the other, is the original homeland of the Taliban.  They still control the territory.  Afghan government influence is minimal but growing.  Slowly.  

During this visit, I was in several meetings with the district governor, chief of police, and other officials.  I also sat in on the District Development Assembly meeting.  This is a shura (a meeting of the elders) to discuss what they want to do to develop their district.  About 30 Maiwand elders were in attendance from various parts of the district.  I was a back-bencher, there to observe proceedings.  What better way for an artist to observe than by sketching?  So I took along my drawing pad and pencil, sat against the wall, and sketched away.  The four drawings above are the result.

As I've said before, Afghans have the most amazing features and are wonderful subjects for an artist.  They're very different from Western norms, very expressive, with different ways of dressing.  I could spend all day, every day, drawing and painting these guys.  Great fun.  My experience as a courtroom artist really helped here, as nobody sat still.  

The meeting itself?  Chaos.  There was much in the way of passionate speech about this and that, people pushing agendas, arguments and counter-arguments, debate, voting, more passion, signing of papers, scheduling of follow-on meetings, and so on.  Sometimes I'd look at the American officer sitting next to me and we'd just shake our heads and laugh.  You can't make this stuff up.  It was great entertainment.  As effective government, well, I don't know.  The district governor is still establishing himself (he's only been on the job for a month and is not from the district), so what he does with this group, and others, remains to be seen.

When not in meetings with the Afghans, I spent time with my primary contact, Carlos.  He's been there almost a year and is extremely well-versed in local governance and politics.  I was listening to the discussion in the shura while sketching, for example, and generally followed what was going on, but Carlos caught a lot of subtleties that I missed entirely.  Sometimes the fact that a certain individual says something, or doesn't say something, is vitally important.  As the man said, all politics is local, especially here.

I was also learning a bit about life on a Contingency Operating Base, or COB.  COBs are small bases with only a couple hundred people total.  This one is right on the edge of the town of Hutal - you can stand on the walls, throw a rock, and hit someone in the bazaar.  (Note: this is not recommended!)  Life on a COB is very spartan: tents, portajohns, gravel, limited supplies of just about everything, crappy communications links, a fairly well-equipped gym, and more MRAPs than you ever thought existed.  But it also fosters an esprit de corps since everybody's in the same boat.  You share what you have and help your buddy out.  Tomorrow, you're going to need your buddy's help.

All in all, a very productive visit for me and, hopefully, for Carlos and the rest of the Maiwand team.  I'm looking forward to working with them throughout the rest of my time in Afghanistan.  

Another Trip to Spin Boldak

I made another trip to Spin Boldak earlier this week.  Spin Boldak is the district in Kandahar Province (like a county in a state) that's on the border with Pakistan.  It has one of the two major border crossings that ISAF uses as a supply route.  Or it did until two weeks ago, when Pakistan closed the border to ISAF traffic after the shooting incident.  But this trip had nothing to do with the border crossing.  Instead, my boss wanted to talk with the key locals about the future.

His message was pretty clear: we're drawing down.  We're not leaving Afghanistan, but within three years, there will be a very small presence in Kandahar Province.  We're not doing lots of projects anymore, and we're not going to be a "shadow government".  Instead, they needed to work with the government structure to do the things that governments are supposed to do: build and maintain roads, provide schooling, provide a health care system, lay the groundwork for private-sector economic growth, and so on.  They need to get their government working now, while ISAF is here to back them up.  They can't wait until we're gone.

How did it go over?  Hard to say.  They certainly listened.  I saw heads nodding at important points.  Now to see what they do.

I was a back-bencher during most of this.  When you're with the Big Dog, he's the one who does the talking, particularly when we're talking about the big strategic picture.  I'll get my chance to talk with some of them later, when we're talking about specific "how to" points.

So, of course, I did some sketching when I could.  I swear, I could spend days drawing these guys.  Part of it is the fact that they look and dress so different from Americans, and there's that fascination with whatever's different.  That's why we all take photos on vacation, isn't it?  It's someplace different.

