Mez Trip

I just got back from a trip to Mazar-E-Sharrif (Mez). It was nice up there, but I hate traveling. We took a French C160 up there, and a German C160 back. The Germans are great pilots. The French, not so much, but they are better than the Italians who absolutely suck. Still, wearing the body armor makes the trip incredibly uncomfortable. My butt starts aching from the weight 10 minutes into the flight and there is no room to move around or reposition. You are packed with people on either side and in front of you.

The American base up there, Camp Spann, sucks. it is crowded and uncomfortable. The DFAC was so hot that I was sweating while I ate. All the drinks were warm. There were so few restroom and shower facilities that you have to wait in line. They didn't have a rec area like stone. After work I think the soldiers just sit on their laptops or go to the gym. I didn't get a chance to visit the prison where the CIA agent, Mike Spann, was killed. They have very restrictive travel requirements so we couldn't just borrow a car and drive over there.

The second night I spent at Camp Marmal (also called Camp Mazar-E-Sharif or the Mez airport). That place was pretty nice. It's a German camp. Everything is clean, well designed and build on a grid. It had several cafe's that look exactly like German cafes inside. They are even rude like european cafes and wouldn't accept dollars, only euros. We went to the Norwegian camp inside the base and had a cappuccino there at a pizzeria/cafe. It was very relaxing, sitting on the couch and chatting. You almost forget you're in a war zone. Also, the airport terminal was awesome. It looked nice, the seating was comfortable, and they had dance/techno music playing all the time. Very German. They may not be great battlespace owners, but they sure know how to run a airbase. They make Bagram look like its still being managed by the soviets. Even simple things like loading/unloading the planes was noticeably more efficient than the U.S. airforce.

I'll post some pictures tomorrow when I get a chance to download them off my camera.

No go

So, I haven't felt like posting lately. A lot has been going on but at the same time it feels like nothing new. As typical I've been fighting with contracting/finance about them doing their job. I've been working on the details for starting a contract to build a small masonry building. Unfortunately the afghan who runs the unit didn't like our modest design and wanted a much more luxurious (and expensive) design so we are arguing about it now. I've been working on a complex biometrics statement of work.

And... I was supposed to leave on a week long trip back to the states today to escort some afghans. Unfortunately the trip was postponed/canceled. That really sucks. I can't put into words how much I was looking forward to seeing my lover, even if just for a night.

Herat

So here is the uncensored report on Herat. It's relatively peaceful out there. The local guys told me that the Iranians keep things peaceful to protect their economic interests. So they have few IED's around town. And the ones they have are radio-controlled so they don't accidentally hit the local population. An IED hit a group of people earlier in the morning that I was out driving around. When I got to my meeting the Italian that got hit was in there meeting with the afghan (because he was late to his meeting). He said it wasn't a big deal. It was small and didn't hurt anyway.

Camp Stone is our American FOB out there. The Italians own the battlespace so the Americans have a relatively small presence. Almost all the Americans I met said the Italians don't do anything. They don't have any money and mostly stay on their base. I don't know how true that is, maybe it's only perception. However the perception in Kabul is pretty much the same regarding the foreign forces, except the brits. When I was at the airport the other day someone was making fun of the Germans there who are under strict orders to not do anything that would reach the German median back home (because they are afraid the publicity would trigger a pullout).

Anyway, the Americans say the afghans, both the police and the army, are openly criminal and corrupt. In Kabul we are used to dealing with the leadership being corrupt, but they said everyone is corrupt around Herat. The examples they gave revolve around all the afghans working on the base. We have lots of construction projects on base and they hire the locals to do almost everything from laying cement to constructing buildings. They said if the afghans workers have any money on them when they leave the base (for example from getting paid) the police/army will take a percentage (usually ~10%) as soon as they leave the base. Also, they said if the Americans give the workers anything, such as left-over supplies, the police/army just steal it and keep it for themselves. They had many stories like that. The perception from the Americans I spoke is that the ANA and ANP are equally corrupt.

