The Kabul Guy - Afghanistan 2006

••• first impressions of a war zone & armed conflict by photojournalist ken paprocki in afghanistan

NEW YORK TO ISTANBUL - 13 & 14 AUGUST 2006, SUNDAY & MONDAY

Leaving New York for Istanbul.


The Boeing 767 is pushing back from the Delta Terminal at JFK. I am able to enjoy this hermetically sealed buzzing jet cabin and write for the first time in over a week.

With the international mayhem that occurred before this flight, I’ve become convinced that I was born under some sort of hexed star. Without fail, every time I venture on some new big life-altering journey by jet, some airplane catastrophe or major airline pandemonium befalls me. It’s as if some higher power were testing my mettle, my resolve to carry through with my well-laid plans.

Take my virgin flight for example.

It was the summer of 1981. A nationwide air controllers strike broke out just as I was to embark on my first jet from Omaha to Hamburg, where I was to then continue to a dairy farm where I’d be a Youth For Understanding exchange student for two months. A trip I’d worked my entire sophomore year in high school to pay for was now in jeopardy because of some stupid labor dispute. Luckily for me, there was a temporary truce hammered out the day before I scheduled to fly out.

Lockerbie, Scotland happened in 1986 while the paperwork was going through for my application to the University of California’s Junior Year Abroad in Padova, Italy. The fact that several students aboard the Pan Am flight perished convinced my Mom it was too dangerous to be flying at the time and pursue the Italian experience. Lucky for me many students heeded just such suggestions from their parents, opening up a slot for me to participate in the program.

The Iraq War (the first one) broke out in 1990 just as I was to return to the U.S. to begin grad school. I was living in Spain where I had spent a year and a half teaching English in Seville and Jerez. My Mom suggested I stay in Europe where it was “safe” until the war was over. I came home anyway.

And not one but TWO tragedies happened when I was going through flight attendant school in the spring of 1996.

First ValuJet careened into some alligator-infested bog in Florida a few weeks into our training then TWA Flight 800 blew up over Long Island shortly after take-off. We World Airways new hires blinked vacantly at each other every time we heard talk of the tragic news. We were too desperate to get our wings and start our fabulous new lives as international flight attendants to let little things like exploding jets and hundreds of dead people get in our way.

So when I heard, 48 hours before my first foray into war zone photojournalism, that some international airline crisis had just been averted I can’t say I was surprised. I had a sixth sense that something was going to happen.

“I hope you’re not going through London to get to Istanbul,” a Turkish friend emailed me, sending up the first red flags, bells, whistles, air raid sirens, Doppler radar tornado warnings in my head.

“Why?” I asked, with Bambi-esque naïveté.”

“Haven’t you heard?”

A few seconds later a New York Times headline popped up on my Gmail account. English-born Pakistani terrorists. Plans to blow up a dozen jets over the ocean. Using … liquids. Liquids? Liquids! Of all things.

It made me think. I believe these terrorists don’t really plan to actually carry out their sinister aviation missions. Their true intention is to make flying as uncomfortable and annoying as possible for passengers.

“The Shoe Bomber” probably had an ulterior motive. It wasn’t to detonate himself and the aircraft but instead to cause millions and millions of subsequent airline passengers in his wake to submit to the degradation and embarrassment of removing their smelly shoes in crowded public spaces, exposing the holes in their threadbare socks.

So now liquids join shoes and nail clippers as carry-on no-nos.

What can be next in the terrorist arsenal against innocent airline flyers? Exploding chicken or beef? That will only lead to airlines defending yet another lowered notch in service, all in the name of upholding public safety. I can hear it now: “Today the choice of entrées is a stale roll or a bag of hypoallergenic peanuts. Take it or leave it.”

Dawn - Jumping Bean #1 - sending me off.


When I arrived at JFK with an oversized green and brown camouflage backpack containing a 25-pound bulletproof vest, a steel helmet, safety goggles and cables for camera equipment I was prepared for a battle. In a readily handy notebook I had my military letter of acceptance as an embed, the TV station letter explaining my mission, and the Afghanistan visa acceptance letter.

A long line snaked outside the Delta terminal but moved quickly. Hastily xeroxed sheets announcing liquid prohibition were posted everywhere. Abandoned Gatorade, Coke and water bottles sat guard below many of them.

I held my breath as I laid my backbreakingly heavy military-looking backpack on the scale. The woman who checked me in was more concerned with the terminal's overactive air-conditioning than with my luggage. She printed out my seat assignment and directed me to TSA security. The Puerto Rican guy who took my backpack was cool.

“That’s it?” I asked.

“That’s it,” he replied.

Surely they’re going to do a carry-on bag search when I get through the x-ray machine since I have a digital camera, laptop and video camera in my carry-on, I surmised. But I waltzed right through the process. The woman behind me though was detained for a small glass jar of red lip balm. She put down the bottle of formula and repositioned her baby on her other arm as she set down her macramé purse so it could be spot-checked.

I don’t take this smooth beginning of the voyage as a good omen for the rest of the trip, but I do appreciate it.

Alex - Jumping Bean #2 - sending me off.

Me capturing my send-off from Alex and Dawn.


On board the plane I laughed to myself, as I always do when I fly long-haul international flights, which is what I used to work on with my charter airline. My old flying days are evoked when I watch the flight attendants hastily coursing through the aisles, faces consternated, as if they’re trying to reach a fire in the back galley. I recall the flight attendant rule of walking very fast: hurry down the aisles looking straight forward so passengers can’t stop you and ask for something.

One of the flight attendants working in first class was wearing a red felt high-peaked hat worn at a jaunty angle. Her matching red body-fitted go-go dress made me wonder if this was some special flight for a TV show where flight attendants relive their glory days of flying. Instead it was simply her uniform. I’ve got three words to say: You go Delta!

Red will likely be the color of my eyes by the time I arrive in Kabul.

Air Ariana, the Afghanistan national airline, departs Istanbul at 11:55 PM on August 15, arriving in Kabul at 6 AM. A military transport is supposed to pick us up at the airport.

Doug Grindle is the one who organized this entire work trip. We went to grad school together at George Washington University in Washington DC from 1991 to 1993 where we both received M.A.’s in International Relations.

The three subsequent years of craving to work in the foreign arena and not doing anything international were frustrating for both of us. Weren’t jobs at the UN, State Department, NGO Think Tanks supposed to materialize automatically as soon as we received our diplomas? In 1996 Doug began work on getting his M.A. in Journalism at Columbia University in New York while I went to another school: World Airways flight attendant training.

While I was serving passengers non-exploding chicken or beef en route to places like Anchorage, Dakar, Munich and Dublin, Doug was working on news stories on Cambodia, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Doug and I reconnected a year ago soon after I had my first pictures published in the 2005 United Nations biennial World Youth Report.

After working in the townships of Cape Town – which were the pictures the UN used – I was searching for some venue where I could get back to the developing world and pursue my passion of photography. My sites were on Africa – Somalia and Namibia to be precise. I never expected to be spending time in one of the ‘Stans (Kurdistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Baluchistan, ….) but when Doug suggested I join him on his next mission to the middle the Middle East I said yes, after a day of debate.

So my summer of 2006 was one of preparing for this Afghanistan venture, working on the final editing of a manuscript for a publisher (Confessions of a Teenage Sex GOD – a humorous book about my high school years in Nebraska), and working as a photographer on a tourist boat – the World Yacht – which takes 3-hour dinner and drink cruises under the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges and around the Statue of Liberty.

The flak jacket was the most essential item for the trip since, as Doug pointed out, I wouldn’t be allowed to board a military aircraft without one. The flack jacket had to have ceramic plates in the front and the back, which weigh ten pounds each. A brand new flack jacket costs in the neighborhood of $2000. Some contractor to the U.S. military is making a gazillion dollars off those. Makes you think where your tax dollars go.

The bulletproof vest will be necessary as we will be going to Kabul, Kandahar, Bagram, Mazar-i-Sharif and mountains along the Pakistan border.

I’ve got my sleeping bag, pen light (for nocturnal bathroom runs), ankle supported Timberland boots (for mountainous and rocky terrain), long-sleeve shirts (in case of explosions that could burn exposed skin) and clothes in your basic brown, olive and navy blue palette.

I have no idea how difficult this will be but I should wear a T-shirt that says “I survived the Messe” when I arrive in Kabul. The Messe is the exhibition fairgrounds in Frankfurt where my friend and former-host-brother, Gregor, works as an importer/exporter for Chinese exhibitors. In January and February of last year I did hard labor for him: unloading trucks, boxing pallets, delivering and removing hundreds of heavy items with handtrucks to exhibition booths. Some days we had to get up at 5 AM after less than three hours of sleep and unload 40-foot containers in the dark, damp, Teutonic cold. One day I unloaded five of these trucks by myself from 6:30 AM to 7:30 PM in subzero temperatures. Talk about Gulag Archipelago.

After seven weeks of working at the Messe, doing three different exhibitions, I figured if I could survive this I could do anything. So rolling a movie camera and shooting pictures of Doug and soldiers in the dessert may not be so bad. Never mind I’ll be wearing a baby blue bullet-proof vest as heavy as a propane gas tank that makes my knees buckle and will have to watch out for landmines, snipers and bombs.

My goal is to capture images that people in Platte County, Nebraska, my home, would understand. I think if I can shoot pictures that make sense of and partially explain the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan then perhaps regular U.S. folk, like Nebraskans, might glean some understanding of what’s going on in that weird ‘Stan half a world away.

I love the dessert and the mountains – especially since I’m from a place that has neither – and before this trip I read “The Kite Runner” by Hossein Khaleid (a gripping novel about two childhood friends and how their lives are forever intertwined into adulthood) and “The Places in Between” by Rory Stewart (his experiences of walking across Afghanistan three weeks after the Taliban is overthrown), so I’m anxious to see the country.

To make this trip a reality many thanks are owed to Jean-Eduard van Praet who wavered sometimes but always supported me and with whose help this trip would be completely impossible; Dawn Shurmaitis, a veteran print reporter, who taught me more ropes than I thought could exist; Alex Ryokeken who showed me all sorts of things on my Canon and Mac that I was oblivious to; Chuck Tayman, a BBC international camera man, who leant me his flak jacket; Michael Kamber, a New York Times photographer who’s made amazing pictures in Sudan and Liberia and is now in Israel, who took time to give me photojournalistic tips; Daphne Angles (la soeur de Natalie) and Lucy Conticello of the New York Times photo desk in Paris, who gave me the lowdown on the procedures of submitting photos; Sydney Oakes and her family for providing me the only fun I experienced this summer when she got hitched to Brad near Tucson, Arizona; and all the friends and family who called and emailed me before this trip.

Next dispatch: Istanbul.



15 AUGUST 2006, Monday – Istanbul

View of Istanbul from my hotel's 7th Floor Roof. I highly recommend the Grand London Hotel if you come to Istanbul. It's in the heart of everything, is inexpensive, has a great staff and authentic Old World class. It's been rightfully compared to the Chelsea Hotel in New York.

Landing in Istanbul


I have a great idea for the city council here: start a campaign with the logo: Istanbul is cool! Make T-shirts, hats and keychains and market them like mad. This city is simply marvelous.

Men serving ice cream in red jackets like the ones you see on little organ-grinder monkeys, tiny cups of tea served on large metal trays with handles, roasted corn sold by street vendors for one Turkish Lira (about 60¢). This is Taksim, the pedestrian street behind my hotel Büyük Londras Oteli. It’s a kilometer-long lane of pleasure. On little side streets are narrow cafés with two rows of tables lining the upward or downward adjacent buildings. Music spills out of stores. Musicians play middle-eastern instruments for money, à la New York Subway. People hang out and talk to each other instead of on cell phones. How wonderful to see this exotic mix of East and West.

A street vendor in Istanbul selling grilled corn. When is Nebraska going to see the light and put these on every corner?


Very few women wear veils and even fewer the black body-covering chador with the open-eyed slit. Young people have long hair and wear T-shirts and have those cool looks that are international for youth. The only difference is that where in the U.S. if the temperature is 90°, as it is here, everybody would wear shorts, here they all wear long pants. That I believe goes with the Middle-East tradition of covering up not only for modesty’s sake but also to protect the skin from the sun. The only people who wear short pants are tourists and most of those are from Europe (read Germany).

Yesterday a Lebanese friend of mine, Emir, showed me around Istanbul. We went to the Blue Mosque, built in 1616, and the Hajj Sophia, the former church built by the Roman Emperor Justinian in the year 412 that became the model of all great mosques in Istanbul and the Anatolian peninsula.

I felt guilty as I was drinking my little cup of sweetened Turkish coffee and ice cold soda water while listening to the mullahs chanting evening calls to prayer over speakers. I watched the setting sun turn the white marble minarets of the great mosques into rose-colored hues. Knowing that I’m going into a war zone made these pleasures hard to accept. It felt a little as if I was a tourist who just bopped off a cruise ship,.

The Blue Mosque

My Lebanese friend Emir showing his happy and serious sides.


Emir, who’s from Beirut, and is fluent in Turkish as well as his native Arabic, told me while we were eating falafels at an outdoor restaurant, that he couldn’t believe all the Arabic he was hearing in the streets. He said that due to the conflict in Lebanon, all the Arabs, mainly from the Gulf States, who planned to visit his country, instead changed their travel plans and came to Istanbul. “Because of the war Lebanon is losing all this money and Turkey is getting rich,” he said shaking his head, sipping his cup of Ayran, a salty yogurt-type liquid (non-explosive by the way). How long will it take for Lebanon to get back on its feet this time? Who will pay for its reconstruction? When will people start traveling there again?




According to Emir the war between Lebanon and Israel is really between Iran, which supports Hezbollah, and the United States, which supports Israel. “The solution is to create a conflict-free zone in Lebanon, where no weapons or missiles or arms of any kind are allowed,” Emir said, his dark brown eyes serious but restrained.

While eating, it was interesting seeing traditional couples dining out. The women who wear the black chador have a little mouth flap that they lift up as they shovel in the food, one hand scoop at a time. The men and women barely talk to each other, which Emir says is traditional.

I haven’t been in the East since I worked in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia for almost a month in 1999 during Hajj, when World Airways flew me to Kuala Lumpur, Damascus, Islamabad and Ankara to pick up pilgrims. It’s so interesting to see regular Palestinians, Syrians, and other Arabs intermingling with the Turks. What would it take to create this type of pleasurable atmosphere in more conservative Islamic countries?

A street protest in Taksim against the War in Lebanon.


“Wherever you go, you will always be hungry for Lebanon,” Emir’s grandma told him when he left Beirut six months ago to take a job as a medical researcher at a German lab in Istanbul.

“It must be beautiful there,” I said.

“It was before I left,” he replied, finishing a plate of hummus with a swirl of his pita bread; the 25-year-old Palestinian restaurant manager hurrying past our table to seat yet another table at the outdoor falafel eatery.

Prayer rugs and wall hangings outside the Blue Mosque. (Thank God none of these had Elvis on them or a little boy being charged by a bull with Jesus behind him.)


For a nightcap Emir and I sat at an open rooftop bar where you could see the yellow lights of boats slowly glide over the velvet black waters of the "Halic" (The Golden Horn). Flood lights illuminated various mosques and fortifications on the hills in the distance.