But in addition to being different, the Afghans I've dealt with have great character in their faces.  They've lived through experiences that you and I don't even like to read about.  They have a dignity and gravity about them.  But there's often an openness, a friendliness, sometimes even an eagerness, that's almost childlike.  (Not always - in one of our meetings, I sat next to a guy who wanted nothing to do with me.  But he listened intently to what was said and made some very sharp, focused, and interesting remarks back to the Boss.)

Spin Boldak Official

Ballpoint pen on lined notebook paper

7"x5" 

Spin Boldak Official

Ballpoint pen on lined notebook paper

7"x5"

These were done during a meeting with district officials.  These guys were quite lively.  Some of their discussion was "I want ... " and "I need ... ", aimed at ISAF, which is how they've been getting much of their resources over the past ten years.  But as the boss made clear, ISAF's not going to provide much more, and they need to get their resources from their own government.  I could see from their faces that they were getting the message.

Later we talked with the tribal shura.  A "shura" is a meeting of the elders to discuss whatever happens to be the topic of the day.  Spin Boldak has created a very representative shura assembly that reflects its tribal diversity.  This is the meeting where I sat next to the guy who didn't want anything to do with me.  Watching the crowd, if you ignored the turbans, beards, and Afghan dress, it was like a community meeting anywhere in the States, except maybe more respectful.  They listened, thought about it, made their own points, and in general were actively engaged.  I hope I can get back down there for another shura meeting soon, only this time without the boss, so that I can better see their dynamics in action.

So what's the future here?  It remains to be seen.  Spin Boldak is a very complex place, much more so than any other place in the region, except maybe Kandahar City.  There are lots of power players, lots of different dynamics, and we have only a shallow understanding of it.  Not for lack of trying, but Afghan society, especially in a place like this, has undercurrents and behind-closed-doors deals and unstated understandings that outsiders will not, ever, know about.  I recently described Spin Boldak as a paper-thin layer of official government laid on top of a spaghetti-plate of real activity.  We're doing what we can to help develop that official layer so that the spaghetti-plate doesn't destroy itself later on.

Friday Musings

Maiwand District Chief of Police

Ballpoint pen on lined paper, 7"x5"

A few days ago, I went out to the district of Maiwand to meet with the new District Governor and District Chief of Police.  It was an interesting trip.  I wound up sitting right next to the Governor and taking notes, so I couldn't do any sketches.  When we met with the Chief of Police, though, I managed to grab a seat to the side and was free to sketch away.  Here's the one of the DCoP.

The big news over the past few days has been the incident in the eastern part of the country where ISAF forces killed a number of Pakistani border troops.  Most of the news reporting that I've seen has focused on Pakistan's indignant response.  They've roundly condemned the attack as unprovoked, an assault on Pakistani sovereignty, and an international travesty.  Additionally, they've thrown us out of a base that we were using to launch drones and they've pulled out of the Bonn talks on the future of Afghanistan that just started.  And, in what will eventually affect me personally, they've closed ISAF's overland supply routes from the seaport of Karachi into Afghanistan for an indefinite period.  In response, we've issued our condolences to Pakistan, especially to the families of those killed, and launched an investigation into the incident.  Afghanistan has also issued condolences and tried to get Pakistan to come to the table in Bonn.  Pakistan, though, is in a helluva snit and does not want to play.

There is, of course, more to this story.  Afghan TV and print media are reporting that the Pakistani forces who were attacked had been shooting at an Afghan border village for some time, forcing residents to stay indoors.  These reports have also stated that an Afghan patrol, with ISAF backup, had come under fire from the Pakistani side of the border, which was what prompted the call for the ISAF attack helicopter to return fire.  I haven't seen any of this in Western news reports, though, only in Afghan.

So before everybody gets too excited and starts condemning ISAF forces as being trigger-happy cowboys (Pakistan's position), let's just wait until the investigation is done.  I bet it's not quite what we've heard so far.

In other news, I've been fighting a friction' cold for the past 3 weeks.  I'm sick of it.  SICK, I tell you!  It's knocked me on my butt several times.  I don't have time for this.  NyQuil and Mucinex and other drugs help the symptoms, but I want it to be gone.  Now, please.