I wouldn't be surprised if that kind of things happens all over the country based on the reports I read. The afghans accept much of it because that's the way things have been here for as long as anyone can remember. But one of the things the Taliban offer is a less corrupt system. That's a mechanism they use to win the support of the local population. I can't say that I'm particularly proud to help prop up a government that allows such open corruption. However, the police in Kabul aren't as openly corrupt like that. And I'm comfortable that the police that I work with in CID are good people in general. Hopefully it is a problem mostly with the average uniformed police.

It just goes to show how difficult this 'country-building' effort really is. We are pouring hundreds of billions of U.S. tax dollars into a country where the corruption starts at the president and extends all the way down the the beat cop on the street stealing form poor farmers. The U.S. military is essentially propping up a Tajik government in a country that is mostly Pashtun. I'm not privy to enough afghan politics to know if the efforts to better integrate the pashtuns into the government are succeeding. I can say that I'm not seeing it personally, which makes me nervous that when we pull out chaos might ensue.

Back from Herat

I went to Herat for the last few days (via Bagram - yuck). I'm too tired to blog about it, but here are a few pics.

Camp Stone is our main base near Herat. I stayed there in the JTF Paladin tent.



The view outside my tent. Just on the other side of those mountains is Iran.



They don't work the long days that we do here at Eggers. Here is how many soldiers spend the evening:



I met LTC Anwar at the Regional Headquarters. Here is the lunch we had after our meetings. Mostly everyone just grabs what they want. With their fingers. They were kind enough to give me a plate and fork.

Umm....

When we are returning from a mission to the east, Massoud Circle is the last traffic circle we go through. The gate to the green zone is at one end of the circle. We are always a little nervous because entering/exiting the ECP (entry-control-point) is one of our most vulnerable points. But it's nice to see Massoud's monument and know we are almost in the safe zone.



Anwar came by our office the other day. I hadn't been out to see him so he felt the need to give me a big hug. I'm kind of flinching because he doesn't smell good. I don't think he washes his clothes either. It's tough to deal with the smell of strong BO. The vast majority of afghans are like that.

Airport run

Been fighting contract battles mostly the last few days. Afghans just can't except how long it takes the U.S. government to pay them, and how often things get screwed up. They are constantly fearful they'll never get paid. One of my favorite expressions:

Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."

I'm having a hard time teaching the afghans this lesson in relation to our contracting process.

Today I got to run around in civilian clothes for a while. I went to the airport to do a sight survey. It feels strange to wear civilian clothes and to not have my weapon on me.

Nomads

We drove past a nomad tribe today. They just wander around the country with their animals and pitch tents to stop in one plane for a while. The place where they were stopped was former warlord land which was being partitioned off and sold to the people. I wonder what the nomads will do when everyone owns the land. You can see the brick walls starting to be built. As soon as an afghan buys some land, he builds a brick wall around it.



I ate an MRE for lunch. The first MRE I've had since Ft. Jackson.

At least a couple of our fish are still alive. I'm not sure who feeds them though. I don't see the smaller fish around. Maybe the big fish ate them.

Flowers

Things have been busy lately. There was bad VBIED the other day that killed a few Americans. It had been a while since Americans were killed in Kabul. The attack occurred on the road to Camp Julian where I did the marksmanship training on April 7th.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/world/asia/19afghan.html?src=me

Also, the internet was really slow for the last couple of days. Something to do with the attack on Bagram air base.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1990334,00.html?xid=rss-topstories

Yesterday morning my directorate held a ceremony to honor two people that died from an IED a year ago:

http://www.usafa.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123205594

So there's been lots of activity. Things are probably picking up now because of the Peace Jirga. I still feel pretty safe. The only threat to me are the VBIEDs, which seem more or less random. So statistically I don't really have a reason to be concerned.

Laziness

The contracting process here is so messed up. At any given time, about 1/3 of my contracts have some kind of problem. And most of the problems are with the military/civilians running the contracting and finance offices. I have to meet with another afghan tomorrow who wants to evict us because he hasn't been paid. Why hasn't he been paid? Because the contracting and finance offices are excruciatingly slow. They certainly don't work under the direction that we are fighting a war here and we are trying to win the hearts and minds of the afghan people. If you have any doubts, just look at the office hours for the finance office. They work less than bankers hours. The afghans that work in contracting actually seem way more competent than the Americans.

