The Tank Graveyard

Today we went to the Kabul Military Training Center (KMTC).

However, first we went to Camp Warehouse which is across the street from KMTC. We only went there for lunch, which at first seemed strange, but then I understood. Camp Warehouse is a French camp. I've never seen a French soldier around Kabul, but they have a bunch at Warehouse. I'm not sure what else they do here, but someone said they mentor one of the hospitals. And they make an awesome Sunday brunch. They had steak fillets, medium rare. About ten different kinds of cheese. Lots of real bread. Shrimp, fish, pastries, etc. It was good. I stopped by their PX and about half of it was devoted to cologne and perfume. And they wouldn't accept dollars - only euros (not that I wanted to buy any). Ahh... the french.

After lunch we crossed over the road to KMTC. It wasn't so bad. It's where all the military basic training happens. The base is fairly nice actually. There were troops everywhere. We were just checking on the Biometrics equipment we have there. No translators were there so it was awkward at first. But then they collected some doctors from across the hall that made a stab at translating for us.

Behind the base is a russian tank graveyard. There are thousands of tanks and APC's out there.

Explosion this morning

Looks like the militants set off some bombs in Kabul today. Sadly, it seems like they were targeting civilians. I don't understand why they would do that.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/02/201022625531437595.html

The explosion at 6:45 woke me up. It wasn't terribly loud, but I knew exactly what had happened. I also heard sporadic gunfire when I went outside. It wasn't scary at all because Eggers is safe. I got dressed and went to my the office to see if they knew what was going on. Al Jazeera had the best info.

I'm suffering some kind of minor cold so I just went back to sleep for a few hours. My biggest concern is that they are going to shut off the water to the restrooms again.

The Empty Pond

Another busy day today. My supervisor was out all day so I had to represent the Biometrics team at 3 different functions. It turns out I know pretty much everything I need to run with the ball. So I guess their goal of having a 2 week overlap with your replacement when you leave theatre is reasonable. I'm not actually the replacement for my supervisor, there is an Air Force major that just arrived who is coming up to speed. As soon as he understands the operational issues for the project, I can start to devote more time getting into the weeds helping the afghans with their technical problems. I actually spent a good part of the day grilling the American contractors on the technical capabilities of their system.

We should be moving offices soon. Hopefully we'll move outside the main office conexs to an old afghan building that some other group is vacating. There is a little fish pond out front. It's empty, but every time I walk by it I wish it were alive. Maybe I'll have time to do something about it while I'm here.

Here's a picture from yesterday where the second IV attempt failed:

Combat Life Saver Qualified

First things first. They finally unblocked this blog site from our work network. That is nice.

I've been in combat life saver training for the last couple of mornings. The first day was death by powerpoint. Today we had to stick IV lines in our partner's arm. It was intimidating at first, but after watching it several times it didn't seem so bad. Unfortunately my partner failed to get either of my arms, or the instructor's arm. He kept sticking the needle through the vein. That's an easy mistake to make. I did that the first time on his arm as well. A couple of people I saw forgot to hold the vein when the pulled out the needle and blood went squirting everywhere. That was both funny and stomach curling at the same time.

My days are very busy now. I regularly work until almost 10pm. And I'm usually the first one to leave. There's a great deal of little stuff to do, and I'm working two projects now. Last night I was trying to figure out why rent wasn't getting paid on one of our contracts. It's a paperwork nightmare.

I've come to realize that we are fighting this war, from Kabul, mostly with our checkbook. Or at least it seems that way from my command, NTM-A. Everyone here is managing contracts. The higher your rank, the more money you are managing. The budget for CSTC-A/NTM-A is about a billion dollars a month (literally). And I don't think that covers all the salaries of the government officials we are paying. I've heard that we're going to be paying their salaries for 25 years. The side effect of that is that if we need more afghans, we can't just get some General to approve the new position, since it literally takes an act of the U.S. Congress.

My command here is trying to be more proactive at telling the world what we are doing. If you interested, you might check out the news on the website:

http://www.ntm-a.com/

A picture of the first failed IV attempt:

Dilemma of the day: Where to use the head?

For whatever reason, they couldn't get the sewage pumped off base today. So they shut off all the water to the restrooms to prevent the creation of more sewage. Now I've only seen one porta-a-potty on base, so that thing must be overflowing. What a stupid problem to have. Camp Eggers sucks.

Meetings Friday

I ate lunch at ISAF today with Walter. It's the first time I've seen him since Ft. Jackson. The DFAC at ISAF is way better than Eggers. Presumably because it is NATO. They had more international food. I had curry chicken over rice. And they had real bread. Not just toasted hot-dog buns. Several different kinds of breads. And butter. That made me happy - I love bread. I guess there is a good reason to have the Europeans around.