So What Are We Doing in Afghanistan?

That's a pretty good question.  I asked it, myself, a lot of times before I ever thought to come here.  Most of my answers to myself were pretty negative.  If you read the papers, you'll think that the only Americans here are soldiers who are constantly getting in firefights or driving over IED's.  You'll also get the idea that Afghanistan is populated only by dirt-poor Taliban who grow poppies for the drug trade during the day and plot ways to kill Americans by night.  You'd think that we're wasting money by the truckload on roads that aren't built and buildings that are falling apart, and giving it away to corrupt officials and crooked contractors.  You'd probably think that we've got no strategy at all, that we're just reacting to whatever the Attack of the Day is, and lying to reporters about how great things are going.  And you'd be wrong.

The reality is far, far, far more complex than that.  I think it's far more complex than even Iraq was.  Iraqis, at least, have an appreciation and understanding of modern ways of doing business, of how government works, what industry is, what schools should do, and so forth.  They may not always act in accordance with what Westerners would do, but they have a fairly good understanding of modern society.  Afghans, in general, don't.  Their country has been in at war for over 30 years now and wasn't very advanced before that.  They've essentially been on international welfare for ages.  (And if you think we know how to get people off welfare, you haven't been paying attention to Detroit, south-central LA, or most any other major city).  The more I learn about Afghanistan, the more complicated it gets.  I'm not alone: this slide below was prepared for General McChrystal to illustrate just how hard it is here:

General McChrystal's response to this was, "When we understand this slide, we'll have won the war".  He wasn't kidding.  Anytime you do anything here, it affects everything else, one way or another.

So now that we've established that this place is hard, and that you the public are probably misinformed, the question is, what's really going on here?  Well, that's like the parable of the three blind men trying to describe an elephant.  I'm just one of those blind guys, grappling with my own little corner of the elephant.  But I think my perspective is a pretty good one.

We're following a strategy that's being driven by a lot of things.  Time and politics are the two primary drivers.  There's a line in the sand that says that the Afghan government will be running the whole show by the end of 2014 and that international forces (including US) will play a minor and supporting role after that.  (Note that this does not say that all US and NATO troops will be out of the country, contrary to what a lot of pundits think).  This timeline is driven primarily by the domestic politics in both the US and Afghanistan.  That's the mission that's been handed down, so the US/NATO military forces, the various embassies, and the Afghan government, are all working unbelievably hard to try to figure out how to do it.

Our mission is to build the capability of the Afghan society, primarily the government, to manage their own affairs.  That means teaching them effective leadership and management skills and helping them build organizations that can function.  We're helping them establish ways to budget for, and then carry out, essential services.  We're building up Afghan security forces that can maintain control of the country and keep insurgents marginalized.  We're laying the groundwork for economic growth so that more people can have jobs and less incentive to plant bombs.

For years, we've been doing a lot of this stuff for them.  People told us they needed a road, we built them a road.  They needed electrical power, we put up a diesel generator plant and distribution system, and then provided the fuel to run it.  We became a "shadow government" because we know how to do things, while the Afghan government was not capable of providing those services.  But we can't do this anymore.  It's time to get the Afghans to learn how to do their own road maintenance, collect fees for electrical service, and provide fuel for the generators.  So we've shifted our focus to training, mentoring, and assisting the Afghan government to do these functions for themselves.  This has been going on now for a couple of years.  We've already transitioned some areas over to Afghan control and they're running the show there.  In three years, it'll all be under Afghan control.

I've been involved in planning efforts for our corner of Afghanistan, which includes the provinces of Kandahar, Uruzgan, Daykundi, and Zabul, all in the southern part of the country.  Our military and civilian team has been following an extremely complex and thorough planning process.  Basically it starts three years out with what the situation should be at the end of 2014, and works backwards, identifying what needs to happen in order to get to that point.  It identifies the risks, opportunities, hard-and-fast requirements for specific actions, assumptions, facts, best-guesses, resources, and much, much more.  There are dozens of people involved, representing dozens of organizations, all of which are putting some of their best minds to it.  For weeks now, we've been doing an iterative process: breaking off into specialized groups, brainstorming, identifying the key issues, discussing with other groups, comparing notes, re-working everything, doing everything we can to develop a solid campaign plan that can effectively achieve the mission, and is robust enough to handle the unexpected.  The end result will be a campaign plan that will guide operations over the next few years.