I wish I had my T-shirt because it's true, Istanbul is cool.

An old tower that cost 7 Euros to reach the top. Screw that. I'll walk up for free thank you very much.

Boy waiting to sell fish at end of work day.

Me across river from Hajj Sophia and Blue Mosque in Istanbul.


5 Comments:

ryokeken.net said...
Very good start! I'm already hooked.
finaly a blogger that I'm sure exists!(I think) ;)
9:08 AM

Sue said...
Glad to see you're using protection! Look forward to the next instalment hun xx
11:58 AM

raquelle dommage said...
Weren't we together in Istanbul in 2002 ? or maybe I was drunk !
Good luck ! you're right, Istanbul is really cool !
xx
2:40 AM

mobaby said...
Love the story and LOVE Istanbul as well. Looking forward to the rest of the trip. All the best.
6:53 AM

Gwen B. said...
Hey honey!! Love the blog. All your peeps in good ol' C-town love checking in. Thanks and love ya, can't wait to see you again. ~Gwen
8:41 AM

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ISTANBUL to KABUL, 15, 16, 17 AUGUST 2006

Hot and cold, in Turkish.

Songbirds chirped away as I worked in the hotel lounge to get my blog started. Lining the windowsills were a dozen cages holding birds. Coming from the open Midwest I feel bad for these entrapped little feathered creatures, whose only exercise consists of sliding along their little wooden poles and jumping down to the newspaper at the bottom of the cage and eating seeds.

I felt like one of those caged birds being stuck on such a gorgeous day writing and editing pictures. I worked on the 7th floor roof terrace for a while to break up the tedium.

The lounge downstairs is a menagerie of all types of memorabilia and antiques, like record players going from a gramophone to a 1970s jukebox. Every corner has something to examine. (On the stairwells there are antique heating stoves for rooms and ornate Ottoman Empire steamer trunks.)

If you ever get to Istanbul you really need to check out this Büyük Londras Oteli -- The Grand London Hotel* (Directions below). This place has free wifi. Rooms can be had for 30€. But try to get one of the big corner rooms (103, 203, 303, 403, 503) which have sweeping views of the city and the Halic, the Golden Horn. Amazing! Especially at night. Also breakfast in the downstairs is included. It’s not the Ritz Carlton but hey, it’s cheap and a real Turkish experience.

My only companion while I worked was an ancient parrot. The gray parrot with pomegranate-colored tail feathers was stuck in a tiny cage between cages of the songbirds. I didn’t realize how old he was until I said hello to him and he slowly hobbled to the side of the cage and with great effort used his beak to pull himself on the bottom of the cage so he could look at me. I think I’m the first person to have stroked his head in a long time. Caged birds are probably a throwback to ancient times but all I can say is that this hotel better not host any PETA conventions.

At 7:30 PM a taxi picked me up and drove only 800 meters to Taksim Square, where I would catch the bus back to the airport. It was too far to walk with my bags. Taksim is nonstop pulstating frenetic organ. It is so filled with restaurants and cafes and music and life that the only thing I might be able to compare it to is the Paris center or the Rambles of Barcelona.

While I was waiting outside for the bus to head for the airpot I was being asked by a shoeshine boy how much my boots cost. He then told me that I should pay him because I took his picture. I felt an arm on my shoulder. I was ready to fend off another person wanting me to buy something but it turned out to be my friend Emir.

A nut vendor off Taksim square. When the cops passed by, all the vendors scrammed, as they're all illegal.

“What are the chances?” he said smiling hugely. “A city of 15,000,000 people and we meet on the street.” This wasn’t merely coincidence. We were supposed to see each other again. I believe in being in tune with the world and seeing something like this as a sign. (I know, very kumbaya.) We only had five minutes together but it was a wonderful send-off. What a nice feeling to wave good-bye to a friend as you leave a foreign city.

The road to the airport is abutted by water. There’s a long park and an ancient Roman wall that stretches most of the length of the shoreline. On the water were a hundred anchored ships with their lights reflecting off the serene silvery water. Families and lovers were eating, playing or cuddling as they took in the beautiful view. I’d love to take a bike next time I’m here and drive all around the waterfront area.

A bike probably would’ve been faster than this bus.

The trip to the airport was bumper-to-bumper the whole way. It took more than an hour to travel 15 miles. Where did all that traffic come from at 8:00 in the evening? I wasn’t too worried though because my flight wasn’t scheduled to leave until almost midnight.

When I got to the airport the check in counter for Ariana Airlines wasn’t listed yet. According to Doug there were two Afghanistan airlines. Besides Ariana, there was one called King Air. Their plane crashed in the mountains last year. Now there’s only one national airline.

I noticed three flights going to some odd place called Domodedovo. Two flights were by Orenburg Airlines (definitely an airline to check out) and one by Vladivostok Air. What a great idea for a story. Just get on a plane and go somewhere that you’ve never heard of before and see what it’s like. By the way, Flylal goes to Vnukovo, if you’re interested.


Kabul or Domodedovo?

The good thing about Turkey is everybody smokes, so it was easy to find a seat in the non-smoking section dining area of the airport. Wifi was free! (I love Turkey.) Behind me there was a mosque sign above a room where people could pray. I noticed lots of pilgrims around the terminal. For what I don’t know, because the Hajj to Mecca is in March and April

I found Doug in line around 10 PM. The way the passengers were pushing their way towards the ticket agents reminded me of when I lived in Italy. The employees of Ariana Airlines didn’t seem too thrilled with their jobs.

Doug and I had the great luck to be the only ones singled out for having excess luggage weight. We were told that 20 kilos was the personal limit. I took my bulletproof vest out of my luggage and the weight of my stuff dropped 10 kilos. The penalty was still $120.

I found the passengers fascinating.

There were Asians of Mongol extraction, Russians, and European-looking people. Some people looked like footage I’ve seen from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. One tall teenage boy behind me wore white flowing pants, a long white tunic, a gray vest and an embroidered green and gold hat. I like that Afghan native look. Where do I get me some of those threads? Of particular interest: his fingernails were hennaed red. Looking at these people, who look so normal, what must their lives be like? What are their realities? I can’t wait to try to find out.

At the security checkpoint before the gate I held my breath as I put my flak jacket on the belt to the x-ray machine. I hoped they wouldn’t say anything about it but they did. They commented on how heavy it was. Nothing more. Yeah bulletproof vests are fine on Ariana Airlines. What their policy is on liquids and nail clippers, I can’t say.

I thought the reason Ariana flies at night is to avoid being a target of ground-to-air missiles. The real reason is to keep the shock of the passengers at bay until they’re close enough to get a really good look at the plane.

An early 1970s Boeing 727 was the aircraft. Now don’t think I’m pooh-poohing this plane as some typical third world fare. I worked for American Airlines in 1998 and I was actually trained on the 727 (as well as the 757, 767, Fokker 100 and DC-10). It is an old aircraft but it was built with a soul. It is spacious, easy to move around in and it has a 3-man cockpit (pilot, co-pilot, navigator) as opposed to the newer aircraft that only have two.

Again Italy came to mind when we boarded and the flight attendants didn’t check our ticket stubs or even look at us – Alitalia all the way.

Boarding the plane is like going back in time as you look at the ancient door handles and galley equipment. The window shades were paper-thin white plastic.

I really loved the part where the flight attendant was briefing a woman on how to open the exit door in case of an emergency. She was a mother with a baby in a car seat next to her. The one person, besides a handicapped passenger, that you do not put in an exit row is a mother with a child, for obvious reasons: if there was an emergency and everybody was rushing towards the emergency exits the baby in the car seat would hinder egress. Buy hey, it’s Ariana Airlines, what’s there to worry about?

Safety compliance checks, such as fastened seatbelts, locked tray tables, seats in the full upright position, baggage underneath the seat in front of you weren’t done. Why bother. It’s Ariana Airlines.

The plane announcements were in Turkish, Pashtun and something resembling English. There wasn’t any announcement however for imminent take-off. The plane simply rolled down the runway until it picked up enough speed to lift off.

When you consider that Afghanistan is a country where people can eat a full meal for $2 I guess we should consider ourselves fortunate when they served us two small sandwiches and tiny plastic cups of juice. That was all the flight attendants did basically. Push the cart one through the aisles.

There was a blue-veiled woman flight attendant and five men for a plane that had about 130 passengers. The woman flight attendant disappeared after take-off and the five men, as soon as they finished serving, went to the aft section of the 727. The only time I got slightly nervous is when the cabin became very hot. I thought perhaps something was burning. But when I went to the bathroom I discovered the reason for the head. The five sleeping flight attendants in the back liked it warm.

Between misty wisps of silver clouds I was looking down below at the black landscape that had little specks and swirls of lights here and there like distant galaxies of stars. It reminded me of when I used to be a flight attendant and would hang out in the cockpit when I could during night flights. The most beautiful nocturnal vista I ever experienced was flying 35,000 feet over the south of France with a full moon in front of us illuminating the tops of night-time clouds white, while sleepy French cities passed underneath. It reminded me of the Peter Pan exhibit at Disneyland as the jet barreled through the firmament.

I had just fallen asleep when I was awaken by one of the flight attendants. We were going to be landing shortly. Not in Kabul. But in Tehran. I’m sure the ground authorities would have loved to discover that there were two American journalists on board.

It was an odd stop.

Tehran by night.

No passengers were on- or off-loaded, so who knows what was taken out of or put in the cargo hold. Before landing in Tehran there was a narrow band of continuous lights for many miles. It made me wonder what must be underneath us. What wonders would I discover if I could walk or drive down there?

Taking off from Tehran, Iran.

We were on the ground in Iran for over an hour. Red flashing lights from vehicles went back and forth. By the time we lifted off the sun was already turning the sky shades of pink and marigold. There was a huge domed mountain that was spectacularly beautiful against the morning’s early rays.

Each time I looked out the window as I drifted in and out of sleep there were new amazing views: fields of tall, fat, moody gray clouds; caramel-colored desserts rimmed by mountains; little villages comprised of mazes of mud-brick houses.

The plane suddenly hurdled downwards. We were about to land in Kabul. No announcement, no safety check, just look out the window and watch the runway get closer.

A beautiful mountain by Tehran.



(*How to get to Büyük Londras Oteli: Take a shuttle bus from the airport for 5€ (from here on out that means Euros, 1€ = $1.20) to Taksim Square, tell them to drop you off at Tapebasi, walk up some steps and across a square and you’re there.)



16 AUGUST 2006, WEDNESDAY, KABUL

The way the people crowded to get off the plane was very developing world. Because of the sudden rush to deplane and due to being bushed, I didn’t realize I left something on the plane until security started making lost-and-found announcements in the terminal. Of all things, how could I have forgotten my bulletproof vest in the overhead? The guards were very nice about it.

In fact every Afghani I came across in the airport was smiling and polite. Very brown eyes, chestnut hair, darkly tanned skin. I remember from my time in Saudi how beautiful the Afghani people are. Every year during Hajj (the pilgrimage to Mecca) there are some pilgrims who slip through the cracks and don’t leave. Many of them become mendicants and many of these beggars happen to be from Afghanistan. The Afghani children resembled gypsies with their wildly beautiful eyes and uncombed crazy hair, but although vociferous they weren’t unruly like gypsy kids. (I saw many gypsies when I lived in Spain.)

The Kabul airport has a hand-painted “border police immigration enterey” sign on the outside of the passport control booth. No questions about my bulletproof vest, they just waved me through.

Doug and I paid a Euro for a kid to tote our boulder-heavy bags on a cart to a taxi who wanted $20 to drive us 15 blocks. Doug held at $10 and we got a lift to Egger’s Military base across from the Afghan National Police.

While our bags were thoroughly checked, soldiers went past us towards the entry, put the nose of their weapons into a concrete covered barrels was a sign that said, “shoot here” and made sure their weapons were unloaded. A blond girl around 25 was in charge of pressing a button to open and close a gate to the entrance. Her face was sunburnt.

For the rest of the day, waiting would be the operative word.






•My first day in Afghanistan.•




17 AUGUST 2006, THURSDAY 2:47 AM local time, KABUL

A friend of mine, Mark Subius, sent me the following tidbit in an email.

In the seventeenth century, the Persian poet Sa'ib-I-Tabrizi (also Mirza Muhammed Ali Saib 1601-1677), upon visiting Kabul, was so overcome with the strangeness and beauty of the city, he wrote a poem and declared that he would never be the same again:

Oh, the beautiful city of Kabul wears a rugged mountain skirt,
And the rose is jealous of its lash-like thorns.

The dust of Kabul's blowing soil smarts lightly in my eyes,
But I love her, for knowledge and love both come from her dust.

I sing bright praises to her colorful tulips,
The beauty of her trees makes me blush.

How sparkling the water flows from Pul-i-Mastaan!
May Allah protect such beauty from the evil eye.

People chose Kabul to Paradise,
For her mountains brought him near to heaven's delights.

The fort's dragon-sprawling walls guard the city well,
Each brick is more precious than the treasure of Shayagan.

Every street in Kabul fascinates the eye.
In the bazaars, Egypt's caravans pass by.

No one can count the beauteous moons on her rooftops,
And hundreds of lovely suns hide behind her walls.

Her morning's laugh is as gay as flowers,
Her dark nights shine like beautiful hair.

Her tuneful nightingales sing with flame in their notes,
Fiery songs like burning leaves, fall from their throats.

I sing to the gardens, Jahanara and Sharbara.
Even the Trumpets of Paradise envy their greenery.


I don’t know if Mark realizes how true this poem rings.

I’ll start with the mountains.

They are beautiful. They do encircle Kabul and look wonderfully accessible. Yesterday, as Doug and I waited at two bases, Camp Eggers and Camp Phoenix, for our press credentials, I had this yearning to walk out the multi-walled concrete fortification and walk towards one of the mountains and just start climbing.

This past June after my friend Sydney got married in Tubac, Arizona, I took a day trip to Sorbino Canyon and, after making sure the coast was clear, got off the very unchallenging trail and started climbing up towards the highest peak in the area. I used to be terrified of heights but after South Africa and a friend I had at the time, that fear dissipated. I still didn’t expect to climb to the top, but I did (nearly). So these mountains around Kabul, which are about the same height as in Sorbino Canyon, would be a pleasure to explore, especially in this hot and dry weather.

In Sorbino Canyon my fear was rattlesnakes. Warnings about them were posted everywhere. Since I’m infamously clumsy and since I like to pick up rocks and since I like to step on shaky stones, I was thinking I’d be a good target for a rattler. At the time I kept on thinking, if I get bit, I’ll use my cell phone and try to give them a landmark to find me. If they asked how the hell I got all the way up to where I was, I’d just say I was following the trail and somehow got lost and ended up on the top of the mountain. Oops.

Anyhoo, I can’t imagine what I’d find in these nearby mountains. Surely things more dangerous than rattlesnakes.

Like the mountains, Kabul itself is a visual orgasm (for lack of a better simile).

It’s like the first time I arrived in Africa: Dakar, Senegal. Our World Airways crew bus was approaching the gates of the airport. The people were tall, thin and handsome, with skin so black it looked almost iridescent, like film on top a can of petroleum or a starling’s feathers. The women didn’t walk down the street; they glided. Their long, wrap-around dresses and robes were an explosion of color, like a flower garden in motion: daisy yellow, shamrock green, clover purple, poppy red, tulip cream, peony pink, marigold orange, morning glory blue.

