Prison

Today was a long day. We left early in the morning to visit the main prison in Kabul. We hitched a ride with MP's that go there as part of their mentoring mission. They had a 3 HMMWV convoy so it actually felt like the convoy training we had back in the states (except the radios work here). They took a winding route to get to the prison (our HMMWV actually got stuck in the mud once) so I got to see a great diversity of afghan life on the way there. It's hard to describe other than to say these people are poor. And they love to build walls. They build mud or brick compounds all over the place. And they are friendly. Everyone I waved to waved back.

The prison itself was nice. It was actually a small Army prison, called ANDF, co-located with the famous Pul-e-Charkhi prison. We didn't go to Pul-e-Charkhi - that houses traditional criminals. The prison we were at is for enemy combatants, like GTMO. The lawyer that was in my car said we couldn't even transfer prisoners to Pul-e-Charkhi if we wanted because it fails to meet international prison standards. I toured around ANSF. It's very clean. In fact it smells better than my room. I talked to some American contractors and they said it's very quiet compared to American prisons. That they rarely have fights or other disruptive events. It was the first time I've been to a prison. We had to leave all our weapons in the HMMWV's. We went through all the gates/bars to the actual cells. It felt weird being locked behind all those prison bars, even just as a visitor. We looked at the clinic. They have better medical equipment, by far, than we have at Camp Eggers. We had lunch there and they served us way too much food. But it was good. A rice dish. Chicken noodle and pea soup. Lots of other vegetables and fruit. I skipped breakfast so I ate a full meal. I hope I don't regret it later. :)

We got back and immediately had to go to ISAF to talk to a NATO guy about Biometrics. THAT was a change of pace. Going from a fast paced American run operation to a slow drawn-out NATO discussion regarding the intricacies of data sharing with 29 difference countries and their legal systems. I knew it was going to be a mind numbing meeting when some British guy started telling stories about Kosovo. Now I understand what that mean when they say the people at ISAF HQ can't get anything done.

I took a bunch of pictures coming home. There were kids everywhere. I'm not sure why they weren't in school. It takes forever to upload pictures so I can't post many.