Little of this is visible to the boots on the ground, reporters, or others who have not been involved.  But the effects of the previous generations of campaign plans can be seen.  The district of Arghandab, that I wrote about a few weeks ago, was an unbelievably fierce battleground 18 months ago, but is pretty quiet now.  Most other districts around here are fairly quiet, too.  Yes, there are still kinetic operations going on not far from here, but the insurgency has been pushed way back.  Al Qaeda in the Afghanistan and Pakistan area has been torn to pieces.  The Taliban is still here and still effective, but it was never really popular, so their base of support has been seriously eroded.  We've made a lot of progress.  It's fragile, but it's progress.

The challenge now is to get the Afghan government to a level where they can sustain that progress by themselves.  The reality is that they're going to need a lot of help, both now and for the foreseeable future.  But that's our mission.  That's what we're doing in Afghanistan.

In the Spin Again

There's a bad case of the KAF Krud going around.  (KAF, of course, being the acronym for our own Kandahar Air Field).  I got the bug last week and have been calling its namesake all week ("kaf kaf kaf kaf").  Fortunately, though, my case was fairly short-lived, about seven days, but I'll have to live with the kaf'ing for several more, apparently.  Colds are no fun.

I just got back from an overnight trip to Spin Boldak.  We had a meeting between a headquarters team that I'm on and the military and civilian leaders in Spin.  The goal was to work through some of the planning and reporting requirements that will guide a lot of our efforts from here on.  As it turned out, we were in violent agreement with the Spin Boldak team on the general direction we should take; our differences were primarily in how some things had been worded, and the different interpretations that we'd put on them.  I think we're pretty much on the same page now.  A good feeling.

The rest of my team left after the meeting, but I stayed for the night in order to get a bit more familiar with Spin B and the players.  I got to see some of the Army unit's command and control, which was very enlightening.  I'll just say that they have a pretty good handle on the insurgent threat, where the insurgents operate, and how to respond to different kinds of activities.

This morning, I sat in on a shura with some village elders.  A "shura" is a meeting to discuss a particular problem.  Afghans are a very egalitarian society, meaning that they arrive at decisions by discussion and consensus.  This particular shura was called because kids in the village had been throwing big rocks at military vehicles when they passed through.  The rocks had caused some expensive damage, and the very act of getting close enough to throw these rocks meant the kids were putting themselves into danger.  So the Colonel called the village elders down to talk about the situation, get the kids in line, and to build some better bridges between the village and the military.  I think the meeting was successful.  The Colonel proved to be quite diplomatic, forceful, and effective.  The elders seemed to get the message and said all the right things.  The proof, of course, will come the next couple of times that military vehicles roll through.

I had no part in the proceedings, but was at the table anyway.  This time I brought my sketchpad.  I started doing a quick study of one of the elders.  He caught on to what I was doing right away and was very intrigued.  Then it turned out that he was one of the key village elders who set the tone for the rest.  I had to leave the shura early to catch the helicopter, but I pulled the drawing out of the pad and gave it to him across the table as I left.  He seemed to get a big kick out of it.  So that's my contribution to today's war effort: building bridges through art!

Death By PowerPoint

One of the major reasons that I was not keen on working at another headquarters command was pounded home to me tonight.  I sat through a 1 1/2-hour meeting whose sole purpose was to fine-tune the PowerPoint slides that will be given to a general tomorrow night.

You read that right.  We had 17 people (not counting me) in a conference room.  All but four were military officers, most of them at the Lieutenant Colonel level, meaning around 15-22 years experience.  That's a lot of horsepower, especially when you remember that other lieutenant colonels not far from here are leading thousands of soldiers into combat at this very moment.  But instead of combat, these guys were focused on briefing slides.  Over forty slides, none of which were legible from more than five feet away.  Each one had two logos, one title, multiple boxes, arrows, color codes, bullet points, 4-point font, and enough words to fill a Danielle Steele novel.  I could read the titles and maybe a headline or two over the bullet points, but that was it.  Even if you could read the fine print, it would take you half an hour to figure out what the slide was supposed to tell you, because it was so full of acronyms, compressed phrases, and Afghan-specific jargon.