Taking a taxi to the Camp Eggers then having a military escort bring us here to Camp Phoenix all I wanted to do was jump out and run around on my own. There were literally thousands of things I would’ve loved to photograph. Not hastily out a car window as I did, but rather in a calm, intimate fashion. Some of the things I saw:

• a crippled beggar in the middle of a 4-land road, completely blocking one of the lanes.

• women in blue burkas walking with their children.

• women in black veils with their faces exposed carrying bundles.

• very cute laughing teenage female students with only headscarves on.

• old men with turbans and white beards riding mules.

• little boys with close-cropped hair, wearing white baggy pants and long white tunics, holding hands as they walk past fields of spinach and sunflowers.

• men riding carts pulled by donkeys.

• people sitting in little green spaces, like a large round traffic median for example, just hanging out in their long black, white or brown tunics.

• melon and gourd sellers - watermelons with a big slice cut horizontally out of one side were set on top of stacks of green and yellow melons. The red and green and yellow combination and the shape of the melons, made this one of the things I’d most like to photograph.

• butchers with lamb and cattle flanks hanging from ropes in the open air (probably fresher than the stuff we buy at supermarkets that are oxygenated to look pink).

• goat herders with their ambling dark brown animals on the side of the road.

• lines of roadside shacks selling everything from used tires to stacking chairs to galvanized tubs.

• men pushing wooden carts filled with pistachios or hazelnuts.

• stationary carts that sell apples, tomatoes, greens and bananas.

• and, for all you fans of Khaled Hossein’s book “The Kite Runner,” young boys walking with their kites, some attached to long sticks.

What’s really amazing are the truck drivers here. They paint their trucks in red or yellow then decorate them with ornate designs in bright colors. Truly works of art (My next mission, an exhibition in Chelsea: The trucks of Afghanistan.)



As the sun set last night, the Koh-e Baba Mountains were different shades of plum and violet. Every direction you turned there was beauty. I thought, what a pity.

The people here live in a world where there is no strong government, where the police force is not taken seriously, where there is no traffic control, where you’re on your own. South Africa had some parallels.

Cape Town is a First World city with Third World elements. You can’t have 2,000,000 poor people surround a town of 400,000 people with money and not expect crime, but in South Africa the police force was so overburdened and the government so lackadaisical about crime, that at times it seemed like the Wild West. A sixth sense kicks in – which luckily I’ve always had, at least since living in New York – where you always check your wallet, your windows, your locks, notice who’s around you, know where you’re going. It becomes second nature.

I guess that’s why human nature conquered the world. We adapt. We’re Borgs. We can take any situation that may seem unfathomable one day and make it seem perfectly normal the next.

I’m sure today the fascination of my surroundings will already start wearing off. Burkas, painted trucks and men riding donkeys will become normal.

I am quite aware though that I’m in a war zone.

When Doug and I arrived at Camp Eggers yesterday there was a glitch in our paperwork. You can only get press credential apparently on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays. It was Wednesday.

A First Lieutenant by the name of Jeff Buteau took care of us. He led us to an office where we could hang out until a Major Strong, our contact in Afghanistan, arrived at 4PM. It was 10 AM.

We weren’t allowed to walk around without an escort, so Jeff had to wait for us outside when we went to the bathroom, or when I wanted coffee, or when we were hungry and he took us to the mess tent. He was a very good sport.

Jeff is young and smart. He’s from Halfway, Oregon, a town of 400 people which tries to cash in on its name. (Apparently there was something on PBS about his town in 1999 and some website half.com.) He was a journalism major in Ithaca, New York and was part of the airforce ROTC. He’s only 23 but people salute him as he walks. I admit I don’t know the ranks (yet) and what the rules are for saluting between the military. But it seemed like a real arm workout as we walked down the lane at a military base with Jeff and he would salute some people while others would salute him him.

Meeting Jeff and seeing this bright guy in this fascinating part of the world makes me regret a little bit that I dropped out of the Army ROTC program after two years. I transferred from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln to the University of California at Santa Barbara with them, but when I wanted to study my Junior Year abroad in Italy, they balked. They refused to let me go, so I said vaffanculo and went anyway, having to later repay thousands and thousands of dollars. My view of the military wasn’t too hot in 1986, but now I think it would’ve been a good choice. At least as a start after getting out of college. Oh well. In my next life.

Military life is interesting. The lower rank soldiers are so young and so normal. Putting a face with word is definitely helpful, and humanizing. Things I found of particular interest:

• wherever you go you always carry a weapon.

• all your clothes are brown and olive.

• you have to wear bullet proof vests when you leave the base – they weigh 25 pounds, then when you add the extra gear, helmets and boots, everything can weigh in the neighborhood of 65 pounds – good weigh to lose weight though, especially when the sun is beating down on you. (I won’t mention my feet last night when I peeled off my black socks after wearing boots and jeans in the heat all day.)

• it’s surprising how many are reservists called to duty. It’s interesting to hear the different salaries that reservists and volunteers get. For instance a reservist gets a $1100 housing allotment per month, a volunteer gets none.

• laundry is free– you drop it off and pick it up the next day at a laundry hut.

• the lavs have a row of toilet stalls and two urinals then a door that leads to a room with six sinks then a door that leads to a room with 8 showers on each side. Where does all the water and electricity come from I wonder.

• there are all these acronyms I have to learn: ANA (Afghan National Army), DFAC (Dining Facilities Administration Center), ISAF (International Security Assistance Force), Non-Commissioned Officer (military), IED* (Improvised Exploding Devices – if interested there is a description of what IEDs are below).

• there is a free internet hut but you have to be careful what you write and of course porn is unsurfable. (how do they survive here?)

• there is a coffee shop on base, The Green Bean (no green beans in sight on the tan painted hut). You have to pay for your drinks. They don’t use metal change. Instead you get paper cutouts with the number on it. Other than the Green Bean and PX you don’t have to worry about money – like I said, I should’ve joined the military when I was young.

• the food is good! For dinner last night we had the choice of cauliflower au gratin, Alaska king crab legs, fried scallops, popcorn shrimp, fresh local-type shishkabob, to name a few choices as well as a full salad bar, and I won’t even go into the desserts they had. I asked Jeff if they supplied wheelbarrows when we took our food to go. (By the way, YOU are paying for that food. When we journalists eat at the mess tent, a form is drawn up and the government is billed $26 a pop.)

• I wonder what they do about sex. When Doug and I were later brought to Camp Phoenix and “billeted” in a little hut (all the structures here are made out of simple wood panels) with four bunk beds, the officer who brought us there said that because of sex, there are now courtesy patrols where soldiers make sure no one is having sex. The press hut, where Doug and I are, is apparently a perfect place for such encounters when no journalists are on base. How do they control the urge I wonder? I mean, you’re young, you’ve got raging hormone action going on. (and if you’re gay?)

• I guess the military is all about having structure in your life and learning to be polite and tolerant of others. Actually not bad things to learn early on.

And the military is 24-hours! I like that. Especially today.

I heard some yelling this morning and woke up. I couldn’t get back to sleep. I imagined it was some morning rollcall so looked at my watch. 1:20 AM. Considering Doug and I went to sleep at 9:20, four hours of sleep was enogh for me. I wanted to type out this post for the blog before we leave camp today. And since I’m a slow writer...

In the poem above there is a mention to dust. And I’m thinking that may have something to do with my stuffed nose. I don’t think I’m getting sick. I just think it’s all the dust, the same dust that made the sky so pink and crimson last night.

Also it might be the heat. And the altitude - we’re at 5900 feet. Plus my body is flooded with adrenalin. I’m so excited to be here. It’s like the first time I went to Europe as an exchange student the day after I turned 17.

The danger factor hasn’t soaked in yet.

There are 20,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Kabul is relatively safe although once in a while there are flare-ups. The hot zones are in the East along the Pakistani border and in the South where the poppies are grown and which supply the Taliban with lots of hard cash. Kandajar (Qandajar), where Doug and I are headed to, is the where the big conflict is now.

I saw armed soldiers last night patrolling a road near the Phoenix base. Two soldiers were crouched with rifles poised while another checked the trunk of a car. (I guess it pays use a donkey and a cart sometimes).

Jeff warned Doug and me that if we took a taxi to Bagram that we should wear our bullet proof vests, lock the car doors, never allow the driver to stop, always have our passports handy if we are stopped at a checkpoint so we don’t sit too long.

When we drove out of the gates of Camp Eggers yesterday evening there was a sign written in inkmarker on some barrels: 7 Days w N D (7 days with no deaths).


(*An IED can be almost anything with any type of material and initiator. It is a “homemade” device that is designed to cause death or injury by using explosives alone or in combination with toxic chemicals, biological toxins, or radiological material. IEDs can be produced in varying sizes, functioning methods, containers, and delivery methods. IEDs can utilize commercial or military explosives, homemade explosives, or military ordnance and ordnance components.

They are unique in nature because the IED builder has had to improvise with the materials at hand. Designed to defeat a specific target or type of target, they generally become more difficult to detect and protect against as they become more sophisticated.

IEDs fall into three types of categories:

1 - Package Type IED

2 - Vehicle-Borne IEDs (VBIEDs)

3 - Suicide Bomb IED

Though they can var widely in shape and form, IEDs share a common set of components and consist of the following:

An initiation system or fuse;

Explosive fill;

A detonator;

A power supply for the detonator; and

A container.

Improvised devices are characterized by varying employment techniques. In most of the techniques shown below, an unexploded ordnance (UXO) can easily be engineered to replace a mine or explosive device using several techniques.)


2 Comments:

raquelle dommage said...
Kenny, this is SO interesting and exciting ! vicarious thrills for little moi here. If you go to Kandahar, make sure you go to the Red Cross headquarters and tell them you're a friend of a friend of Philippe who is now in Darfur !
Good luck
xxx
E.
1:25 AM

jillsmove said...
This is a wonderful way for you to stay in contact. Very interesting. Lucky I had a lot of time at work today. :) Miss you. Love your sis.
12:40 PM

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THE MINISTRY OF FINANCE - KABUL to BAGRAM, 17 AUGUST 2006

•Shaviola, the taxi driver you can’t live without, taking Doug and I to Bagram from Kabul.•

THURSDAY

A taxi is necessary to bring Doug and me from Kabul to Bagram. The initial plan was that we would be escorted, as is the general procedure with “embeds.” We had hoped to go with a military convoy that was heading for Bagram but were informed that there was no room at the inn for us.

Hailing one of the beaten-up cabs – the main means of transport for people between cities and villages here – is not a light matter. You have to make sure you’re not fleeced by the cabdriver – like we were when we paid $12 for a taxi for the 15 blocks from the airport to Camp Eggers when we arrived in Kabul. The average wage of an Afghan is between $4 and $6 a DAY. (Forget about Mexico. Let’s move all our manufacturing to Afghanistan).

You also, as an American, as a Westerner, have to worry about being ambushed, robbed, kidnapped or killed. Our contact on Camp Eggers, First Lieutenant Jeff Buteau, a totally pleasant 23-year-old, Airforce ROTC, journalism graduate, hooked us up with a taxi. His translator – which most ranking U.S. officers have the luxury of – called someone he knew to pick Doug and I up outside the gate.

The car – a small, white, 4-door, Toyota – didn’t look as battered as others we’ve seen driving around Kabul. Our driver, Shaviola, spoke some English. His clothes -- a long white tunic shirt over baggy white pants -- needed a good washing. His young face was suffering from acne. He tells me he was 19 when I asked.

•Shaviola’s taxi.•


“How long have you been driving a taxi?” I ask.

“Three years,” he replies.

The asphalt road out of Kabul is one of the worst I’ve seen. And I’ve seen some BAD roads in my life. It ranks right up there with the roadway I drove one evening from Nata to Kasane in Botswana, an 80-mile, straight-to-hell, stretch of pavement. While I drove the pot-holed, cratered, pocked road at 70-miles-per-hour, trying to get a friend and myself to our destination before the sun set and all manner of wild animal began to cross the road, I had to watch for treads from busted tires, camouflaged beasts, and (usually fresh) elephant dung.

At one point, near the Phoenix U.S. military base, the road confusingly narrows from a two-lane in each direction to a one-lane in each direction. That’s because the asphalt of the southbound part of the road has completely been washed out so both directions of traffic use the northbound lane. It’s sheer bedlam in front of a facility that needs as much security as possible with all the Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and terrorists lurking about.

Shaviola joins the course of honking cars that toot their horns every 45 seconds or so to warn the driver in front of them that they are nearing. The driver in front will pull over to the right to let the car pass on the road that is void of lane markers.

The road is full of slow-moving hopelessly overloaded “jingle trucks,” elaborately painted and decorated Afghani and Pakistani semis that bring to mind some tacky Hindu shrine on crack. The trucks are so nicknamed by the military because of the jingling sound the decorative chains that hang from the front and rear bumpers make when the truck is lumbering down the road. If a jingle truck goes too fast, its wheels might roll off. And if it tips over, it might take three days before a crane can be secured to upright them, after the entire contents of the truck bed has already been off-loaded by hand.

I like the Developing World. And thus far I like this War Zone. So I figure, going 40 miles per hour, with Shaviola honking the horn, making stops for gas then cigs, and swerving around washtub-sized potholes is not only an experience, but it’s fun. Never mind the possibility of a buried IED bomb or hidden sniper down the road.

I happily snap away on my Canon as Afghan life passes us by. 8-feet high walls made of mud and straw. Cube-shaped dwellings made out of baked mud-bricks. Boys and men in traditional garb (nicknamed “man jammies” by the U.S. military) riding bikes – the Afghani equivalent of a Beemer. Farmers in fields harvesting wheat BY HAND -- coming from Nebraska and knowing a thing or two about crops, I can’t imagine picking off every groat of wheat from a stalk manually then stuffing it in a big orange bag.

Shaviola honks as he passes broken down jingle trucks – here they use stones instead of neon-orange traffic cones to mark out an area of safety around the vehicle. I’m taking pictures of one of the gravel markers on the side of the road listing people who died during Soviet and later Taliban occupation, while trying to include the hazy purple mountain range in the background when Shaviola slows down.

It’s a roadblock.

I hardly have time to set my camera down on my lap and cover it with a red bandana before rolling down my window as four young bearded men stand in the middle of the road and motion us to stop. One has a rifle. There are several parked vehicles behind them on the shoulder. For the first time in Afghanistan my mouth goes dry and my heart races as thoughts of what to do drain out of my head like a gunshot to a pail of water.

At first Shaviola tries to explain that Doug and I are friends of his and that we’re traveling to Bagram. As you can imagine that argument doesn’t get us very far when the men glance at the 10 pieces of luggage in the backseat.

“Where are you from?” one of them demands. He is shaven except for a thick Cheech & Chong moustache. He wears wire-rimmed glasses and speaks very good English. I can imagine him as a militant college student. He’s obviously the brains of this operation.