I'm not a big fan of Karzai, but if he has to deal with half as much crap from the military as I do, I can see where he might be frustrated and wonder if it'd be better for us to just leave so we'll stop screwing up and turning the local population against the government. (Of course, he wants is to keep funneling our billions/month his way.)

I can't imagine the kind of communication failures that would lead to this kind of stuff:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/16/afghan-prosecutor-arrest-warrant-us-officer

Fish

LTG Caldwell came by the other day for an awards ceremony. He got a chance to see the tortoises so now they've met the senior ranking officer for the base. That's probably as high as they'll go. I don't think GEN McCrystal ever comes over here.



Also, the NGA folks managed to get 6 fish for the pond from their afghan counterparts.

And a crazy sandstorm blew through today. It lasted about 30 minutes then it went back to being a beautiful sunny day.

Rock Stars

Ok, so the tortoises are popular. We had a power outage yesterday for a while so I took let the turtles out to stretch their legs. Probably 20 people were milling about watching them waiting for the power to come back on. Even BG Macdonald walked over to check them out (probably wondering what everyone was staring at).

Tonight was cigar night and a Major General was over smoking a cigar and checked them out. I bet they wish they could tell all their friends in Mez about their moment of fame.

Not Turtles

I haven't felt like updated my blog lately. The days are starting to blur here. Not much changes.

Some company in the states donated a pump for our pond. It looks nice and clean now:



The NOCs asked out interpreter to get us some turtles for the pond. Unfortunately he got us Russian Tortoises which just sink. So now we're not sure what to do with them. But there are very popular. Everyone stops by the check them out. I even took them for a walk yesterday.

Half Mast

I noticed the Canadian flag was at half mast today. It's a sad day for some family.




http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/breakingnews/canadian-death-toll-in-afghan-mission-143-members-of-forces-2-civilians-92751934.html

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Standing in Line

There is not much nice about Eggers. It's crowded everywhere. There's not enough berthing. Chow is greasy. It's hard to find a free treadmill at the gym. There's an ever present sewage smell. You get the idea.

But there are a couple of things I enjoy. Every morning when I walk to work I see the snow capped mountain peaks in the distance. I always enjoy that sight:



The only flowers I ever see the afghans planting are roses. So it's actually very very nice to see rose bushes everywhere:



Lastly, I was standing in line at the DFAC and realized I actually enjoyed the wait. It's not uncommon to wait 20-30 minutes in line, depending on what they are serving (pizza night is the most popular). But it's never bothered me to stand there in line and zone out for a little while. Strange. In the states I hated to wait on food.

Victory Day

Afghan's are celebrating some victory day (over Russia I think). So they have Wednesday-Friday off. That fine by me because I'm ready for a break. It's been a frustrating week. Afghan politicians are so greedy. Their strategy for any given policy seems to be whatever maximizes the amount money we dump into their country. Even if the solution is worse off for them. It's been one of those weeks where I can't imagine this country not falling into chaos when we leave.

Fine Cuisine

We went to the MOI today. Nothing special, just a normal day where we have a list of items that need to be discussed. For example coordinating biometric enrollers showing up at some place that our Generals have made a priority.

Afterward we walked to a French restaurant for lunch. It was incredibly beautiful. Run by an older french gentleman and his wife (who looked afghan but spoke french).

It's hard to describe how nice it was there. The weather was perfect so we sat outside. The other patrons were westerners - presumably european by the way they were dressed. There was a group that came in after yoga. And there was a group of what looked like back-packers. I didn't really listen to the conversation, I just enjoyed the peacefulness of the environment. It was surrounded by walls and a steel gate so it felt relatively safe. There was only one questionable building that overlooked the outdoor portion that could house a sniper position. But I still felt relatively safe because I think that building was behind the second of the MOI checkpoints.

There are so few opportunities to relax here, when it does happen the feeling is incredibly powerful.

MCIT

Today I visited the Afghan National Data Center (ANDF) at the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) with LTC Anwar. That place is very nice. From the outside it looks like a normal trashy building, but the inside has a modern data center. I'm trying to convince Anwar to move our mainframes there so he doesn't have to worry about power and generators and dust, etc. He seemed moderately warm to the idea.

The people there were very smart and educated. It's refreshing to know that the country has those kind of people and that they've found their way into the government. Whoever ends up in charge of the country, I hope they retain the educated workforce. They are doing a great job of propelling the country into the 21st century.