I know the general that this briefing is intended for.  He's the kind of guy who loves to dig down into a topic, ask lots of questions about details, find the obscure little byways of an idea, and gnaw at it until there's no life left at all ... in either the subject or the audience.  And what's really scary is that these guys tonight are giving him a huge variety of topics to play with.  It'll take him six or eight hours to go through them all.  And he'd have a ball doing it, too.  Non-stop.

Not me.  I'm afraid I'm going to be tied up in another meeting tomorrow night.  Even if I have to make one up.

PowerPoint has been the bane of military operations for many years.  There was a great article in the NY Times a year or so ago that addressed it.  I used PowerPoint back in my own military career, but it was nowhere near as all-encompassing, nor as crammed full of data, as these presentations are.

I may be an 82nd "Chairborne", but I'm not a PowerPoint Ranger.  I'd rather pull out my toenails with a rusty pair of pliers than sit through tomorrow night's briefing.

Spin Boldak

Life is different when you're traveling with a general.  They go with entourages.  They'll have several cars to move everybody.  Helicopters wait for them.  When the group gets to wherever the general is going, there are people there to take and store everybody's gear, guide all the staff to their particular destination, and make sure that everybody is well taken care of.  They treat you like you're Very Important. 

I didn't have the heart to tell them I'm not very important.  The only ones who think I'm important are my dogs and sometimes my wife.  I just happened to be the designated staff officer to tag along on this trip.  But I didn't say anything, I just smiled and enjoyed it while I could.  Tomorrow, it'll be back to the real world: humping my bag and battle rattle (kevlar vest, helmet, and other heavy goodies) along a dusty road, waiting two hours for the helo to arrive (IF it arrives), trying to figure out where to go and what to do at the far end, and hoping to hell that I got off at the right FOB.  

Today's trip was to attend a quarterly operations briefing in the province of Spin Boldak, which is down on the border with Pakistan.  This briefing was special because it was being done by the Afghan National Security Forces, meaning the Army, National Police, Border Police, Customs, and the District Governor.  Now a US military organization could put on a presentation like this without breaking a sweat, although it would inundate you with 75 PowerPoint slides and detailed discussions of logistical and operational considerations that you would never have considered.  Not so with the Afghans.  This is still very new to them.  The men speaking today are smart in all ways Afghan, but many of them probably can't read and few have done much in the way of public speaking.  Still, they did a fairly credible job.  Very little of what they said was news to us, but that wasn't the point.  The goal was to get them to think about what it is they've done so far, what their goals are, what their resources are, how to get where they want to go, and how to put that thought process into words.  

Since I was considered Very Important, I had a front-row seat, right in front of the stage with the real VIP's.  That meant I couldn't nod off, scratch wherever it itched, or behave like I normally do.  So I entertained myself with sketching a few of the briefers instead, making it look like I was taking notes.  

This was the Chief of Police for the district of Spin Boldak.  He and his men have a very tough job.  This district has a sizable local insurgency.  More importantly, it has one of Afghanistan's primary border crossings with Pakistan.  There's a huge amount of traffic (well, huge for this area) going back and forth.  Smuggling has been a major occupation ever since the border was created and they're very good at it.  And the smugglers carry everything: war material in, drugs out, booze in, money out, people both ways, and more.  The Border Police are charged with taking care of the border, but the Chief of Police has to deal with all the district's related issues.  And he has to do it with a minuscule budget and people who often aren't paid for maybe months at a time.