We had a crazy afternoon. Jeff came over to ISAF and we had meetings all afternoon. Lots of new people coming into country trying to come up to speed and biometrics is a hot topic. We came back for dinner, then had more meetings in the evening. It almost feels like we're just passing info around to the various generals about their staff. Telling them not just what we're doing, but what the other guy is doing. It's a great learning experience for me though because Jeff knows a lot (which is why everyone keeps asking him to brief) so I'm learning a lot by just sitting in the meetings.

No pictures from today, but here's a couple more from yesterday:

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.

Quiet Day

We didn't go anywhere today (for once). We has some meetings scheduled but they were canceled. We had a group meeting and decided we should try and get space in another building rather than wait for them to wire electricity to the new connex that was supposed to be our new space.

One thing I've noticed here, is that the job you end up doing (for those that actually want to accomplish something here) tends to be closely related to your skills/strengths. The job descriptions are so vague that people just self assemble into a productive structure. It's also interesting that some things seem impossible to get done - typical government bureaucracy. Other things however get done at amazing speed. If you need a building built, and you can find a general to champion it, it'll will get built in a few weeks.

Here is an outside shot of what my new housing looks like. They build lots of buildings here out of these connex boxes.



Here's the tent I stayed in for the first couple of weeks:

Learning the mission

I'm starting to learn more about my mission. It's slow coming up to speed because every program here seems like its a mess. Most of the soldiers/sailors that come through here don't know how (like me) to properly setup and run a contract. Worse than that, they leave after a short while so the knowledge of how they actually got the money or people to run the program is lost. So not only am I learning how to run a military contract, I'm learning how to fix contracts that don't represent reality. The most important thing is to know people here. I'm not really big on getting to know people, but just having gone through ft. jackson with them has helped me get stuff accomplished with other offices. So, try to get to know casually as many people as you can (and don't make enemies) because the odds are you'll want something from them at some point in the deployment. It's actually kind of neat to see the 30 people I came here with start to take over responsibility from the people that are leaving. And I've been able to help them out (mainly with knowledge) with what's going on in my directorate, CJ-2.

My main program is to advise the afghan MOI Biometrics division. Biometrics is a big theme for the country, and we're just a small piece. I go over to check on the status of their work and help them solve problems. My main task will be to mentor the technical people to take over the system after we leave the country. It's a daunting task because it's difficult to find people with computer skills, and even more difficult to get them to work for a government salary. I have about 4 positions I need to help them fill and work with the American contractors to train up.

We get 4 more people this week. That means we'll have 5 more people than we have chairs. We checked on the status of our new office and the guy that was supposed to be setting it up had done nothing. Normally I would be shocked at this level of ineptness, but I'm getting used to it here.

Below are pictures of the main drag that is camp Eggers. The two ends of this street are the borders of the camp.

Oh, and I finally got a package from Austin today. What a great feeling after living out of a sleeping bag for weeks. I'm taking great pleasure in opening all the presents from my lover.

Improvements

I finally got computers a couple of days ago, and I got a connex room yesterday. That's why I havent been to the MWR computer's lately to blog. I'm not sure why the military net blocks this blog.

My room is faily small, I still don't know where I'm going to put all my stuff. My roommate is an airforce lieutenant that is 6 months into a one year deployment.

I subscribed to the $70/month internet service, which I still think is a ripoff since the company has a monopoly on the service.

Today is an afghan holiday. I think they are celebrating when the soviets left. I still haven't received any packages. Almost 2 weeks since they were sent from Austin. Today is a slow day because we didn't go anywhere, but most days go by quickly if I spend time out. Yesterday I didn't get back to my room until 2300. Most offices here have lots of free time. Some actually take official 2 hour lunch breaks and leave work early. CJ-2 stays pretty busy though. However I'm still coming up to speed on all the programs so it now easy finding areas where I can help out. Though it's much easier now that I have email access in the shop.

Food Poisoning

I finally got sick form eating some afghan food the other day. I woke up with my stomach burning about 2am and it lasted until the afternoon - so about 12 hours. Not too terrible. So I spent most of yesterday in bed recovering.

Still no computers or a room. I don't really care anymore about the computers. I come into the office in the morning and ask if we are going to any meetings today. Usually we are going out but of not I'll just leave - unless I can find an open computer.

So the days I go out are usually fun. Staying here in mind-numbing. Here is a pic from a few days ago when I went to some Afghan training base. I also asked someone to email me a picture they took the other day (that I got sick) of the main afghan guy I work with and an admiral that came to visit. I'll post that if I get it. The admiral was kind of funny. He is a Navy Seal and hates it when someone won't give him a straight answer. Which is probably often because he only asks direct questions.