I’m about ready to give my stock answer of ‘Canada’ when I think ahead (for once). What if he asks for my passport or I.D.? What if I’m forced to show him my passport – like when you tell a cop you don’t have your license and he says he’ll have to take you in to the station then you miraculously come up with the desired-to-be-seen I.D. (not that this has ever happened to me mind you). What if he finds out I lied? What if he knows I’m an American, an occupying force that he obviously loathes? What’s to prevent this guy from pulling out a pistol from his baggy sleeve and pumping a round of lead in me, then Doug, and maybe even in Shaviola for being an American sympathizer? There’s no one policing these roads, and like the law enforcement in Mexico, the Afghan National Police are too afraid to stop the people who break the law and too corrupt to come to the aid of those who actually need their help.

“We’re American. We’re with the U.S. military covering their operations in Afghanistan,” Doug blurts out from the back seat.

Well, if he was considering killing us and not certain whether he should, he sure as hell is sure now.

“So, who are you?” Doug asks. I start to slide lower in my passenger-side seat.

“We’re with the Ministry of Finance,” the Brains says, showing a roll of pink stickers. “You must pay 200 Afghanis.”

Ministry of Finance? More like the Ministry of Haji and his three sketchy friends trying to get some money to buy some guns or make some roadside bombs. And fuck. 200 Afghanis! I don’t have that kind of money. I’m like here on a shoestring. But how else are we going to get to Bagram? That is, if they don’t shoot us then steal our wallets first.

“How much is 200 Afghanis?” I ask Doug.

“$4,” he says. Oh, that kind of terrorism I can deal with if it’s only going to cost me $2.

During this entire highway robbery I barely speak. I don’t want to say the wrong thing.

While Doug is counting out the money, I offer one of the guys a plum. He gives me a genuine smile and signals no with his hand. Note to self: offer terrorists presents before they think you’re cheap and shoot you.

Not until we’re actually on the road again and out of range of those boys from the Ministry of Finance (as well as out of gunshot range) does my heart return to its normal rhythm. I just looked the Taliban in the the face and survived. I'm still not quite sure why the guy didn't shoot us. It would've been so easy ... and lucrative, with all the equipment we have in our luggage.

I'm feeling a high. The type of sensation you feel when you walk over a perilous mountain precipice and reach the other side safely. It's a giddy feeling. Like, I almost died and I'm so relieved that I'm laughing. Doug, on the other hand, the old military reporter veteran, isn't phased. He's dealt with most scenarios you can imagine in a war zone, and this was just another bump along the road ... almost literally.

Doug relates that the road we’re on was built by the Soviets. The old road between Kabul and Bagram went through villages and closely skirted the mountains and was thus much easier for the muhajadeen to attack.

After Shaviola crests a big hill, huts, ramshackle booths and walking people start to appear.

Bagram.

Man, talk about a one-cow town. The stalls that sell melons, used tires, and galvanized buckets, are much more dilapidated than those in Kabul. As we pass a bustling area, two boys on a bike pedal to catch up with us. “Hey mister,” the boy on the back keeps saying. Both are smiling.

•2 boys on bikes outside gates of Bagram Airfield. Shaviola is having a smoke in the background.•


Doug tells Shaviola to stop.

We’re outside the gate of Bagram Airfield, a large multi-coalition base with 20,000 soldiers and civilians stationed within its 8-mile perimeter of road. While Doug talks to the soldier on duty. I snap pictures of the boys. One asks for money. I say I don’t give money for taking somebody’s picture. I tell him that he’s handsome. I show the boys their images on the camera’s back LCD screen. They smile hugely. That’s something I remember from the townships of South Africa. You’d take a picture of a child or youth and they’d be all stern and serious, then you’d show them their picture and they’d smile broadly. That’s when I’d quickly snap the follow-up picture.

As Doug and Shaviola are unloading the trunk a bevy of children has now surrounded my side of the taxi. I pull my backpack from the passenger side of the vehicle where I’m sitting. I don’t realize that the back strap has caught on the stickshift. The car suddenly rolls forward. Before I have time to react, the taxi rams into the car parked in front of us. Unfortunately, one of boys on the bike, who was buzzing around us, has his back bike wheel pinned between the bumpers. He extracts his bike out and holds his knee.

I’ve seen these little street urchins in action before but I also think, Oh shit. What if he actually did break his leg? What the hell would or could I do?

I walk over to the side where his 1950’s style black-and-white, well-maintained bike leans on its kickstand. He points to his bike and says his bike wheel is bent. I lift the bike and spin the back rim. Looks O.K. to me. I try to not notice the dent in the fender.

Doug is waiting for me. Shaviola is trying to act like nothing has happened as he slides back into his taxi, $30 richer. The soldier guarding the gate is barking at the children, telling them to disperse. I grab my bags and walk away, feeling very much that Bad American.

“What about my bike? You pay for my bike!” the boy yells.

“You’re bike’s fine,” I say, not completely convinced.

“Fuck you man!” the boy yells, giving me the evil eye as I disappear behind the field of concrete “Texas barriers” (so called because the wide-bottomed, narrowed topped barriers resemble the Lone Star state).

A little stunned, I have a chance to sit for a moment and think. I was considering giving the kid $10, but then thought that, like in Africa, if you give one kid money, he or she and the rest of the kids in the area will always expect it. While Doug and I await our escort, I hear other local boys who work on base yelling to each other: “Shut the fuck up, bitch,” “You suck my cock,” “You stupid ass.” These boys know they’re using colloquial dirty language but they don’t know how potent their sentences are. It makes me grin to myself. I think of movies set in Vietnam where the woman says, “Me love you long time.”

As in Kabul, SGT Shawn Cullop, who resembles Mr. Big from Sex and the City, isn’t prepared for us. He does issue us our press credentials and base pass though then brings us to the 219th Support Group of the Indiana National Guard, who Doug will be working with for his stories for one of their state television stations, WishTV.

Not having a clue what the 219th or Doug have planned, my only thought is to get to our “billet,” unpack and take a shower. We’re subsequently informed that some local women and children are waiting for our arrival at the Egyptian Camp Hospital on base. About something called “Operation Care,” some sort of military-sponsored humanitarian organization. I am, as usual, very confused.

Doug and I are quickly introduced to a group of commanders. On is a round-faced, bespectacled guy named Major John Whitecotton. He reminds me of the sheriff in “Smokey’s Run.” He has a wad of chewing tobacco juicing up in the side of one cheek and a small plastic water bottle in the side pocket of his cargo pants, which he pull out intermittently to spurt in another jigger of black tea.

I drive to the Egyptian Hospital with the red-haired, mustachioed man about my age (the real age, not the age I tell people). First Sergeant Nick Clutinger explains that he and his colleagues have been awaiting our arrival and that a group of 200 women and children have been waiting in the 100° heat for over an hour outside the hospital.

I still have no idea what he’s talking about. But when we arrive and I see a line of women, mainly in blue burkas, and lovely, dark-haired children wilting in the heat across the gravel road, I pull out my camera and hustle to take pictures.

Burkas and abayas (the black covering they wear in Saudi) have long interested me. Despite my personal distaste for them, as a confining and misogynous garment, I find them aesthetically beautiful for photos. (James Nachtwey’s group of completely black-veiled mounds with a single open palm against a glycerin-clear, blue sky comes to mind.) To actually be photographing women in blue burkas is a thrill. But I don’t have a moment to savor because everything is rushing by. I take what pictures I can, unsure of what setting to put my new camera on in this intense sunlight.

I step through a doorway and find an enclosed courtyard where soldier volunteers hand out bags of used clothes and shoes, backpacks full of school supplies, toys, candy and water. All items were donated, mostly by U.S. schools, religious organizations, families and businesses.

You can’t see the facial expressions of most of the women, but I can sense their joy. The children, some walking in calloused bare feet, are more awestruck than happy about their gifts. This process of getting 200 woman and children through the donation line is completed in less than 10 minutes.

I am then ushered into the hospital tents and introduced to the Egyptian Camp Head Doctor, Colonel Moataz Attila, a very distinguished man with concomitant thick gray moustache. I didn’t have time to take a shower that morning or put in my contacts. My eyes can’t focus the camera very well but I act like I know what I’m doing.

I’m lead into the women’s in-patient ward. Like the men’s ward, it had 10 beds. I’ve just had my first interaction with Afghan “local nationals” now I’m confronted for the first time with war casualties. The face of a thin, elderly woman is bandaged-up and she has a green tube coming out of one nostril. She was severely injured by shrapnel when a Taliban-planted bomb exploded as she opened the door to her house. Her husband, lying in the next room, was shot twice in the leg in the ensuing ambush. The couple was targeted because of their purported sympathies with U.S. troops.

Nick Clutinger, the First Sergeant with red hair and light blue eyes, delivers book bags filled with donated items to the woman and talks to her for a while through an interpreter who speaks Dari and Pashto, the principal languages here. Nick proceeds to talk to every patient, showing a special tenderness towards the children. He will become my attaché and personal guide to Bagram.

Later Doug and I are taken to “Tower 6,” a security station on the far end of the base. The views are great. An Army Engineer (Deputy Director of Public Works), David Novy, points out that there’s a lot of trash in the field downwind from huge railway car-sized boxburners, but since the trash is on a landmine field that can’t collect it. After the tower he shows us “unexploded ordnance” laying around and points out “mine lines” which were laid out by the Russians in vehicles then marked with concrete fence posts.

By the time my head hits my rolled-up GAP sweatshirt (we’re given beds here but no sheets or pillows) my mind is at its outer limits of comprehension. I just saw more in one afternoon than I see in two weeks. And this is only my first day out of Kabul.


dawn said...
Amazing story. Astonishing pics. Love the action shots!
Be safe, my friend.
dawn
10:12 AM

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KILLER CHICKENS - BAGRAM AIRFIELD, 17 AUGUST 2006

•Women heading to Operation care to receive their donations.•

•A mother and her child after receiving donations from Operation Care.•

Killer Chickens: Forging Good Relations with Local Afghanis, One Operation Care Package at a Time
By Ken Paprocki, Bagram Airfield, Parwan Province, Afghanistan, 17 August 2006, Thursday

Chickens, you could say, are the reason 10-year-old Zotola Adreem lies in a frail metal bed at the Egyptian Camp Hospital at Bagram Airfield here in Afghanistan. Six weeks ago at around five in the afternoon Zotola was performing his daily chore of collecting the chickens in the yard and bringing them inside the house for the night. Pink feet were still clawing in the dust of the yard when the first rocket struck.

•Zotola coloring in his Barbie coloring book.•

•What a difference a smile can make. 10-year-old Zotola at the Egyptian Camp Hospital.•


The bones in Zotola’s left leg were instantly shattered when molten-hot shrapnel exploded from the impact only meters away. Though severely injured, Zotola’s only thought was to run away. Daud, Zotola’s eldest brother, who was standing near the front door at the time, rushed out of the ten-room mud and straw house, to help Zotola. That’s when the second rocket struck. Daud and two cousins who were also in the yard were all killed.

Azizran, Zotola’s father, who estimates his age to be between 25 and 30, was still working in his melon field when a third and fourth rocket crashed into his small plot of farmland. He ran to Zotola, now close to shock due to profuse bleeding, and from his small village of Oruzgan Erehut drove to the nearby U.S. military Forward Operating Base of Orzgandi to seek help. Medics there stabilized Zotola then flew him to Bagram Airfield, the largest military base in Afghanistan which is 27 miles north of Kabul; a two-day drive from Oruzgan Erehut.

Bagram is a dry and dusty town of huts, vendor carts and ramshackle stalls surrounded by high, jagged-toothed, slate and tan mountains. The base is the biggest thing they have. At Bagram Airfield there are two main medical facilities. One medical facility is run by the Egyptians, the other by the Koreans.

It was at the Egyptian Camp Hospital, where Zotola was brought due to the severity of his injuries, that First Sergeant Nick Clutinger came to know Zotola and his father. Azizran never left his son’s side.

•10-year-old Cobro Gulam shades herself from the beating rays of the sun while waiting with mothers and other children for donated clothes, toys, backpacks and school supplies at Bagram Airfield. These women and children waited quietly in 95° heat for over two hours to receive the donations from Operation Care, a military-sponsored humanitarian organization.•


Clutinger, along with two other colleagues, only days earlier had initiated an all-volunteer, military-sponsored, humanitarian assistance program named “Operation Care.” The scope of Operation Care is simple: dispense donated supplies, such as clothes, shoes, school supplies and medicine to the local population.

Often, due to lack of manpower and time, these donations that come from families, schools, churches and companies in the U.S., sit in large metal shipping and storage containers, known locally here as “Comex” containers, and languish. It was because of one such Comex container that Operation Care came into being.

This past May, Clutinger, who lives on a farm near Taswell (population 30), Indiana, and is a reservist in the Indiana National Guard, was deep in the throes of what he calls the “called-to-duty blues.” “It’s a kind of depression most soldiers get 70 to 90 days after deployment,” Clutinger explains. “I’ve been in the military for 25 years and married for 22, and this was the first time I’d ever been away from my wife and three girls for more than 20 days,” he continues, his fiercely blue eyes glancing at a family picture taped above his desk.

Clutinger’s personal void was filled one day in early June of this year when he stumbled upon a 40-foot Comex container filled with medical supplies. After consulting with colleagues, Clutinger approached the Egyptian Camp Hospital and asked if they could use and distribute the medical supplies at their facility. The Egyptians jumped at the opportunity to help the local Afghani population.

•3 1/2 year-old Amrula is in the Egyptian Camp Hospital because his lower limbs are swollen with blood due to an infection.•

•Weas Gul with his 3 1/2-year-old son Amrula. This guy looks like he stepped right out of a page from the Bible. If they make "The Last Temptation of Christ, Part II", he's available as a stand-in.•


From this initial seed of charity grew Operation Care.

At the end of June Operation Care had its first donation hand-out at Egyptian Camp Hospital. Now, once or twice a week, it sets up distribution tables in a walled-off courtyard and the crew, currently numbering 90 army, Airforce, marines and navy volunteers, distribute stuffed animals; backpacks filled with school supplies, games and toys; bags of clothes and shoes; as well as water and candy to more than 400 women and children.

“At first we let everybody in the courtyard at the same time but that was sheer chaos,” Clutinger chuckles, the ends of his red mustache arching upwards. “Now we only let the women come with their children in groups of three to five.” Clutinger grabs a pair of boots on the floor and adds, “When you take into consideration that a pair of shoes can cost a few days’, if not a week’s, income in a country where the average salary is $4 to $6 a day, you can see why order was necessary.”

The women, who arrive in taxis and buses from Kabul and the 100-plus villages that lie in the surrounding Parwan and Kapisa Provinces, do not know which day Operation Care will be present when they arrive at the Egyptian Camp Hospital seeking medical attention for them and their children.

•Joe, AKA Mosold from Barchachee Village at the Egyptian Camp Hospital was writing block letters of the English Alphabet when I came across him. I love this kid's smile and intelligent eyes. I always ask myself what will happen to these kids? How is there homelife? Will they make it?•


“Operation Care takes place on different days in order to ensure the women don’t come to the hospital just to receive donations,” Clutinger explains. On the chosen distribution day Operation Care notifies the Egyptians. The Egyptian Camp Hospital, which sees men and women on alternating days of the week, taking Friday off, the Muslim holy day, in turn announces their pending arrival to the patients. “Once they’re all in the wire, we head to the hospital,” Clutinger explains in military jargon, referring to all the patients being on base.