This was the District Governor.  He also has an unenviable task.  Unlike American governors, Afghan governors don't have much power.  He doesn't make or control the district's budget, for example, since there isn't one.  All funds are apportioned to line ministries by the national government in Kabul, and the ministries control their own activities in the districts.  Imagine if your Department of Public Works was funded by, and answerable only to, a National Public Works Department in Washington.  That's what these guys have to live with.  They are, essentially, appointed by President Karzai to keep tabs on what's going on at the local level.  They kinda/sorta make the district's concerns known to the provincial and national level and maybe try to coordinate a few things between ministries.  Maybe.  And more than a few have been assassinated over the years.  Think you'd want that job?

But all in all, the briefing went well.  I had some good discussions with my contacts down there and met a few local Afghans, including the District Governor.  Then it was time for the Entourage to Depart, so off we went to catch our Blackhawk helicopters again and fly back to our base.  And then life returned to normal: back in the office, about a hundred emails were waiting for me.  Such excitement, I can't imagine.

"Transition"

Has it really been a week since I last posted?  It's been pretty hectic and the trip to Arghandab seems just like a couple of days ago.  I've been a travelin' man since then, having been out to the districts of Dand and Maiwand, as well as into Kandahar City twice.  We had another trip scheduled for today, but a bit of rain last night flooded out the roads.

These frequent trips are part of our effort to get everybody onboard with Transition.  That's transition with a big T, meaning it has all kinds of very loaded meanings.  Transition means the process of scaling back our efforts, shifting responsibility over to the Afghan government, and providing them with support and help while they get their own processes up and running.  It's a big, big task.  There's an overall plan that has been developed between the international community (mostly us, but with the participation of NATO, some neighboring nations, some not-quite-neighboring, the UN, and maybe a few others), all working with Afghanistan.  They've laid out the overall guidelines.  I'm part of the Regional Command South, which covers the provinces of Kandahar, Zabul, Uruzgan, and Daykundi, and we have developed our own plan for putting those guidelines to work in our area.  So I've been going out with a few others to work with the small District Support Teams that are out in the districts.  We go over the plan and how it can/should be implemented in their specific area.

Since every one is very different, it's a challenge.  Some areas are fairly quiet and secure.  Some areas are "kinetic", meaning there's a lot of fighting going on.  Some districts have good people in the government who are trying to do good things.  Other areas are stuck with guys who may be corrupt, or don't show up for work, or are lazy or incompetent.  More than a few government workers can't read or write.  Kandahar City is a major metropolis with somewhere around 800,000 people in a fairly small area.  Other districts are very rural, with only a few thousand people scattered over hundreds of square miles.  Mullah Omar came from just west of Kandahar and that area is still heavily influenced by the Taliban.  But most of the people in the region don't like the Taliban, viewing them (correctly) as brutal thugs.  So every area is very different and requires a very different approach.

On one of my trips, I went out to Maiwand District.  This was a good trip.  The team out there, to include the civilians and the military, has a good grasp of what they need to do and we just provided some specific help.  After the meetings, we went to an old British fort for a celebration with the local Afghans.

Now when I say "old British fort", I mean it was built sometime around the 1830's.  "Old" to you and me, yesterday to the Afghans.  It still has its original wooden doors, as you can see above.  This was apparently the last fort the British held before they withdrew from Afghanistan altogether.  The celebration was for Eid al-Adha, which is a major Muslim holiday.  It marks the end of the Hajj and commemorates Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Ishmael.  The American troops and civilians from the outpost hosted the celebration for local police and Army forces.  It was a lot of fun.  On the other hand, if I posted photos of the Afghans that attended, I could be putting their lives at risk, because this area has a lot of insurgents.  One step at a time ...

I've been able to do a little drawing on occasion.  This was made while waiting for our helo transportation back home.  Combat Outposts (COPs) are pretty basic places.  Tents, shipping containers, MRAPs, a generator or two, piles of water bottles, Hesco barriers (big cloth bags reinforced with galvanized steel mesh and filled with dirt, which makes pretty effective walls), gravel gravel gravel, and lots of razor wire.

There's lots more that I can write, probably because, when you're going so hard for so long, there's so much you want to share.  But not tonight.  Time to hit the rack.  Got an early morning tomorrow.  More soon.

Arghandab

A UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter is a pretty nice ride.  Noisy, of course, but as military helicopters go, it's pretty smooth.  A group of us rode in this Blackhawk up to the Arghandab district center today for meetings with the District Governor and with the commander of the US troops in the valley.