Frustration

They tell you when you get here that you are going to be frustrated. Roger that - it's a war zone. What they conveniently leave out, is that you're going to be frustrated because some #*$$% doesn't want to do their job. Or perhaps many people aren't doing their jobs.

I found out yesterday that there is no good reason that I don't have a computer. They have more than 30 computers sitting in the connex next door for our use. And instead of setting up a computer for me, they are setting up new computers for the senior officers first.

So yeah, now I'm starting to get frustrated. I'm having a hard time giving them the benefit of the doubt. They are either grossly incompetent, or they just don't want us newcomers there. Whatever the reason, I'm frustrated that they took me from my family and job so I can spend most of my time watching T.V.. (And trust me, I have been proactive about trying to get a desk/chair/computer, to the point where they told me to just stop and wait.)

Newcomer brief day

I have to sit though a newcomer brief all afternoon. They said it was more boring than a videocon with senior officers. I don't know what they can really say. "Don't walk more than 300 yards in any direction or you'll be off-base."

I drove home from MOI again yesterday. My supervisor complemented me on my skills at cutting people off. He said it usually take a while for someone to get used to driving here. I think he was happy that I punked some UN vehicle. The UN people are not well liked here because they are viewed as useless and a waste of resources - as far as I can tell.

This morning I want to some afghan army base to pickup some printers. I got some nice pictures of the mountains around Kabul and the mud-brick buildings around town. Also, they are building a beautiful mosque on top of a hill next to some tomb.

All the Afghans I continue to meet are very nice.

We are all still in a temporary tent. They managed to get me a used desk, but still no computers. They gave me a broken chair which sinks all the way down. So I just sit there low riding in the chair reading a book if I'm not out somewhere. I still think office situation is stupid. They must have known for nearly a month prior that I was coming. And they said more people are coming in this week. I can't help but think someone isn't doing their job. Probably an Army guy because they tend to be more reactive than proactive.

Slush

It has been snowing the last few days. They have afghan's shoveling up the snow into wheel barrows and dumping it around base. And sweeping the water and slush around with brooms. It's kind of comic to see them doing this every morning, but probably necessary. There's not much in place for water drainage.

Outside the Wire

Spent most of the day out meeting with Afghans. It was a really fun day. We went outside the 'green' zone, but still within some other zone that is considered moderately safe. I'm not sure why they say that though because it looks plenty open to me. I met with several afghans both high and low level. It definitely interesting and stimulating. I was trying to remember all the nuances they told us like don't show your feet, try the food they offer, etc. It seemed like every time we sat down to talk they were serving us chai tea. Which is good, except the restroom facilities aren't really up to American standards. I had a Kabob for lunch. It was spicy chunks of beef in a long piece of nan bread that is folded over the meat. To eat it you unfold the nan bread and tear off pieces then grab and eat a chunk of meat with the piece you tore off.

We stopped by the Afghan criminal investigative unit (think CSI). They are hurting. Unfortunately their advisor/mentor is EUPOL. So they are chronically short of supplies, and people. For example, they have a hard time just getting fingerprint plastic or crime scene tape. I felt bad for them because they were asking us to help them get supplies when all we went over there for was to learn about their fingerprint processes. My supervisor said that America is really the only organization here that is spending money, so his Romanian EUPOL mentor probably just can't do anything to help. He said he could probably justify some supplies as part of his biometrics effort. But it really exemplifies all the problems this government has. What's the use in having a large biometrics database if the police don't even have robust crime scene investigators to pull prints and such? I felt so bad for him I wanted to get on the net and order some fingerprint plastic for him myself.

At the end of the day I stayed back to talk to some young cop who was assigned to guard the lab while my supervisor went to go argue with some afghan general. He seemed like a really good kid. He'd been a policeman for about 4 years. He didn't seem the have much authority or power, but he was nice enough. Some other guy had to translate though because his english wasn't that great.

All in all I'm feeling overwhelmed with all the acronyms and politics. It's going to take a while to learn all the moving pieces for this program. I'm starting to understand what we (as deployed servicemen) need to do to help this country. I'm still not sold that we should be doing it, but I am sold that we are doing a good thing. There are several hard pieces. One of them is just finding good soldiers/sailors to help this process along. My supervisor is really good at this job. But I've seen other people of the same rank/experience that just don't want to get involved and don't want to go outside the wire to work with the afghans on their problems. So maybe that is what McCrystal is hoping, that by piling so many people into the country, there might be enough good leaders in the mix to get this government functioning properly.

Right now I'm just hoping to get out of this tent soon and into a regular room. I took some pictures of the snow this morning, but I can't upload them yet. Internet here costs $70-$100 per month for really slow service. I think that's a ripoff but I'll probably subscribe once I can set my laptop on a desk (there are no desks/chairs in the tent and I'm on a top bunk). The ISAF base has free wifi. I heard Gen Caldwell was trying to setup Eggers like that as well. I hope so - that's the least he could do considering I was pulled away from my family to spend a year here.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I went to ISAF yesterday afternoon for a video conference. You can walk there from Eggers. It's only about a mile away and still in the green zone. We drove though because of the snow. They have a really nice area called the beer garden. Unfortunately they don't serve beer there.

Friday is a down day

The normal working hours are 8am-8pm every day except Friday, which is 1pm-8pm. Firday is the muslim holiday, like our Sunday. However, the boss of my directorate doesn't believe in down days so he still wants people in early on Friday. He's not here this week though - most people in the office seem happy about that.

It is snowing here. It's kind of pretty actually. I can't find my rain jacket though. It is stuck at the bottom of one of my seabags and I don't want to empty the seabag while I'm in this temprary tent.

They finally assigned me a job yesterday. It actually looks interesting. I'll be assisting the Afghan National Security Forces in building their biometric capabilities. For example, making sure every policeman is fingerprinted.

Camp Eggers Day 3

Still nothing to do here. Yesterday I volunteered to go on a short Convoy to Camp Phoenix. Someone had to go by the Air Force office there and they needed another body. Since I didn't have anything to do (or even a chair to sit in) I decided to tag along. It wasn't very far but it was neat to drive around Kabul a bit and use the convoy tactics were were taught. I was manning the Radio for my vehicle. We had lunch at Camp Phoenix. Their DFAC is much better than ours. Ours are just too small (like everything else at Eggers). I had to wait outside for dinner about 20 minutes to get into our DFAC.

Nothing has changed this morning. They still don't know what to do with me. They mentioned having me do contract work. After my initial shock I told them that I would consider that to be remissioning and I'd have to report it back up my OPCON chain of command with NAVCENT. After borrowing someones chair to sit in this morning I stared at the wall for about an hour then I decided to bail and came over to use the MWR computers. I ran into Greg and he said the exact same thing. After sitting around for an hour doing nothing he decided to goto the gym. I'll check out the gym this afternoon. They have some grappling and TKD classes I'll look in to.

Arrival in Kabul

Well, I finally made it Kabul today. Let me see if I can elaborate on the last few (sucky) days.

I caught a plane from Kuwait to Bagram Air Base on a C17. That was one of the most uncomfortable experiences of my life. We were packed into small coach sized seat wearing full battle armor and resting our backpacks on our laps. The seat cushions were worn out so it was very hard. It felt like the blood circulation was getting cut off to my legs the whole flight. So I kept fidgeting the whole flight but I was never able to get comfortable. It was like sitting on a wooden bench for 5 hours and being unable to move around. I was in agony. And we weren't allow to get up for most of the flight because of turbulence. I was able to half stand up once, but I couldn't move around. I was so happy when that thing finally landed.

Bagram sucked. I'm sure that is the nastiest base I'll ever see. There are about 28000 on that base, and the infrastructure supports maybe 5000. It was dirty, smelly, and dilapidated. It seemed like most of the base had something under construction. I asked one of the locals about it and he said all the construction began about 6 months ago. It looks like we are planning to stay a while because unlike kuwait, the new buildings are permanent structures. I stayed in the transient tents for two nights. I had a bunk with a mattress at least. There were about 120 Army guys in there with us. Unfortunately the Army is not keen on cleanliness.

We convoyed down to Kabul today. The convey was uneventful. This country is dirt poor. Looks like they build houses mostly with a kind of mud brick, or whatever garbage they can find. Everything I saw was either dead landscape, or some small settlements that looked like a garbage dump. Kabul itself cleaner. Nicer cars driving around. It seemed busy with taxicabs and all. Still dirty and run down, but definitely more signs of civilization.

Camp Eggers is really really small. I'm stuck in a transient tent again. They don't have any permanent space for us yet. They said maybe two weeks. It's a smaller 12 man tent with just Navy so that is better.

As far as my job... I'm pretty disappointed. I don't actually have a job yet. They are going to have a meeting tomorrow to make up some jobs for us. (I've heard the same thing from several other people that arrived today.) But even when they do make jobs for us, there isn't enough space. They don't have computers, desks or chairs for us. I can't help but think this whole thing is stupid. They made it seem so critical that they redirect us from our missions in Iraq to come here, yet the people here are scrambling to find space and work for us. I think the only critical thing about getting us here was to plus up the number of US troops in country to satisfy the administration's goals.

Anyway, enough ranting. I finally have a mailing address:

Charles Beyer
CSTC-A CJ-2
APO, AE 09356

I don't really need anything though - I'm still living out of my luggage while I'm in a temporary tent.