When Operation Care arrives a line will have already formed in a waiting area. Having perfected the donation process Operation Care can currently distribute donations to 400 or more individuals in 15 minutes.

•I found this young girl absolutely beautiful. She looked like English would come spilling out of her mouth. The special thing about his photo is her mother whose face is revealed from her burka, a real rarity in Afghanistan.•

•This little girl looks like the peewee version of a writer friend of mine in New York by the name of Anna Marrian,•


While part of the Operation Care team breaks down the tables in the courtyard, Clutinger and a handful of volunteers visit patients in the hospital and distribute Operation Care packages. Clutinger, an inveterate people person looks forward to this part.

Besides having five clinics – including dental, eye, and pediatrician tents, as well as a pharmacy, intensive care unit, and two operating rooms – the Egyptian Camp Hospital has three in-patient wards: one for women, one for men and one for American-referred patients.

Clutinger makes a point to talk to every patient after he gives them their package. He always asks, “No matees?” (What’s your name?). He also counts to 10 in Pashto and Dari, a foolproof way to get kids to giggle.

On one stultifyingly hot mid-August day Clutinger gives Zotola a gift.

A thin boy with large, intelligent chestnut eyes, Zotola smiles broadly when Clutinger hands him a new book bag filled with goodies. His eyes bewitched, Zotola sifts through the bag that sits on his left leg, which is held together by over two dozen metal pins.

Zotola occupies one of the ten beds in the ward for males. The air-conditioning in this in-patient tent does little more than circulate the dust in the sweltering heat. Zotola has now been in the hospital over six weeks and has the distinction of being one of the first recipients of Operation Care’s donations. Recovery has been slow. His 75-pound body has been resistant to some of the medication.

“From the day he arrived, he has never cried or complained,” says Captain Kareem Sayed Emam Mohamed Abou-Senna, one of the 63 Egyptians that attend to the medical needs of the local populace.

Likewise, 15-year-old Nazeema who, as many Afghanis, uses only one name, “did not make as much as a whimper,” according to Chief Medic, Moataz Attila, when his team removed a lypoma growth from her eye. A congenital defect, lypoma can lead to blindness if left untreated.

•I find picture of Nazeema poignant.•

•First Sergeant Nick Clutinger, called to active duty in February of this year with the Indiana National Guard, delivers an Operation Care package to 15-year-old Nazeema, an in-patient at the Egyptian Hospital on Bagram Airfield. One of 11 children, her father brought her up from Kabul to have surgery on her eye that would otherwise have led to blindness.•

•Zoldi AKA Jack, age 14, a patient at the Egyptian Camp Hospital gives the sign for finished.•Nazeema sits quietly on her bed in the woman’s ward holding her stuffed pink poodle, a previous Operation Care donation. On the left of her is a middle-aged woman who has a green tube running from one nostril and is heavily bandaged after a planted bomb exploded in her face. To Nazeema’s right is an ancient, withered woman whose bony arms throws a blanket on top her head when she sees visitors approaching.•


The unbandaged eye of Nazeema, the fourth of 11 children, lights up as Clutinger passes her a book bag with the words “We can learn together” under the green, red and black Afghani flag on the front. For an Afghani child this is quite a gift. Burlap potato sacks are often used as book bags here.

Speaking Dari with her through his interpreter Zach Clutinger discovers that she’s in Fifth Grade. Although a U.S. student of the same age would already be in Ninth Grade, it is no small feat that Nazeema has made it this far. The resurgence of the Taliban has led the burning of hundreds of schools that teach girls across Afghanistan.

“As soon as we hear a school has been burnt down or rocketed, we try to find desks and dispatch them along with instructional supplies to the school,” Clutinger explains.

•A smiling Nazeema at the Egyptian Camp Hospital•

• Nazeema and her pink poodle.•


This has been the worst year of violence and casualties since U.S. troops arrived here in 2002. The Taliban has regrouped and, funded by Iran as well as receiving an influx of extremists from neighboring countries, has been especially aggressive the past few months.

For Clutinger, Operation Care is an important weapon against the insurgents because it shows the local nationals that the Coalition Forces care. Clutinger is convinced that when his tour of duty ends next February his successors will not only keep Operation Care going but will make it grow. Currently there are plans to expand distributions to neighboring villages.

Despite fully embracing his new role as the Operation Care chieftain, Clutinger looks longingly forward to his mid-tour, two-week leave back in Indiana. His departure date is September 11th.

•Soldier volunteers of Operation Care at Bagram Airfield visit a patient at the Egyptian Field Hospital to deliver a care package. The woman was severely injured by shrapnel when a Taliban-planted bomb exploded as she opened the door to her house. (Her husband, lying in the next room, was shot twice in the leg in the ambush. The couple was targeted because of their sympathies with U.S. troops.)•



Before departing the hospital, Azizran, the father of Zotola is asked where the rockets that injured his son came from.

“They came from Orzgundi,” he says, referring to the U.S. military base that, like many FOBs (Forward Operating Bases), lobs rockets intermittently during the day to keep terrorists on their toes. “But they might’ve also been from the Taliban,” Azizran prudently adds, noticing the military personnel gathered around him and his son.

Is he angry? “Yes, of course,” he says. The eldest of his five children and two nephews are dead, and his injured son may never be able to run again, he explains.

Who does he blame? He examines the calluses in his palms and remains silent.

•Zotola coloring his Barbie coloring book as a soldier holds a selection of crayons for him.•


As for Zotola, he simply colors in his new Barbie coloring book, the only one left when his book bag was stuffed. Asked what grade he’s in his smile temporarily fades. “Grade two,” he says, more as an apology than an answer. “We have no instructors to teach us and we aren’t very motivated to go to school,” he adds quickly in his native Pashto.

Questioned what he’d like to be when he grows up, he doesn’t hesitate. “Maldan,” he says. That means “teacher” in English.

•I love this picture of two sisters trying to make their little sister look at the camera outside the Operation Care donation center.•

•You got to love the colored baseball cap of this little boy paired with his 'man jammies' (local garb).•

•Jeremiah G Kuehl, SGT, 24, lets in a woman to Operation Care. My question is: How can she tell where she’s going?•

•Outside Operation Care at Bagram.•

•An elderly gentleman in the in-patient clinic at the Egyptian Camp Hospital at Bagram.•

•Waiting for his turn at Operation Care among all the chaos.•

An Operation Care soldier voluteer has a handful of candy ready for the next child to approach her.•

•Awaiting Afghani women and children, Senior Airman Carla Cruz Franicos grasps a handful of candy as “Major Monkey,” the mascot for Operation Care, a military-sponsored humanitarian organization, looks on. Major Monkey became the mascot because "his eyes were too big to give away," according to First Sergeant Nick Clutinger the person in charge of spearheading Operation Care.•

•Dolls waiting to be donated by Operation Care.•

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HABIB AND MAYA THE CAMEL - BAGRAM AIRFIELD, 18 AUGUST 2006




Habib and Maya the Camel: The Weekly Bagram Airfield Bazaar
By Ken Paprocki, Bagram Airfield, Parwan Province, Afghanistan, 18 August 2006, Friday

A word to the wise. If you ever walk into the Friday Bazaar at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, do NOT take pictures of Maya the camel. If Habib the owner doesn’t get you, the cantankerous, people-hating camel will.

On this seering hot day in mid-August, Maya’s single oil-drum-sized hump is covered with a rich blue velvet cape covered with gold-flowers. The camel is how Habib generates money. While Maya stands in place staring blankly in front of her, Habib sits nearby on a high wooden stool, his eyes continually darting around, on the look out for any camera lens foolish enough to be directed towards his camel. Next to a pile of camel droppings is a white-painted wooden placard where Habib has meticulously broke down the prices for having pictures taken with his camel. Written in black inkmarker the placard says:

PICTURE OF CAMEL $2.00

PICTURE WITH CAMEL $3.00

PICTURE ON CAMEL $4.00

VIDEO OF CAMEL $6.00

Written in smaller letters underneath the price list is an asterisk: *PICTURES ARE FINAL. PRICES ARE PER PICTURE!

Obviously, Habib is a hard-nosed business man. But here competition is fierce. Organized by the Coalition Forces at Bagram Airfield over three years ago, the weekly bazaar is a way to bring hard currency into the local economy while providing a means for military personnel to shop for local goods which otherwise would be impossible for most. The bazaar has also vastly improved relations between locals and Coalition Forces.





While most of the vendors travel from Kabul on Thursday night to line up for the 90 slots inside the base on a field, some are local. Each vendor must select a village in the Parwan Province around Bagram to represent and pay a $180 fee to their community bank in order to have the opportunity to sell merchandise on the base. The village will then use the money for community improvements such as building or repaving roads, or school funding. Once the vendor is allowed through the gate at 7 AM, he then has until 3 PM to recoup his 9000 Afghanis. It is hard to imagine a merchant who leaves without making a hefty profit.



Popular items among soldiers are antique guns and pistols, fine gemstones, brass and silver bracelets and necklaces, bootlegged DVDs, leather and fur coats, Persian and fur rugs, marble vases and cups, watches, former Afghan and Saddam Husein banknotes, and local scorpions and the renown camel spider encased in plastic and used for paper weights.

One fur salesman explains that he sells coats and rugs made out of rabbit, wolf, chinchilla, fox, mink, sheep and goat. A heavy, hand-made, stylish leather or suede coat lined with fur will set you back $40. Want it custom-made? No problem. The vendor will measure you and bring the tailor-fitted coat with him the following week. The cost: $60. (Be forewarned: the zippers are reversed here.)

A coat may be the perfect item for unprepared civilian or military personnel in this part of Afghanistan. It may be hot now, but at almost 6000 feet elevation, cooler temperatures are not far away.





Another popular item among bazaar-goers is lapis lazuli, a cobalt blue stone that has flecks of silver in it. Though the merchants will claim that lapis lazuli only comes from Afghanistan, the truth is that there are other parts of the world that mine the azure rock. It is true, however, that the finest lapis in the world comes from the Badakshan area of Afghanistan. The mines there may be among the oldest continually worked in the world. It boggles the mind to imagine these same mines that operate today supplied lapis to the pharaohs.

To make things as easy as possible for military personnel a gigantic green truck parks near the bazaar gate, opens up its back and turns into a U.S. post office, complete with two postal-trained soldiers.




Are there items you can’t mail home? “A gun newer than 1898 is a no go,” says Sgt. Brian Venerick of New Jersey who works in the postal truck. “Antique guns must be accompanied by three affidavit forms from customs.” Other things that can’t be mailed: weapons, dirt, sand, dead animals (unless encased in plastic), protective masks, empty weapon magazines (like 50 cal rounds), open shells from bullets, feline fur coats (distinguished by stripes or spots), camel spiders. Hooka-pipes can be mailed as long as they don’t have any residue in them.

Customs forms are readily available near the postal truck and there is a bevy of military bazaar organizers to answer questions. If a soldier needs money there’s a makeshift bank trailer available.

•Abdul Javeel shows off a pair of metal-mesh panties for that woman who knows how to turn her man on when the burka comes off.•



Soldiers must barter for their desired goods, but unlike the world “outside the wire,” the merchants here are not allowed to chase after potential clients.

Hovering over a case of watches, Spc. Stephanie Curry and Spc. Jasmine Buie, both from California, are asked what they like about the bazaar. “I like the entertainment value of bartering and looking around,” says Curry, holding a plastic bag full of $2 and $3 DVDs.



“I enjoy finding vintage pieces of jewelry,” Buie says, adding that you have to be able to tell the difference between counterfeit and authentic items.

Besides counterfeits the bazaar has other problems.




Outside the gate on this particular morning, two vendors got into a shouting match as they both jockied to get towards the front of the line so that they might have the choicest spot on the military grounds to sell their wares. When they came to fisticuffs both were ejected from the day’s bazaar. That means each is out $180 plus the expenses they incurred to get to Bagram and return to their homes.

Military guardians must be constantly vigilant to make sure nothing pornographic is sold at the bazaar in this devout Islam country.

Some vendors, loaded with cash, are mugged after they leave the military compound by thieves who lie in wait.

•Just another vendor doing what salesmen have been doing since the beginning of time: trying to sell you a piece of shit -- in this case a carved wooden eagle -- that you have absolutely no need of in your house, or mud hut.•



It is corruption, however, that may be the worst problem. Recently it was discovered that some forces of the Afghan National Police (ANP) were hitting up vendors for $100 kickbacks. Confronting these forces is a delicate business for military officials. If the police force becomes sufficiently insulted or angered, it can easily find ways to get revenge. Landmines and Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) are a few examples.

•These Me bricks are being laid by locals near the bazaar grounds to make a prayer floor where merchants can pray during the day.•



At the end of the day Bazaar guardians collect “yak dollars.” A yak dollar is the $1 each vendor pays into a pool to be divvied up between a group of 11 and 12-year-olds who come in and clean up the area after the merchants depart.

While the vendors at the bazaar begin breaking down their stands, Habib quietly unties Maya, closes his marquis and hangs it on the camel’s side, then disappears around a corner. Where Habib and the camel live, how Maya has avoided landmines all these years and what Habib does during the rest of the week are all unknown. Only Maya knows the full story.




•Like father, like son.•



•A traditional hat with the label "Afghan's Proud Millitant."•



•A tarp from the UN's refugee agency, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), being used as a covering to sell marble crap at the bazaar.•



•A must-have from Afghanistan, paper-weight tschokas with scorpions encased in plastic,•



•I was impressed when I rant into this big brawny military guy who knew the ins and outs of buying an Afghan carpet - how many knots per inch, whether the rib on the side was visible, how much silk was woven in, what type of dyes were used.•



•A soldier examines a star sapphire one of the more popular gem stones at the bazaar.•



•Hats for sale.•



•A soldier at the mobile Post Office.•

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WHITE'S GOOD. RED'S BAD - BAGRAM AIRFIELD, 19 AUGUST 2006

•Major Maciek Grajper (left) and First Sergeant Nick Clutinger peer into a Soviet bunker looking at an old unexploded and unstable mortar rocket. Clutinger and Sergeant Tom Clark, to his right, are inspecting a recently demined field at Bagram Airfield, 27 miles north of Kabul. Major Grajper, 28 is head of the Engineer Corps Division of the Polish Task Force and in charge of demining operations at Bagram Airfield. Grajper’s battalion of 36 men is divided up into groups of five to six men, where each group is in charge of demining different sections on and around the base. The airfield, built in 1976, was heavily mined by the Soviets. Some “mine lines” were marked by concrete posts, but many landmined areas were left unmarked. At a rate of a few dozen square meters a day, it may take years before the entire airfield is completely demined.•


White’s good. Red’s bad. -- Demining Bagram Airfield
By Ken Paprocki, Bagram Airfield, Parwan Province, Afghanistan, 19 August 2006, Saturday

Few, if any, would envy Major Maciek Grajper of the Polish Engineers Task Force when he starts work at five in the morning. By the time he reaches a scrubby field with tan dust as fine as talcum, he has already donned a 25-pound flak jacket, metal helmet and steel-toed boots. Soon after entering the field, before the mid-August sun’s rays begin to bake everything in hundred-plus degree heat, he walks along rows of wooden stakes and rocks. Some are painted white and some red. For those who don’t want to have a foot or leg or blown off, or worse, it’s best not to step over any row markers painted in red. Inside the red zone are landmines.

Some portions of this particular field at Bagram Airfield here in Afghanistan, 27 miles north of Kabul, are so thickly laden with landmines that in an hour of searching with a metal detector it is possible to find 20 or more.


•Major Maciek Grajper, 28, head of the Engineer Corps Division of the Polish Task Force, is in charge of demining operations at Bagram Airfield.•



Major Grajper, age 28, and 36 fellow Poles were selected by the Coalition authorities to sweep the base clear of landmines. (There’s probably a joke somewhere about why the Polish of all nationalities received this commission, just as there’s probable a joke somewhere in Bagram about the group of Polish carpenters who built the new access road at the base airport. True story.)

Since February this Polish Engineering Brigade has been finding and destroying hundred of landmines originally laid down by the Soviets and later shuffled around by the Taliban.

Before coalition forces started removing landmines in the spring of 2003, 80 to 100 Afghanis were wounded or killed every month by landmines or unexploded live ordnance. That figure has now been cut in half.



•Standing in front of a newly demined sector is Major Maciek Grajper, 28, head of the Engineer Corps Division of the Polish Task Force. He is in charge of demining operations at Bagram Airfield.•





The town of Bagram and the military base there are just two of hundreds of sites in Afghanistan that are heavily landmined. “Most bases are going green,” military brass will tell outsiders. This means that mines within and around military bases have been “safed,” i.e. detonated. Yet you will still be cautioned not to step off paved surfaces on the base if you can avoid it.

Maps of Bagram Airfield used by the Polish Engineering Brigade show large swaths of green where landmines have been cleared. The map is comprised of substantial yellow zones where landmine clearings are in various stages of completion. But the red zones of known and suspected landmine fields are substantial.

The number of square meters cleared of landmines in a day seems small compared to the task ahead. Major Grajper and his crew of five working from five to eleven in the morning, with a minimum distance of safety distance of 30 meters (90 feet) between them, can each clear up to four meters a day.

When you consider that the field where Major Grajper and his group are working was an intense battle zone between the Soviets and the muhajadeen the small daily square-meter number may seem more reasonable. Besides tens of thousands of metal shrapnel bits, each of which must be carefully marked, examined, sifted through and removed, there are also human bone shards, military effects – such as metal dinner plates, vodka bottles, even military coats – and even a destroyed Soviet tank and an armored carrier vehicle littering the few acres of land.

Furthermore, besides personnel landmines, the straw-dry earth in this field is teaming with T62 anti-tank landmines, some of which were rigged by the Taliban to be triggered by considerably less pressure than the usual 400 pounds. Other dangers to contend with are ammunitions dumps, rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), mortar rounds and, recently discovered by a K-9 military German Shepherd, an unexploded unstable 525-pound air-to-land mortar. The monstrous unexploded World War II type bomb was found six feet underground. This seems as deep as the bottom of well when you consider that most anti-personnel landmines are buried around 15 centimeters (six inches) under the surface.

•A Polish minesweeper, part of the Engineer Corps Division of the Polish Task Force, finds a mine at Bagram Airfield.•




The mine-sniffing dogs that found the monster-sized bomb, while handy, have considerable limitations. The heat wears them out quickly. The dust dulls their sense of smell. And some dogs even lose their lives in the line of duty. Last month, one mine-sniffing dog lost her life after setting her paw on the primer – the top -- of an anti-tank landmine. “There wasn’t even pink mist in this case,” an American overseer remarked.

While the Polish Engineering Brigade prefer to walk their fields, using handheld metal detectors to sweep the ground, there is machinery available: a remote-controlled “mutual mine detector.” The detector scoops up the top 12 inches of contaminated soil then deposits it in a berm. The problem with this “mechanical reduction” is the resulting berm. As with any tall pile of landmined dirt, there is the danger that weapons can wash out of it if not sifted soon afterwards. Exposed ammunition is something the military tries to avoid at all costs.

Among the countless wounds the Soviet occupation left in Afghanistan, landmines are arguably the most insidious. The Soviets were nothing if thorough in their mining. They had machines to lay mines and create “mine lines” which were marked by concrete posts. Some mine lines however were not marked. In all, it is believed that 11 million land mines are buried in the Afghani soil, a country the smaller than the state of Texas (251825 square miles).

•An old unexploded and unstable mortar rocket sits tenuously on the rung of steps that lead to a former Soviet bunker on Bagram Airfield.•




Children are the biggest victims of landmines. Many children, sent to the fields by their parents to collect scrap metal that can later be sold, are often maimed by landmines. Many fingers, limbs and lives have been lost by curious children picking up colorful or unusual-looking landmines. 15 pounds of pressure is all that is needed to detonate most anti-personnel landmines. Besides the toy-looking butterfly landmine, the worst mines are the blue, yellow and red plastic ones that look like toys. These Soviet mines, called Apers, even have an innocuous nickname, Bird Mines, on account of their bright and happy colored plastic hull. But once the mines are activated after a released chemical hits the air, they will explode at the slightest touch.

Sergeant Tom Clark, a reservist of the Indiana National Guard called-up to duty, vividly recalls his first exposure to a landmine in Afghanistan. “One morning an 11-year-old girl covered in blood was hurried through the front gate at Bagram,” he says, his voice faltering a little. “She had been playing a field when her 6-year-old sister picked up something blue – a Russian cluster bomblet, a sinisterly lethal weapon that sends out pieces or small, sharp, piercing metal when it explodes. The 6-year-old followed closely behind her big sister. Her hand was full of shrapnel. She lost two fingers, but thankfully, neither lost their sight.”




•First Sergeant Nick Clutinger holds an unexploded mortar in a field that is being demined at Bagram Airfield.•




Major Grajper recalls one day seeing a group of boys pushing a little one towards a row of exposed mines. The small boy struggled to get away but the older ones kept pushing him towards the row of mines. Luckily for the small boy, this highest form of bullying did not lead to any injuries.

A new generation of “safer” landmines is on the horizon. The U.S. military is looking into landmines that explode automatically six months after being installed. And new smart mines, dropped from planes, send out wires to keep people away and then explode automatically 24 hours later. Whether these new landmines will decrease the number of casualties remains to be seen.

The problem of old landmines and unexploded ordnance are issues Afghanistan will have to deal with for decades to come. “I worked with garbage men when I was in Jalalabad, and often I’d see grenades and amo inside the trucks,” Sergeant Clark says. “And I tell you, those locals went though everything those trucks dumped off. Every day was an accident waiting to happen.”


•A pair of Polish minesweepers take a break from demining Bagram Airfield, 27 miles north of Kabul. The two are part of the Engineer Corps Division of the Polish Task Force in charge of demining operations.•




So the obvious question is what are the risks? “A Polish minesweeper lost his leg in 2003,” Major Maciek says dismissively, “but since then, nothing has happened.”

And what does major Maciek’s wife think about his job? “She’s not happy,” he admits. Especially now that he has a 3-year-old daughter. But clearing mines earns him $500 a month, where in Poland his monthly salary as an engineer is just surpasses $200. Reason enough to make a few people in Poland envious of major Maciek’s job. Perhaps.

(And what do I think about landmines after tramping around in a minefield for an afternoon? Well, I don’t pick up or kick things I see on the ground in Afghanistan. I try to stay on the beaten path. And I certainly go jogging around the outside wall of the base.)




•Major Maciek Grajper, 28, head of the Engineer Corps Division of the Polish Task Force, stands in front of a destroyed Soviet tank at Bagram Airfield.•






•A destroyed Soviet vehicle sits in the middle of a mine field at Bagram Airfield, 27 miles north of Kabul. The site of an intense battle between the Soviets and Afghans, the bed of this vehicle was taken out by landmine blast. The Engineer Corps Division of the Polish Task Force is in charge of demining the base.•

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GAY POLICE REGIME & COOCHIES - BAGRAM AIRFIELD, 21 AUGUST 2006



GAY POLICE REGIME & COOCHIES
BAGRAM, 21 AUGUST 2006, MONDAY

Doug and I were being thrown that military alphabet-soup of acronyms and armed forces jargon at an early morning briefing at Bagram Airfield. “Be on the look out for SBIDs and VBIDs,” (Suicide-Borne IEDS (manned), VBID Vehicle-born IEDs (unmanned). “Be aware that we have Category 5, Black Heat Status. You’ll need to drink at least one bottle of water every hour.” “We’ve got to work out the long gun situation.” Militaryese is actually its own language. It takes a lot of work to understand it but I just concentrate on the facts: A group of 12, including Doug and me are going to visit some governor in a village in the Parwan province to discuss local improvements.

We’re stepping into the Humvees when Major Whitecotton puts one of his black-gloved hands to his 1970s-sized headphones. “Wha-at?” I hear him say, followed by a spurt of tobacco juice in his plastic bottle spittoon.

More new jargon: “Stand down, stand down,” Whitecotton yells, obviously p.o’ed (how’s that for an acronym?). “Mission scrubbed per Tiger 6. I repeat, mission scrubbed, by order of Colonel Slaughter on behalf of SAID.” Everybody groans as they pull off their Kevlar helmets and flak jackets.

While Doug and I are thinking what we’ll do today in lieu of this convoy, we hear a guy say, “Hell, I’ll take ‘em to the range.” I turn around and see Snezení velcroed to the guy’s shirt.

I’ve heard about “The Range.” Doug was supposed to go there a few days ago, but because of an IED (Improvised Exploding Device) near the base it was cancelled. I’m not real keen on going to the Range. I picture some rinky-dink field with a bunch of shredded and shot-up paper targets with black figures. But since I don’t have anything better to do, I acquiesce.

Donny Snezení, an ethnic Czech from a small long-horned cowtown in Texas (Rosenburg, 40 miles southwest of Houston) thinks quick and talks quicker. Doug and I follow him as he walks over to his iron-clad silver pick-up truck with a colleague. We hop into the back.

“Damn wind,” Snezení complains as he rolls up his window. “It’s just starting to blow now. It’ll keep on blowing for the next 90 days non-stop. It drives you crazy.”

I pull out my digital Canon. “That’s a nice camera you got there,” Snezení remarks, his brown-green eyes looking at me in the rearview mirror. “I’ve seen the base’s high-end camera lens. From what I know of it, it can hit a girl’s freckle on the crack of her ass at about 1000 meters.”

As we pull out of the front gate, Snezení points out a line of concrete posts that mark the mine lines the Soviets laid down. A bunch of kids are hanging out nearby, hoping to get something from a passing a soldier or vehicle. “Those kids go crazy for a pen,” Snezení says. “They’ll rush up to the razor-wire and fight over one and won’t even get cut. This is the only country I’ve ever seen where a kid will walk over a landmine to get a pen.” [Note: Wouldn’t it be a great PR campaign if a pen company, like Bic, donated a 100,000 or so pens to the children of Afghanistan?]

Snezení pauses to take a sip of his Mountain Dew. “Locals tell me, ‘I know where the mines are, I know where the mines are,’ then you see them the next day with their foot blown off.”

Doug and I are jostled around in the back as Snezení takes a hard left turn then jumps up onto the blacktop.

“Don’t get freaked out by my driving,” Snezení says over his right shoulder as he rampages down the cratered Bagram highway in his armored pick-up. “I know where the holes are. The command drive like they’re in some neighborhood in the States. I’d rather be thrown around than blown up.”

“I know every hole in this road,” Snezení sniffs. “I know when they fill the potholes. They wait a couple days for you to get used to the dirt – they don’t use asphalt here to fill them in -- then one night they plant an IED inside the pothole and wait for your car to get blown up all to hell.”

“What about those gravel piles next to the road?” I ask. “Are there IEDs in them?”

“They could put a bomb in gravel, but it would be harder to set off and the explosion would be less. They like dirt. And if you do hit an IED your chances of avoiding injury are better if it blows on the side of you rather than underneath,” Snezení says as he barrels past a huffing jingle truck.

The Taliban. The Muslim Extremists. The Insurgents. The Bad Guys. The Evil Empire. Whatever you want to call them, have become more aggressive in the past months. I’ve heard more than once that the Taliban is trying to incur as much damage as possible on the occupying forces before the autumn. Once the cold of winter sets in they hibernate in Southern Pakistan until the warm winds of spring return. “Snow leaves tracks,” Snezení reminds us.

“We’re stirring the bushes pretty hard,” Snezení remarks regarding the increase in Taliban activity. “We’re seeing stuff this year we’ve never seen before.”

Snezení has reason to be vigilant. This has been the first year that the Bagram area has dealt with suicide car bombings. In fact, the Taliban have increased suicide attacks this year, borrowing tactics from militants in Iraq. The escalation in the Taliban insurgency has stoked bitter fighting. More than 1,600 people, mostly militants, have died across Afghanistan in the past four months, according to an Associated Press tally of reports by U.S., NATO and Afghan officials.

The IED attack that ‘scrubbed’ Doug’s plans to go the Range a few days earlier could’ve been potentially very lethal.

Down the road from the main gate, a suicide bomber had detonated his car. His plan was to set off a second, more powerful bomb to inflict as much damage and death as possible. While the bomber died in the initial explosion, the second bomb didn’t go off. Some soldier picked up the dud IED and brought it on base … without disconnecting the wires. Had anybody dialed the number to set off the IED, which was designed to take out a tank, the bombers’ original intention of many U.S. casualties might’ve been realized.

Later that day Snezení went outside the wire to assess the damage. “The bomber’s body had been in the middle of the road and they kicked it to the side by an empty shed,” Snezení relates. “In a Muslim country, where you’re supposed to be buried within 24 hours of your death, that’s saying a lot. The locals don’t like that shit. It’s like those three jackasses on a motorcycle last May who blew themselves up for nothing by the gate. No one was even hurt. But their bodies had to be removed.”

It’s common knowledge that these suicide bombers get their training in Iraq and Pakistan, and that most of the funding is from Iran. Luckily for Bagram the attempts to kill coalition forces and sympathetic locals have mainly failed.

I feel that I’m in good hands with Donny because he knows what’s going on. “If you see more than one person in a car that’s good, because suicide bombers usually like to go to Allah alone,” Snezení says. “I’m the only person on the entire base who’s authorized to leave the post anytime I want. I feel safer alone. The terrorists look for convoys.”

Seven clicks (kilometers) out of the city, Snezení slows down and turns onto a dusty road. Bumping down the dirt path we see herders way off in the distance surrounded by moving black dots of goats. “I’ve got too many people that walk around on my range,” Snezení complains.

“His” range turns out to be the size of a county. It’s an expansive stretch of land near the foothills of the Selseleh-ye Koh-e Bâbâ Mountains and continues for six kilometers.

•An Afghan National Army soldier.•



“What really ticks me off is when they try to grow crops on my range,” Snezení continues. I wonder how many thousands of years Donny’s Range was tilled and grazed upon before the military decided to make it an artillery and ammunition testing ground.

“And I’ve got a big problem with this clown down here. I caught him the other night with a propane (cisterline) tank and a blowtorch, cutting metal off my targets.” Snezení’s “targets,” used for mortar-shell practice, are old Soviet-era vehicles. Locals collect all manner of metal and sell it to scrap collectors for some cash. Snezení had told us earlier that after the Kiwis (New Zealand has a significant presence at Bagram Airfield) had practiced the other day, boys came scrambling to collect the brass casings. (Now you know where the metal from your Afghani souvenirs comes from.)


•A boy observing us from a distance put up his hands to show he has no weapons.•




“When I got up to my targets, he ran away. I took his blowtorch and shot up his water cooler and food supply,” Snezení says shaking fist in the window. “They’re supposed to stop,” he says referring to the pick-up that’s followed us from base. “A closed fist means stop!”

•The water cooler of the clown that Donny shot up.•



We get out and examine the targets. The clown did a pretty good. There isn’t much left for the mortars to destroy.

A man parks his car 100 meters away from us. I can see the hackles rise on Snezení’s neck. A middle-aged man with a gray beard slowly approaches us while his young son waits in the car, the boy’s eyes anxiously following his father. Suicide bomber? Terrorist? Everybody tenses up, ready to grab their weapons and pull the trigger at a moment’s notice. Through our translator Zach we discover that the man wants to file a complaint about the military trampling over some of his crops. I can sense the steam ready to whistle out of Snezení’s ears.

Once the man leaves, a couple of ANP (Afghan National Police) vans edge up behind our vehicles. A portly man with a silver beard plops out followed by very young men in green-marine, baggy police uniforms. Zach translates as the hefty man, who brings to mind Santa Claus, puts his thumbs inside his thick black belt and then gestures dramatically, his hands up and down and all around.

A young boy dressed like something you might see from Ali Baba and the Seven Saracens comes nears us, haltingly. He says a few words to another translator then stands back observing us us, leaning on his wooden staff that comes up to his chest.

“He’s a Coochie,” the translator says. “They’re a nomadic tribe who herd goats around this region.” I walk up to the boy. I touch my left chest with my right palm and say, “Salem alekum” (Hi and blessings to you). Through the translator I find out that the boy’s name is Gulham and he’s 13. He has five brothers and one sister.

“Where do you live?” I ask.

“Everywhere,” he says.

“Do you go to school?”

When the translator poses the question, Gulham smirks.

“The Coochies are nomadic. They have no school. He is simply a goat herder,” the translator replies. I wonder what it must be like to walk a week or month in Gulham’s shoes. Speaking of which, his white shoes look very new, in direct contrast to his weathered and chapped ankles. I suspect he saw us arrive from a distance and pulled out his good shoes from his colorful yarn bag before he approached us.

•Gulham, a 13-year-old Coochie goat herder, talks with a U.S. military translator.•


•Detail of staff and clothes of Gulham, a 13-year-old Coochie goat herder.•



I give Gulham a bottle of water. I figure it’s safe. The danger with giving people things is, like I saw happen with baboons at the Cape of Good Hope, they can become dependent on handouts. Earlier Snezení was saying that he doesn’t give kids anything. “If you give a younger kid something, the older kids will beat the living shit out of him,” he said. Snezení added that you see boys beating up on little girls, presumably their sisters, while the mothers watch. “You just want to take these little girls home with you and tell their mothers, ‘I’ll take better care of her.’”

“I think they’re smart for covering up their women, though,” he continued. “They look at someone, you stone them.” I think that statement had more to do with his ex-wife searching for guys on the Internet and finding “some nice guy from Folsom state prison” than anything else.

Gulham accepts the bottle of water with a smile. I recall that Snezení remarked that he found it ridiculous how the locals drink the water then throw away the bottles. “And they’re always looking for something to carry water in,” he said, shaking his head.

•Oman Wiashman worked in the DFAC (Chow Hall) at Bagram Airfield but was fired. There are rumors floating around that it was due to questionable loyalties. Below are cigarette burns that he inflicted himself into his arm to impress a woman. Nearby witnesses of the event claim the girlfriend resembled a donkey.•





The police party breaks up and I join the others. I wish Gulham well. He really wants my cobalt blue and silver Fossil wristwatch. I tell him, Sorry.

After all that commotion, Snezení sums up the meeting by saying, “Well, the police chief said if I feel like putting a few bullets in that clown’s engine block, feel free.”

While I take pictures of tents and Comex containers that the police use as accommodations when based on this part of the range, Snezení has tea with some “elders”: wise men with gray beards who keep their local tribes in check. Snezení is full of surprises. He won’t eat any of the local fare because he gets “stomach sick,” yet he’ll have tea with the elders.

•Having tea after discussing Donny's cut-up targets.•


•How to make tea when you're in a comex in the middle of no where. By the 'gay' police station.•



Before we leave the range we stop off at a place where machine gun training is going on. “There about 120 meters off,” Snezení grumbles. “They’re basically walking around an area that’s covered with unexploded ammunition and grenades.”

•Soldiers taking a break from machine gun practice on the Range by a wall that wars soldiers to not use it as practice.•




Our final stop is at a permanent police outpost.

“I hate this police station,” Snezení spits. “It’s like a gay regime.” Doug and I look at each other and try not to burst out laughing. There are over a dozen young men hanging out at the bare, white-walled building. I start snapping photos and, as is my luck here, they don’t mind. They even pose. One guy has really striking eyes and facial features. His thick, wavy hair is fashionably combed and he wears one of those Palestinian scarves around his head. That one could be gay I think.

Snezení cringes when he sees the guys put their arms around each, which as I’ve seen in Turkey and Saudi Arabia, is simply a way of expressing friendship.

•Jamsheet Parwees, age 16 (left) and Zobeit Achmat, also age 16, are "just friends."•


•Zobeit Achmat, age 16 shows his official Police card, while his friend Jamsheet Parwees, also age 16, looks on.•




I can tell Snezení is anxious to go after a short while, so I wrap up my photo session.

Back in the safety of his pick-up, heading back to base, Snezení cocks his head over his shoulder and says to Doug and me, “Man did those cops stink or what? I swear it’s a damn homosexual den there – it’s strange.”

What’s really strange is why American TV producers would do a reality show following around two bimbos like Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie when they could just do a one-man show with Donny Snezení at Bagram Airfield and get some really strange stuff and entertaining lines as well as a gay police checkpoint on the middle of a firing range in Afghanistan.



•Me on the right taking a picture of two guys at the 'gay police station' on a motorcycle.•



•A friendly face at the ‘gay police station.’•



•Chefi, age 21, with ‘gay police station’ behind him.•



•Shefi, age 21, outside police checkpoint on ‘The Range.’•



•Grandpa and grandson at police checkpoint on ‘The Range.’•


•A group of guys in front of the ‘gay police station.’•


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SNAKES AND CAMEL SPIDERS AND SCORPIONS – OH MY! - ORGUN-E, 22 AUGUST 2006

•Sheik Mohammed and Daood, both 22, local laborers at Orgun-E.•

22 AUGUST 2006, ORGUN-E, TUESDAY

A refugee convoy leaving France before the Nazis arrive. A battalion of new soldiers arriving at Khe Sanh to commence fighting the Viet-cong. The theme from M*A*S*H playing over the loudspeakers in my head. All these sensations bombard me as I take a seat on the open bed of an enormous olive and black military truck.

Soldiers and contractors sit opposite Doug and me on board that run the length of each side of the truck bed. Luggage, mainly olive green canvas military rucksacks and dufflebags are heaped in between us. Exhaust from the fat pipe behind the drivers cab billows black carbon monoxide into my face. (Note to self: Next time I take a military transport truck, get on last and sit by the opening.)

I look at my watch and see it’s 2 AM in the morning when Doug and I are dropped off on the metal-ribbed tarmac. We will listen to choppers and planes take off and land for the next three hours as we await our transportation to a FOB (Forward Operating Base) called Organ-E, O.E for short. The night temperature is balmy. Soldiers sleep on their enormous rucksacks as big as burlap bags of grain.

I close my eyes a little. But I don’t want to miss seeing the long line of Vietnam-era Chinook helicopters being loaded and readied for flight. The double-rotared cargo helicopters resemble monstrous black round beetles, something straight out of the movie “Starship Troopers” (that film where alien bugs try to take over the universe).

Although it would’ve been nice to have been able to sleep in our accommodations and arrive at the aircraft an hour before take-off instead of being up for all night and waiting, it’s great to be able to see the pinkening dawn erase the black from the sky, the black jagged mountains in the distance turning purple.

•A Chinook at Bagram.•


When we’re called to bring our luggage and start loading it into a Chinook, we go from a complete standstill to instant hustling.

We step onto the back loading ramp of the Chinook – similar to a ferry that transports cars across a waterway – and hurry to get to the end of a red nylon bench of seats. In the middle of us are wooden pallets loaded high with luggage, metal crates and cardboard boxes.

Doug saves me as soon as the rotors start beating the morning air. It is deafeningly loud. This is no locked and pressurized cabin. He somehow maneuvers his hand to pull out some earplugs for me, while his movie camera sits on his lap and his heavy bag of computer and camera equipment rest by next to his boots.

Lift off is so smooth I don’t even realize it until I look towards the back ramp, upon which a gunner is sitting with a mounted machine gun between his crotch, and see mountains getting closer. Our backs are to the wall, we are squished between a full load of soldiers, overloaded pallets are crowding my knees, but I still manage to turn my torso and snap some shots out of the round bubble window.

•Talk about a window seat. Back gunner of Chinook taking in the morning over Afghanistan. On way to Orgun-E•

•Chinook gunner enjoying the view. On our way to Orgun-E.•


I wouldn’t want to be a gunner for all the tea in Kansas, but the views offered to him are breathtaking. We pass over towns that look like something out of ancient Babylon: enormous walled compounds with mud huts inside (the complexes are called “kulots” – the Afghan version of a neighborhood), small tiered fields of low-rising corn, tomatoes and eggplant marked off by low mud walls, groves of dates and palms, and one forested area of trees that are spaced out and fairly uniform in appearance with tan dirt between them rather than plants. Mainly though the landscape is desert and mountains. The mountains here aren’t rocky monoliths of granite or limestone. They’re more like towering piles of gravel, dirt and boulders. There are no uniform rock faces or complicated overhangs. Rather they’re just like enormous hills, all of which invitingly easy to climb. I’d love nothing more than to actually do that, but with landmines, Taliban insurgents, and strict military embedded rules about leaving base I guess such climbs will have to wait.

•The front gunner taking a breath on a Chinook helicopter.•


Two hours later the Chinook alights outside the dusty base of Orgun-E. We hustle to pull our bags out of the Chinook. The heated exhaust out of the massive engines on either side of the unloading dock nearly suffocates me on the tarmac as I try to see where Doug is.

As always, there’s no one to meet us. Doug and I walk into the plywood operations facility. We ask a young man sitting in his office wearing PTs (black gym shorts and a gray T-shirt) about our military contact. He leads us to a beat-up conference room. 10 minutes later an olive-skinned, dark-haired Lieutenant by the name of Rudy Rodriguez comes in, apologizing about not knowing when we were supposed to arrive. It’s the standard military greeting Doug and I receive.

Rudy leads us to our barracks, which is actually very nice. We have our own walls (pine-colored plywood) and the floor and ceiling are concrete rather than the flimsy, dust grabbing plywood cabins known here as “B-Huts” (which I like to spell as “Bee-Huts.”)

“Remember to always have your flashlight on you at night,” Doug cautions. “These FOBs don’t have any lights like the big bases and there are all types of critters lurking about. There are snakes – all of which are poisonous -- scorpions, and the worst of all, camel spiders. If a camel spider sees light it’ll run away … usually. So make sure to shine the light on the ground in front of you when you walk.” I guess I’m not in Bagram anymore. Sigh.

Being at a FOB for the first time, I realize how good I had it at Bagram. Bagram is like the Vegas of Afghanistan. This is more like Dubuque.

Since we’re so high – 7460 feet – the air is cooler; chilly towards evening. For some reason the sun went down this evening about an hour earlier than in Bagram. By 6:00 it was dark outside instead of 7:00. (Did I mention I don’t have a map of Afghanistan and have no idea where I am?)

The locals who work on base are pretty hard-core Afghanis. No T-shirts, baseball caps or shaven faces here like at Bagram. The locals who work at Bagram seem to laugh a lot and genuinely enjoy their jobs. These Orgun-E local workers seem like they laid aside their insurgent Kalashnikovs just long enough to finish their shifts on base.

The water in the sinks is non-potable. That means if you brush your teeth with the water – that could have fecal matter in it, according to one soldier I talked to who tested well water in a nearby village – you could get diarrhea. This leads me to the next FOB difference: toilet facilities.

Bagram was no Taj Majal for bathrooms. The standing joke between Doug and I was whether we would be able to find a non-shit-smeared, non-shit-encrusted toilet to do our business. But at least Bagram had normal white porcelain toilets. Here instead are little outhouse huts built together having two to six separate walled stalls. I thought they were outhouses until I looked below the toilet seat positioned on a concrete block (can you say medieval?). Below the throne is an oil drum cut in half. There is no liquid or disinfectant in it. Just oil drum … and other post-toilet goodies.

I wonder to myself – being fascinated by such things – where they dump all that honey. I find out later that they don’t dump it anywhere. They pull the lobbed-off oil-drums from underneath the concrete thrones and at a safe distance douse them with gasoline and burn them. It remains to be seen whether such burning contributes to the Greenhouse or the Outhouse Effect. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)

It might be added that the local Muslims have their own separate crappers. They are made of wood instead of concrete and have a design that resembles the Star of David cut out above each door instead of the crescent moon you usually see on outhouses.

•American shitters out of concrete.•

•"Haji" shitters out of wood (no toilet seats).•

•Piss pipes.•

•Waste disposal at Orgun-E.•




And if you just want to go pee?

Here they have “piss tubes” instead of urinals. When I first heard the name I thought it was simply another military nickname. But the truth is, once you go behind a hastily cobbled-together wall of plywood, you see plastic white tubes – the plumbing type you’d find in a house basement below the sink and toilet -- coming out of the ground at an angle with a screen over the top. Upon seeing the piss tubes I considered resorting to my surefire way to save myself a walk to the bathroom at night: a big plastic cup.

As for dinner, the chow hall doesn’t offer T-bones or crablegs here like Bagram. It was two entrées (hamburgers or mac ‘n chili {macaroni and cheese and chili with hamburger in a sea of oozing golden molten Velveeta}), gray canned green beans, and overbaked potato cubes. But Organ-E does have Gator Aid bottles in their drink cooler. And I will say that in the morning a Hispanic soldier made the most killer omelets.

Yellow flycatcher streamers hang down all over the place. I was told they’re nicknamed “lick-a-sticks” because if you don’t watch out where you’re going you may run into one and end up licking the black speckled delight. (I wonder if they have nicknames for suitcase-sized rat traps placed all around the camp.)

Apparently the camp has a farm somewhere that’s populated with donkeys, camels, sheep, and goats. The farm is there so that whenever an animal is killed accidentally by the military, it can be replaced with alacrity.

•••

The beautiful solitary confinement that Doug and I enjoyed didn’t last long. A few hours after we arrived a somewhat older man with a graying beard came in with his luggage. I saw one of his luggage tags, Dave Kinsella. I whispered to Doug, while the guy was dropping off his bags in his room, that he’s a well-known photographer.

“I can’t believe a famous photographer is here in Orgun-E,” I say to Doug, who’s working across from me on his laptop, after our new roommate leaves. “There’s goes my exclusive.”