Some helicopters feel like they have to gather their strength to leap off the ground.  Not Blackhawks.  They'll be sitting there, whopping and vibrating, and then just lift up and away, with no fuss or bother.  We cruised northwest over the Kandahar City suburbs (above) and then over a mountain range and into the Arghandab River Valley.  It was really quite beautiful, a wide valley bounded with very steep, rugged ridges that faded into a white haze in the distance.

Just over a year ago, the Arghandab Valley was one of the most contested pieces of real estate in Afghanistan.  It saw some of the most vicious fighting between US Army troops on the one hand and Taliban fighters on the other.  An article in the Atlantic magazine last year, titled "The Last Patrol", brilliantly captures the ferocity of the battles here.  (I consider this article a must-read).

A lot has changed in the year since the article was published.  The Army soldiers who fought so hard were largely successful in pushing the Taliban fighters out of Arghandab.  The few Taliban who are left can only mount an occasional raid or plant IEDs.  They don't control the territory anymore and are seen by the locals as being the losing side.  Now the challenge is in building Afghan capabilities to manage their own affairs without the Taliban.  That means helping to establish local government, building police forces, re-establishing the informal shuras by which Afghans have managed themselves for centuries, and forging links between the local government, the provincial government in Kandahar City, and the national government in Kabul.

This is hard.  Afghanistan has been in constant war for over 30 years.  Few Afghans now have any memory of what peaceful life was like.  First it was the Soviets, then the warlords, then the Taliban, and for the past ten years, we've been gradually rolling up the Taliban up.  This has given Afghans a very short-sighted outlook.  Why plan for the future when you probably won't be alive then?  Grab everything you can now.  This mindset permeates Afghan ministries, which results in corruption at all levels.  Ordinary people see it.  And if they don't see it, they invent it.  Afghans are masters at conspiracy theories and apply them to everything.  If some company gets a contract, it's not thought to be because they submitted the best bid; rather, they must have paid a bribe, or there are tribal connections, or it's a plot by (pick your villain of the day).

The low-level police, for example, are very corrupt everywhere in Afghanistan.  And they have a reason: they are paid a pittance, not enough to live on, so they have to do something to make ends meet.  They do this by setting up checkpoints and shaking people down.  If you're transporting produce, gasoline, or some kind of merchandise, you hand a portion of it over; if not that, then pay a bribe.  Or get the crap kicked out of you.  Or maybe killed.  This is the normal Afghan's daily experience with their government "services", so it's easy to understand why they're leery of supporting it.  (The national police have a slightly better reputation, and the army is actually well respected.  The army is much more selective and enlist better-qualified people, so it's not surprising).

Today we needed to talk with the District Governor of Arghandab.  Shah Mohamad Ahmadi is an extremely capable Afghan leader.  He's working hard to cross tribal and village boundaries, build a working government, provide services, and keep the Taliban out.  He's not getting much help from the provincial and national levels, though.  We talked for a long time about the difficulties that he is facing, as well as what the future holds with the transition to Afghan control coming down the pike.  The Governor was quite candid and held nothing back.

Subsequently, we met with the American commander of Army forces in the valley.  He is also extremely capable, as well as quite candid about the difficulties that he and his troops are facing now, as well as in the future.

So what did I take away from all this?  Our troops fought hard, and many died, to free this valley from Taliban control.  They succeeded.  To keep the valley free requires a reasonably effective Afghan government.  The Afghans, with our support, have only been at it for a bit over a year and have made a lot of progress.  But it's very, very fragile.  Now there's a deadline facing us.  We (the Afghans and the US) have only a limited time to get their government functioning at some very basic level.  If we pull out too soon, this valley will revert to either warlords or the Taliban.  One is just as bad as the other, both for Afghans and for our own strategic interests.

In 1989, we declared victory when the Soviets left, and then we walked away.  The subsequent turmoil led to the Taliban rule and Al Qaeda presence, which in turn led to 9/11.  We can't let that happen again. Not after fighting so hard and paying so much in blood and money.