Here's a picture of Anwar during the tour. They made us where shoe protectors to keep dust from falling off our shoes.

Pashtunwali

Long day today. We picked up some biometric kits and an officer at MOI then drove out the the detention facility (ANDF) at Pol-e-charki prison. We got there just before lunch. The Kandex commander gave is lunch in his office. It was basically the same mean I've had the last couple of times I was there. And it was just as good. As usual, I ate too much and still only ate half of what they gave me.

The officer we brought with us checked the configuration on all the kits they had there. It took about 3 hours. MAJ Perez took a tour of the prison. I hung around outside an watched the prisoners. They were pretty interesting to watch. I had a pashtun interpreter with me. He was telling me what the prisoners were yelling at each other about. He said they were just talking politely asking how each was doing. How their health was. They stared at me for a little, but mostly they ignored me. The interpreter said they he didn't hear them saying anything about us. He said that Pashtuns were very respectful people in general. He told me that once one of the nastiest detainees was yelling and cursing at him but the elders told him to be quiet.

Many were playing soccer. A couple of times they kicked the (mostly flat) soccer ball over the razor wire accidentally. I threw it back to them. An Army major went and talked to them for a bit about their conditions. The only thing they really complained about were their shoes. Apparently they wear out fast. They are more like sandals than shoes.

The interpreter was a young American from New York. His parents were from Pakistan. I talked to him for a while about what he's learned whiles he's been visiting the prison for the last few months. (Not interrogation wise - I don't think they do that at ANDF.) He talked about how tribal this culture was. In Iraq, although there is sectarian violence, they have strong nationalistic feelings. There's much less nationalism in Afghanistan. Most people align with their tribes. The prisoners, who are mostly Pashtuns, used to run the country. Now all the Army and guards are composed of Tajiks. He also mentioned that the guards seem scared of the pashtun detainees. All in all, they were very interesting to watch. It's hard to describe, but they didn't really look like prisoners. They looked more like a tribe of men - all ages - who happen to be stuck behind a fence for the moment.

Talking with this guy, it sounded like working out the political complexities of getting the tribes to agree to work peacefully together to form a single nation-state may be insurmountable. He also reiterated something I've heard several times before, that this country would crumble apart if it isn't run by a Pashtun.

Lecture

This morning we had a meeting with LTG Yarman, the head of CID. He's a very good leader - I think I've mentioned him before in my blog. We were talking with him about the process for investigating biometric matches. It was a long conversation, mostly because of translations. After a couple of hours, when our business was concluded, LTG Yarmand wanted to talk about a really nasty incident where NATO forces killed some civilians.

http://www.theage.com.au/world/us-troops-accused-of-coverup-over-womens-killings-20100405-rn44.html

Min. Atmar had sent him down to investigate and he gave us a detailed account of what happened. He drew a diagram on the whiteboard and showed us what happened where and at what time. The incident was so bad because the soldiers involved knew they made a mistake and apparently tried to cover it up. Yarmand's point as he went though this was not to point out how screwed up the operation was, but to show at each step how the failure was likely related to a misunderstanding of the Afghan culture, and that the onus is on us to understand their culture if we are going to be performing such dangerous operations.

I've known about that incident for a while, but fortunately it hasn't hit the mainstream media hard. Stuff like that makes our job so much harder. Things are bad enough with nearly every person I know distrusting Karzai and his intentions. It is true that tensions are building between many Coalition Forces and afghan politicians. At the my level relations are good because we've because we've built personal relationships with our afghan counterparts. Yarmand for example knows how hard we are working to improve their capabilities and appreciates our efforts. I don't know what's going on at the head-of-state level that is causing things to sour. Except the fraudulent election. That has almost every American I know upset.

M4

Today was a meeting day. I was even called into a meeting while I was walking to a meeting. The meeting I got called into was pretty cool though. They call it the CUB: Commanders Update Briefing. The commander being Gen McCrystal (whom they refer to as M4). It was a Video Conference with many coalition generals and the ambassador. It was neat to hear them work though the problems across the country. It makes movies like The Green Zone seem pretty ridiculous.

Here's a picture someone took of me traversing the dangerous part of the hike yesterday: