Commander's Return

Monday we popped over to the MOI quickly in the morning. We just needed to get a signature from BG Yarmand to fix a pay issue for our biometric enrollers out in the field. Some months back they gave travel pay to all the police field inventory clerks, but made a mistake and forgot all the biometric enrollers. So we've been working for months to get them paid equally. What a pain. It's frustrating that the afghans are unable to solve this for themselves. Normally I wouldn't bother but the problem was caused by someone in another command at CSTC-A, so I feel somewhat obligated to help solve it. To solve it we are making a degree for the Minister of the Interior to sign. It seems like paying 60 guys is such a trivial problem to bring the the minister, but because of the limited autonomy in their chain of command, that's what we have to do.

Monday night Jeff came back from R&R. I tried really hard while he was gone to solve problems and not store them up for him when he returns. But as we were going over all the issues, I realized we left more than we thought. Ah well, good thing he likes to solve problems.

Today was another mind-numbingly boring day at MOI. We had visitors down from Bagram and they were visiting the Biometrics, Criminal Technique and Crime Scene Investigators offices. Afghan's love visitors and love to talk about their offices, and their problems, so all the meetings took twice as long as scheduled. I hadn't been to all the labs before so it was neat to see some things like the ballistics lab. But after four hours, I was tired of talking and touring.

Anwar was sooooo happy that Jeff came back:

Don't Ask

The last couple of days have been quiet. On Thursday they go home after lunch in preparation for Friday. Yesterday all the airforce guys were at remedial training so I had the office all to myself. It was quiet - which was nice.

Today we went over to MOI in the afternoon. One of the airforce guys caught Anwar putting his hand on my leg.

Back to Prison

We went back to the prison today. We had to exchange out some broken biometric kits. It's a long ride out there over some really bad roads. Today I was escorted by HMMWV's:



However, I definitely felt less safe because everyone notices you.



The kids love seeing HMMWVs though. They come running down streets or across fields to wave to us. We gave them some water and candy once but they swarmed so close to the car we couldn't get our doors shut for fear of catching their fingers, and we were afraid of running over their feet. Lesson learned.



They seem like generally good kids. Although I saw some kid shoot a dog with a sling-shot. Boys will be boys I suppose.

We had lunch again at the prison with the guards. That food is so good. The Nan bread was fresh out of the oven. Still warm and fluffy.

In the afternoon we moved into our new office. Finally. The airforce guys have been hot swapping desks for a month. Which really sucked for them, and everyone whose desks they were using.

A funny thing happened later in the afternoon. Word already got out that I won my paperwork battle yesterday and a LTC called me up asking if I could do it for another unit. I told him that I didn't know if I could, but I'd give it a try. It's weird how getting things done in the military feels like you are constantly asking favors from people. You aren't, you are just asking them to do their job. But it gets turned around and you feel like you are imposing on them. It's not always that people are lazy or they don't want to help you. The main problem is that few people (even the smart ones) know how to get stuff done. Much of the reason is from the constant rotation of folks through theater. There are very very few Standard-Operating-Procedures around here because things change rapidly and people don't have a lot of time or incentive to write them. So the only way you know how to do something is by knowledge transfer from someone else. As people become adept with the system here, they get returned home and a new guy comes in who knows very little.

Now that I'm starting to learn the system here, I feel closer to rotating home. :)

The airforce situation continues to amuse me. They all got sent to remedial training tonight at 5pm wearing full battle rattle. They came back about 8pm just in time to miss dinner at the DFAC. Is it rude of me to laugh at their plight? Ah well, too late now.

Police Escort

Today was... interesting.

The day began with me waiting for about an hour in some random alley in Kabul for our escort. We only expected to be there a few minutes, but our escort was late (as often happens in Afghanistan). I'm pretty sure we were making all the afghan nervous sitting there in two uparmored SUVs. They kept looking at us suspiciously. I was the only military person in the group.



Finally our police escort shows up. They guys were awesome. They had a truck in the front, and one in the rear.



Going out there was uneventful because the traffic was light. I'm near the back of the convoy. The last police vehicle was behind me. With the police escort we blew through all of the checkpoints without any problems.



Then I spent the next five hours in a desert of shipping containers. There was an Army SFC running the show. He was pretty squared-away. He reminded me of my drill instructors at Ft. Jackson. The afghans... not so much. It seems to take forever to get something done with afghans involved. The basic problem is that no one seems to know exactly what to do. So everyone huddles and starts doing stuff and undoing stuff and arguing until they come to an agreement on what was supposed to happen. It's a funny process to watch, usually, but dealing with weapons I didn't find it so funny.

Finally the SFC showed the afghan Major how to do all the paperwork and we got out of there in the early afternoon. By then traffic had gotten bad. The police escort was barreling through it though. They had their sirens and lights on. They had a bullhorn and they were yelling at people to get out of the way. They were cutting off other uparmored SUV carrying American forces. I waved at them as we passed. They were probably trying to figure out what was so important about my convoy. The funny thing is, nothing was, I think the police just liked the opportunity to run this kind of mission. At one point they got tired of the traffic on our side of the road and they cut over to the other side. So for a half-mile or so I'm driving against traffic. I wish I could have taken a picture of that but it was very tense driving. You have to maintain very tight formation to keep other vehicles from getting in the convoy. But the SUVs are extremely heavy because of the armor so they are hard to stop. You can't relax for a moment because a few milliseconds lapse will cause you ram into the car ahead. Anyway, it was fun but I was glad when we got back to Eggers.

Then in the evening it was back to fighting the battle of emails and paperwork, with a telcon thrown in.

Reasons to make fun of the Air Force

Today was back to normal. I was running around like crazy fighting paperwork battles. I can't say I won the war, but I might have won a skirmish today. I'm a hairs breath from completing the paperwork for getting my police officers new weapons. I've been working that for many weeks.

I had to run to MOI unexpectedly this morning to take our contractors over there to start the mainframes after we got the generators fixed. MAJ Perez was going to go but he was unexpectedly grounded. They all are. They are pretty bummed about it. There is nothing worse than being stuck in the office all day... for 12 hours.

Some wise men in the Air Force admin offices decided that many of the people they sent out don't have enough training to leave Camp Eggers. Except one who went through 5 weeks of training. So, for the time being, that leaves me and one Air Force guy able to travel out to MOI. And we both have other responsibilities that often supersede the Biometrics job. One more example of the chaos and confusion that goes on in a 'combat' zone. For the time being, there's not much else to do other than make fun of them.

Things are still problematic at MOI. The vehicle problem has grounded the contractors who manage the biometric mainframes. Since their vehicles haven't been registered yet, they can't drive. I drove them to MOI this morning to fix some problems with the system that they couldn't fix remotely. They paid some exorbitant about of money to some other contractor to get a ride to Eggers to meet me. This situation is a mess though. The military should have starting registering vehicles long before the mandate became official.

I spent all afternoon inventorying afghan weapons. They have serious responsibility issues. The serial numbers they gave me weren't quite correct so I had to physically re-inventory everything myself. And in spite of their assurances their weapons were clean, many of them weren't. They're so nice though - it's difficult to be a hard-ass and yell at them.

I'm still mulling over in my mind how to communicate to them the fine points of weapons accountability and cleanliness.


I came across a cool article about my game this morning:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/03/genocide-and-jedi-why-the-sith-may-be-right-in-old-republic.ars


Here's what I'd look like as a contractor:

The will to code

Nothings been going on the last few days. It's actually been nice. The afghans always have Friday off, and since they have Sunday off for new years, Saturday was an effective holiday as well. It seems like most of the coalition forces are on low battle rhythm as well because I haven't had any scheduled meetings. All the stuff I need to do I had to push off to next week when the afghans come back to work. So all said, its been nice and quite for the first time since I've arrived. I've been at the office, but other than responding to a handful of emails, I've haven't done much other than program. It's been nice to code again. I started work on a program to analyze some of the biometric data we have. I also played around with some stuff in java - dusting off the cobwebs. It's been several years since I spend much time in a java IDE.

Our new office still isn't ready. It's frustrating because we are waiting on the network lines to get connected. But CJ-6 (comms) doesn't seem to work as much as us. For example, they get to leave at 5 and they don't have to work on Sundays. That's messed up. I heard CJ-1 has a similarly lax schedule. It's frustrating that we don't all share the same core work hours. I feel the same way about the short airforce deployments. It just adds conflict. The involuntary mobilizations should all be the same length - probably 9 months.

Atmar

Today was... interesting.

We went over to MOI about 1030 to graduate some more enrollers. Instead of police this time, they were contracted enrollers. They were trained completely by the afghan instructors though without help from the American contractors. That marks a first. So I ordered $20 dollars worth of cookies to celebrate. Also, the American contractor refused to print out certificates so I asked LTC Anwar to have some printed commercially and I'd pay him back. My distaste for the American contractor here is slowly building. (Maybe not so slowly.)

We bummed around (talked) from 1200-1400 waiting for a meeting with LTG Wasim. That's the first time I'd met him. I don't like he likes Anwar for some reason because he didn't shake Anwar's hand. He was 45 minutes late to the meeting away. General Macdonald showed up so mostly it was the American talking amongst ourselves.

Then we had a meeting with Ministar Atmar at 1500. Which started about 1530. That meeting was a mess. There were a bunch of people there. Some from my own shop. We were talking before hand and none of us knew what the meeting was about or why we were there. Turns out it was a sales pitch by someone from Ericsson about installing a 3G or 4G wireless network. There were a ton of military guys there and most of us were looking at each other in shock that we called over for this type of meeting. General Macdonald, to her credit, found out what the meeting was about ahead of time and just left. Well, I got to meet the famous Minister Atmar anyway. Seemed like an ok guy, except the fact that the whole meeting was just weird.

There still water in the pool so I guess it's not leaking.

Bureaucracy

The last couple of days have been frustrating. It feels like I've spent most if my time pushing a wet noodle. On a carpet.

It's hard to remember all the issues I've been working. The only victory I have is (supposedly) I've finally finished all the hurdles to trade out broken weapons for new weapons. These are for some officers that I work with. It took me about 4 weeks. Record time I'm told.

Both the generators at the MOI biometrics office are broken so work has halted there. It seems the reason they keep breaking is because the maintenance company is incompetent. We wanted to switch to a better company but we were told that they are the lowest bidder by far, so if we re-bid it they'll just win again. When dealing with the Army I've learned to not question such logic. Anyway, so now we are trying to rush a multi-thousand dollar purchase order to replace the burned out components.

I had a meeting about the National ID card yesterday at the USAID. It was painful to listen to the Embassy staff dwell on privacy issues when the Afghan guy says its a non-issue. The nice part was that I got to walk over there so all the kids mauled me on the way. I gave them some socks, and jump-rope, and all my pens. They even wanted the paper wrapper the socks came with. They are good kids. Except for when they fight over the stuff. I kept having to break up the fights.

Today we went to the MOI. Our contractors are no longer able to come other there because they don't have license plates on their vehicles. So I spent much of the day reading though the contract to understand their obligations as well as ours. I was in a pretty bad mood after that.

This thing with the license plates is very frustrating. GIRoA put out an order that everyone, including people in up-armored SUV's, must have a registration. But they enacted it so fast, that many vehicles weren't able to get registered. And our contractors can't even get their vehicles registered because we (the military) leased them (and promptly lost all the paperwork). But my command refuses to register them because they are being used by contractors. So you can see why I feel like I'm banging my head against the wall sometimes.

Several more issues like that but I don't want to revisit them.

The best thing that's happened is that afghans have started planting plants and bushes various places around camp. And someone in my group decided to put some water in the pond. I'll redouble my efforts to not forget taking the malaria pills in case the mosquitos get out of hand.

Waiting on the new Office

I spent the morning around the office doing admin work. Mostly boring. I made an airport run in the afternoon to drop some people off. It was a beautiful day. I lazed around in the sun a bit while I was waiting at the airport. It was hot too, especially since I was in full battle armor.

Here's a picture of the empty pond in front of my new office building.



And here is a picture of the outside of the office. We are on the bottom floor from the end where the picture was taken to the point where the door is. Our NCOs did good job of fixing it up. They had some holes in the wall patched. They got it repainted. They had new carpet put in. Now they are having new network cables run. It should be finished in a couple of days.

Soldiers Marching

Nothing much to report. Went went to KMTC today (and the warehouse for lunch). At KMTC we mostly just listened to the Biometrics lead about all of their problems. We haven't been able to go out there very much because it takes a minimum two-vehicle convoy. It's much farther out than MOI. So we're talking about keeping people there full-time (rotating everyone though) stationed at Camp Alamo. I certainly am not looking forward to staying there, but the do need us there more often.

KMTC is where they have the army basic training. I saw a platoon out on a march.

Sad Days

My grandmother passed away yesterday. So I've been a little sad. It wasn't unexpected, but its still upsetting that I won't make it to the funeral. After all those memories, I can't honor her at the end. It again makes me wonder about all the sacrifices American soldiers are making for this country. Some make the ultimate sacrifice and never return home. It's hard to imagine the misery those families are put though. I hope the mission here is worth it.

Groundhog Day Again

They are playing groundhog day on the television again. It's a good movie, but I really hope they don't play it once a week.

I met with a group this morning working to get an Afghan National ID card stood up. It was at ISAF HQ so we ate lunch there. Real bread and cheese... yum. I had a little trouble getting out of the parking lot. The SUV we have is hard to put in reverse sometimes. You have to nudge it forward a bit and try again. Unfortunately I got into a tight spot and there was a toyota corola in my way. So I had to nudge it a bit to get the SUV in reverse. Whoops.

After that MAJ Perez and I went over to MOI for a bit. We stayed for an hour or so going over issues. The roads were crazy today. I got a little nervous at first because they closed the first road on my route. We took a different road around the closure. The police seemed all agitated about something. Maybe there was a VIP driving around. I heard it got worse later on. They found some unexploded ordinance near a major road and shut it down to clear it. Our group coming back from Camp Phoenix got stuck in that traffic for over 2 hours.

Not much else going on. The rest of the day involved mostly admin and paperwork issues.

Every now and then I have to take a cold shower because there's no hot water. Like last night. Tonight when I went in to shave, some guy was taking a shower. He was still in the shower after I shaved and took a good 6-8 minute shower. Then I came into the bathroom again several minutes later and he was still in the shower. So all told, at least 30 minutes that I'm sure of. Now we don't have a lot of water here, let alone hot water, so that guy is just an ass. Living here is measurably worse because of people like that.

Certified Afghan Enroller

We had a fun day. We arranged to have the biometrics office train us on taking biometric enrollments. The senior afghan instructor gave us the course. Normally it takes 4 days, but they compressed it down to 4 hours. Much of the regular course explains biometrics in general and its importance to Afghanistan. We skipped all that and just learned to do the enrollments.

We had Chicken Chili Rice for lunch. That's Sgt. Jackson's favorite. It was good, but I think I'm partial to the kabobs.

I spend the afternoon working on a supply issue trying to get some promised equipment to my afghan team. The paperwork process here is daunting at times. Besides the maze of military paperwork, mixing in the afghan side is a killer. I've been working this one issue for two weeks now.

Generator Down

The last couple of days have been typical. Go to the MOI. Talk about the pages of issues we have. Come back and send emails to more people about the issues. This morning Groundhog Day was playing on the TV when I came into the office. Very apropos.

Today I got into a bit of a heated exchange with LTC Anwar, the head afghan guy for the Biometrics office. The generator broke yesterday and he wanted us to fix it for him. After what seemed like an hour discussing the problem I asked him what he would do if we weren't here and the generator broke. He said if the Americans weren't here that the generators wouldn't be running at all. I told him what that tells me is that if MOI won't support the computer systems then we need to put them somewhere else. It's not that I didn't want to help him get the generator fixed. It's that I wanted them to at least try to fix it so we can see where the problem is in the afghan chain of command. Anyway, I left annoyed and fairly certain that we need to move their computer systems to a better home.

I had dinner with a LEP (Law Enforcement Professional) at the Engineering Camp across the street from Eggers. Everyone has told me that their DFAC is the best in town. It was pretty good. Not as good as Camp Warehouse, but certainly better than Eggers. And since I can just walk there, I may visit more regularly. Someone said the Eggers DFAC contract was changing hands in 10 days so maybe we'll get some better food. Though that won't address the overcrowding problem at Eggers. I saw that they were building more temporary housing tents. They are putting one right on half-basketball court next to my conex. The other one is near the corner of the compound. I think that leaves the rose-garden as the only space on Eggers without a structure.

I saw Secretary Gates walking around today but he looked too busy to chat.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/03/08/gates-afghanistan-sees-hard-days-ahead/?test=latestnews

Puppy-Dog Eyes

We spent all afternoon at MOI today. It takes much longer to have a conversation via an interpreter. About 3 times longer because of the translation time and the miss-communication time. After we talked to Anwar for a while, Gen. Yarmand came by and we spoke with him for another hour. He talked for a while about the history of Afghanistan, and what we need for the future to bring some stability to the country. His main point was that the U.S. needs to stick around for 20 years or so before stability will be achieved. I didn't know what to say to that. I said we'd probably be providing funding and training for that long, but that I didn't think the military would be this heavily engaged for that long. The point I was try to get across that started the discussion was to try and shift some of the MOI funding burden to USAID from the Military because I thought they'd be here longer. My proposal was kind of round-about but I think he understood in the end. We agreed to look at the actual funding requirements before we make a decision.

MAJ Perez blogged about the graduation the other day (at the behest of the PAO office). They put it up on the NTM-A website: http://ntm-a.com/news/1-categorynews/237-afghan-biometric-systems-a-success


When we got back to Eggers, this cute dog was sitting in the middle of the parking lot. He almost wouldn't get out of our way. We had to nudge him a little with the truck. Then when we parked he came over to us to ask for food. I petted him for a few minutes. He was so sweet. I was sad that we didn't have anything to give him. If the afghan kids had tried the puppy-dog-eyes technique on me yesterday I probably would have given them a bunch of money instead of just a pen.

10 Print Examination Graduation

Today we went to a graduation ceremony at the Biometrics office. They were graduating about 20 new fingerprint examiners. It's a fairly involved 4 week course. The instructor is an American contractor with a long history of teaching this course. They are given examinations and are kicked out if they fail. I think they only lost two students. So, it was a great accomplishment for these young police officers. And they were very proud. They all held up their certificates and said something patriotic sounding in Dari.

Here's a picture from the day before. From left to right: me, Sgt Jackson (the senior enlisted in the Biometrics group), Samey (a afghan that works around the Biometrics office) and Maj Perez (the new Air Force guy that is taking over from Jeff as the Biometrics OIC).



Here's a picture of Gen Macdonald talking during the graduation ceremony. I'm sitting in the front to the left.

Advisor Training

Yesterday I spent all day out. It was a good day. In the afternoon Jeff had to meet with some minister so I hung back and chatted with the Afghans cops that I work with. They are young - 26 is probably their average age. They are very smart and friendly. Our translator had left already so I had to communicate directly. Their english is pretty good in general. They talked about the various parts of Afghanistan. Some parts are green and beautiful, some are a desert. And some are trouble, like Kandahar.

Last night I was having a discussion with someone. We were talking about why America is here nation building. Neither of us could come up with a good reason. We agreed that we are doing good things here. We are making the country a better place and vaulting it into the present. However it comes at great cost to Americans, both in terms of dollars and human lives. There is just no strategic interest for America that justifies the expense. Iraq, because it sits in the heart of the worlds oil supply, has a very clear strategic interest. And because it has oil, we have a clear exit strategy because they can fund their progress after we pull out.

Today and tomorrow I'm in mentor training. It's more or less boring since I've been working with Afghans for a while already. There were two interesting lectures. One was on the history of Afghanistan. That was excellent. We could have spent all day on that. The second talk was given by a guy from the embassy. That talk was more interesting.

He talked about the state departments issues. In case you haven't been following, Karzai has been giving the international community the shaft since the incredibly corrupt election a few months ago. He kicked all the international people off the 'independent' election committee (and replaced them with personal appointees). He repealed the guarantees of female representation in the legislature. And enacted several other similarly corrupt, backwards and insulting acts. This in spite of the fact America is investing over $100 billion per year to stabilize his country (and increase his personal fortune). We spent $300 million alone on his massively fraudulent election. Anyway, it's no secret how I feel. This money would be better spent funding science and growth in America. The only thing the embassy guy said about Karzai was that he's playing chicken with the U.S. because he thinks we need him more than he needs us. Regarding American politics, he may be right.

I mostly kept my mouth shut. But what surprised me was the hostility that came from all the other officers in the room. Nearly ever officer that spoke, from majors to colonels, expressed obvious disgust at this whole situation. Topics ranged from the obvious government corruption, to the negotiations with the taliban for amnesty, and to the unsustainable government we are building. For example, the one question I asked was: if all goes well and we start to pull out of country, who's going to fund the government after we leave? That is, we're building up this government and military. We're employees and raising salaries. However they don't have any kind of income tax or any real industry besides opium. So if we're funding most of the salaries of the government employees, what happens when we leave? He said he didn't really know, that's something the USAID program has to deal with. He said he suspects they'll just have to cut back without external funding. Not very comforting words. I think most of us just shook our heads.

At least I can say that all the mid to low level afghans I've met are really good people and our efforts with them are not wasted. I don't think they are corrupt or overly lazy, and they are very happy that we're here stabilizing things after the last 30 years of craziness. I think the elite afghan class are milking America for all they can because they know the money is going to dry up before long and they are trying to gain all they can while times are good.