“Yeah, 9-11 brings out all the rats,” Doug says like a street-smart weary waitress at a truckstop. That dovetails with an earlier statement Doug made that day: “I hate rich people.”

When our roommate comes back, I ask him point blank if he’s on assignment. We discover (to my relief) that he’s not a photographer at all, but actually an employee for the State Department who works as a Political Adviser here in Afghanistan. The more I talk to him, the more I get the feeling that he’s about as rugged and ready for a FOB as Charo.

“So you schlep all your stuff around army bases while you’re here?” I ask.

“Oh, no. This is only because I have to go in-land for a meeting. Usually I’m one lump of ice cream or two,” Kinsella says.

(Did I mention that Doug and I know each other from Washington, D.C. when we were students at George Washington University getting our Masters Degrees in International Relations? Did I also mention that the kind of job this fop has, the guy who says his most distressful situation in Afghanistan is whether he should have one lump of ice cream or two, would’ve been a dream job for Doug and me, two guys who love the international theater and culture and who 14 years after first meeting are together in Afghanistan working as journalists earning a meager pittance. Can you say bitter?)

It looked to be another gorgeous Afghan sunset. Like Kabul and Bagram, Orgun-E is in a fishbowl: a flat plain surrounded by high mountains. If this country ever got its conflicts out of the way it could turn into a prime tourist destination. The weather is dry. The mountains are close and accessible from the cities, they’re easy to climb, the views are breathtaking, and the place isn’t overrun by German tourists. What more could you ask for?

I climb a tower in order to get a good vista point. I’m always afraid some gun-happy soldier or observant sniper will shoot to kill when I climb up tower steps. I was lucky to find Rudy, the guy who gave Doug and I our accommodations, in the look out. It turns out there’s some action going down.

•Shadow of guard tower as sun sets on Orgun-E FOB.•


“We’ve got two possible insurgents on that mountain top over there,” Rudy says, pointing forward with his chin while looking through binocs (binoculars). “That’s the same ridge they launched the rockets that hit our TOC.” The TOC (Tactical Operating Center) was full at the time. The rocket hit a beam and blew outwards, the shrapnel deflected by the bricks between the beams. “The beam was bent but that’s all that happened. If that rocket had gone between the beams there would’ve definitely been casualties,” Rudy says.

Rudy points to the building that was hit. The tin over the impact site is lighter than the rest of the roofing. “They actually hit our TOC twice. To date that was the most accurate rocket targeting in Afghanistan,” Rudy explains. The good news is the military found the rocket launcher that was lobbing the mortars on a timer. The bad news is the insurgents are trying to set up a new launcher. The two guys on the mountain ridge top might have been giving coordinates to insurgents planning to organize another rocket attack.

Rudy watched them leaving the ridge as the base loaded up its big gun mortar launcher. I was surprised how long and how far the mortar flies. It seemed nearly a minute before I saw the puff of smoke impact on the mountain. (A mortar can soar almost seven miles according to Rudy.)

•Mountain sunset at Orgun-E; taken from back window of watch tower.•


I tried to do some work in MWR (Moral, Well-being and Recreation area). At Bagram it’s nice to work on the computers while people are playing pool and a movie’s on the big screen TV in the backgroun. At Orgun-E there were two guys in the MWR. One was snoring on the couch, the other was watching the one channel on the TV. (You haven’t seen boring and bad until you’ve seen a military commercial … over and over and over again).

“It’s kind of quiet here in here for 9 PM,” I say to the one guy who’s conscious. He shrugs his shoulders. “But I guess anything after Bagram will seem quiet.”

The soldier turns to me. “Bagram’s Airforce, they don’t get killed.” O.K. time to go.

I stand for a moment outside the door of my barracks. I haven’t seen a sky like this since I was in Africa. Without any light pollution you can see faint colors of large stars – pink, green, yellow, purple. And you can see the filmy white swath of the Milky Way.

Like I said this place would be ideal for tourism. How great it would be if the only thing to look for in the night sky was a shooting star instead of whistling rocket.

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MAN LOVE THURSDAYS - WAZA-KHWA and BERMEL, 23 AUGUST 2006

•Young ANA Soldier at Waza-Khwa.•

WAZA-KHWA and BERMEL, 23 AUGUST 2006, WEDNESDAY

I notice a guy with his foot in a cast and aluminum crutches laying by his bags. There’s a large group of soldiers waiting behind the guy for the helicopters that will arrive shortly to whisk us all off to new FOBs.

The guy with crutches was watching me as I was taking pictures of the Orgun-E Wall of Heroes which has some interesting plaques dedicated to soldiers killed in action. One placard – in the morbid Victorian style of gold letters on black – lists 18 names of soldiers who died on 6 April 2005 in Ghazni. I’d love to find out what happened on that day that led to the death of so many soldiers, which also includes at least one woman (SPC Chrystal G. Stout). For such a high toll of life you’d think there might be something that would come to mind, from our media. I read the New York Times every day when I’m home, but I don’t recall a thing about any major battles in Afghanistan.

•At Orgun-E, Warren Davies, 33, of Albuquerque, explains how an IED his his Humvee that caused him to injury his leg.•


•Plaque in Fallen Heroes plaza at Orgun-E.•


In fact, I didn’t know more than a few tidbits about Afghanistan until I actually got here.

Is this the part where I say the U.S. media is partly to blame for me – an M.A. holder in international relations – being so poorly versed in what’s going on in a country where U.S. troops are dying? Do I now say that not only is the U.S. sadly lacking in real news, it’s a travesty that our journalism is instead more preoccupied with fluff, like finding JonBenet Ramsey’s murderer or a (gasp) polygamist being apprehended (the only two things I’ve heard about America on the news since I’ve been here).

Answer: a resounding yes.

Talking the other day with Doug, who’s been to Iraq seven times, I thought that America needs an intellectual writer for our age, a George Orwell, an Adolous Huxley, an Anthony Burgess. If I wrote novels and if I were smart, I’d love to write a book about America having been totally defeated in the world arena. We’ve lost all our bases overseas. Our economy has been trumped and superceded by China. Our political alignment has left us with no allies. A modern Fall of the Roman Empire. The thing is though, the American public hasn’t an inkling that any of these catastrophes have occurred. The U.S. media, under the benediction of the administration and kowtowing politicians, and with the complicity of U.S. mega-companies, gives the public Brave-New-World-like soma. Instead of reporting the real news, covering important issues, telling us what’s really necessary, we’re palmed handful upon handful of empty-calorie stories: Michael Jackson’s penis is allegedly completely white, Cuba’s beaches will soon be selling Starbucks iced mocha lattes, all S.U.V.’s will soon be compelled by law to be outfitted with seatwarmers.

There’s so much going on in Afghanistan, but how do you and can you make a dent in the U.S. media so citizens know at least a few of these things? How can a country be fighting a war, or whatever it is they’re doing here, and no one have a clue or even wonder what’s going on?

Questions to ponder.

Anyway, I go up to the guy with crutches lying beside him and ask him what his story is. It turns out Specialist Warren Davies, 33, of Albuquerque, was driving a Humvee around noon on August 17th near Waza-Khwa (a two-day drive from Orgun-E) when he hit an IED. There were two possible roads to take to his destination. Davies chose the wrong one.

The IED was in a soft berm facing away from the road. (A berm is a long pile of dirt, pebbles or rubble.) Davies therefore couldn’t detect anything unusual when he drove up the berm. His front wheel drove over the pressure plate on the other side of the berm and tripped the bomb. The explosion, one of the biggest coalition forces have seen on a roadside, was later discovered to be due to one mine being stacked upon another.

“It was painful. I was screaming. I undid my combat lock and the first thing I thought of was: Is everyone O.K.?” Davies says, rubbing his wounded ankle as if the thought of the explosion brings back the pain. The steering column collapsed on his leg and pinned him. The ‘terp’ (interpreter), who was sitting behind him when the bomb went off, pulled him out of the vehicle. Afterwards there was gunfire, standard procedure for IEDs. Luckily no one else was hurt.

“I ended up with only a sprained ankle and bruised knee,” Davies says. “I came here to get x-rays done.” As for the bad guys, two vehicles were located in the hilltops. All 10 of the insurgents were killed in an ensuing explosion. “There was a secondary explosion that means they had more IEDs with them,” Davies explains.

Davies, who’s stationed at Fort Drum in New York and is with Charlie Co. 28, arrived in Afghanistan in February. He says that since winter is only weeks away in this high altitude country, the Taliban is trying to set off as many bombs as possible. “They’re impatient now,” Davies says. “When the Coochies [nomadic herders] head south to Pakistan for the winter, the Taliban will follow them down there. May through August is bad, but the next two months will really be hectic.”

We hear choppers whipping the air in the distance. Davies heaves himself up on his crutches and hobbles to join his platoon. Doug and I pull on our helmets and flack-jackets and gather our stuff.

Ever since we arrived to Afghanistan, Doug has been telling me I need safety glasses. Safety glasses this. Safety glasses that. Once we’re seated in the Blackhawk helicopter and it begins to take off, I see why. There doors are open and dust and debris are flying everywhere. On the one hand I was smart: I borrowed a pair of safety goggles before I left Bagram. On the other hand, I’m a retard: I left them in my big rucksack. I put on my reading glasses as a back-up. What a big help. Not.

I also wasn’t happy that, as a former world-class international flight attendant, I struggled such a long time with the jump seat belt buckle. I fumbled a full three minutes before I could figure it out … gr-roan.

We land in Waza-Khwa – a place I detest because I can never remember the fucking name. I keep on calling it either Kuala-wazoo, or simply, Kazoo. (Waza-Khwa is 30 min by plane or 12 hours by road from Salerno the main FOB in the area. It lies at the southern tip of the Eastern Coalition’s territory known as Freedom’s Frontier.) There’s some ceremony for a changing of command. Real exciting (yawn) stuff. Doug and I luckily meet someone interesting: Sgt Nick Lutton, 28, from San Antonio. (Nick is red-haired and freckled but apparently in his veins course conquistador Spanish blood. He tells me that his relatives left the Canary Islands in 1706 and originally settled San Antonio, 10 generations ago.)

•Symbol of ANA (Afghan National Army).•


All military ceremonies are filmed and that’s Nick’s job, videographer. He got his journalism degree before being called up in the reserves. When he gets back to the States he plans to work at the fire department.

Nick films the ceremony. I stay until the part where all the soldiers sing some songs. I wonder if Nick can send that clip to America’s Funniest Videos because I haven’t heard singing that mumbled, thin, and off-key since the last time I went to church in Columbus and the congregation was expected to sing some hymn covering three octaves.

The FOB (Forward Operating Base) in Salerno is where Nick is stationed. He says that, like Jalalabad, it is located in a bowl (a valley depression) and is very lush and green (very unlike all the parts of Afghanistan I’ve seen thus far). He says not only are there orchards but there are all types of critters, the ones Doug warned me about: poisonous snakes (Nick’s killed four so far, including one of the most deadly on earth, the crate snake), scorpions, and the dreaded camel spider.

•Local workers at Waza-Khwa.•



“So have you actually seen a camel spider,” I ask.

“Yeah I’ve seen a couple,” Nick reports. “Both outside. I killed one with a stone and you know how spiders usually explode? Well the camel spider didn’t. It was more like a sandbag.” Nick goes on to tell us that the camel spider is not really a spider at all, but more like some hairy crab. It’s bigger than a tarantula and is very aggressive. It has 10 legs and huge claws in the front of its head.

“What do they eat?” I ask.

“Everything,” Nick says.

Time to head to the helicopter again for our intended destination: FOB Bermel.

•The rotor blade and machine gun of a Blackhawk flying over Afghanistan.•

•Flying to Bermel aboard a Blackhawk.•

•Chaueffeurs bring our luggage from the helioport of Bermel to our 5-day Bee-Hut accommodation.•



We arrive at Bermel just at the camp is ready to hold a ceremony for a fallen comrade. If this ceremony is like the one I saw at Bagram, I’m not looking forward to it.

At Bagram everybody on the base was called by loudspeaker to attend the ceremony. It was 1000° out as soldiers lined the sides of the main roads, Disney Way (named after the first soldier killed in Bagram) and Echo Drive, which the caskets would come down. After an arduous 25-minute wait, the caskets simply passed by. There was no supplemental information. Who were they? How did they die? Where are their bodies being flown to? How old were they? I like to know the specifics. It’s make death authentic.

This ceremony turns out to be the real deal, complete with a bagpipe player. In the courtyard of the operations building there is the dead soldier’s boots and rifle and a picture of him on the wall. The courtyard is full of officers who flew in for the ceremony and all the soldiers on the base.

I take pictures from the distance and then wait for the 21-gun salute. (Trivia told to me by a soldier: The 21-gun salute (seven rifles, three volleys) originated in the Civil War. When three volleys were shot there was a cessation to the fighting so that soldiers could retrieve the dead and wounded from the battle field. Three more volleys meant combat could resume.)

I’ve mentioned before that since my Mom’s death from cancer, I’ve come to believe that we’re given signs from the deceased, but we have to look for them and be open to accept them. Well, I know nothing about the guy who died other than he was killed by some bomb ‘outside the wire’ (off base) on a patrol, but as the ceremony comes to an end, I for the first time since I’ve been in Afghanistan hear thunder rumble in the sky above. Then after the 21-gun salute I, again for the first time, see a flock of birds fly over the camp. To me these were both signs that the deceased was with his comrades watching this ceremony.

I glance over at the State Department guy Doug and I met in Orgun-E. He happened to be on our same flights today. He sits slumped in a chair in the background looking between the ground and his watch.

• Chaplain, Cpt Dave Ditolla outside our B-Hut,•


After everything breaks up, Doug and I get our accommodations. It’s a Bee-Hut. We’ve got a roommate. A Chaplain, Cpt Dave Ditolla, a small and bald man with a face resembling that boulder which used to be the symbol of Connecticut before it fell off its perch. Being an ethnic Italian he’s of course friendly and talkative. I ask him how the locals in the camp are.

“We have good relations with them,” he says, “but since today is ‘Man Love Thursday,’ they’ll be scarce.”

Man Love Thursday? Isn’t that the name of some weekly gay party at a bar in New York? Doug and I haven’t heard of Man Love Thursdays so we inquire within.

“Man Love Thursdays is when the men find boys and have sex with them. It’s done here in the Bermel area, also in Kandajar and the Helmud Province down south. Since women are so segregated from society, it’s accepted in this culture.” If I wasn’t hearing this from an ordained chaplain I’d think the story was bowlshit (sic). I still am not quite sure I believe it, but if I ever get the opportunity, I am definitely going to do an in-depth report of Man Love Thursdays in this part of Afghanistan.

Doug, for his part, has other things he wants to report on, namely Taliban insurgents.


•PFC John M Newman III of Washington DC age 24 watches 21-gun salute to a fallen comrade. Funeral ceremonies were held for Corporal Jeremiah Cole (born 14 April 1980, died 16 August 2006) at August 23 near Bermel Forward Operating Base, Afghanistan, seven kilometers from the Pakistan border. Cole was killed towards end of 12-hour patrol, when Humvee he was in hit Taliban-planted, anti-tank landmine. He was in third vehicle behind the driver when the back wheel detonated mine. Cole suffered internal bleeding and severe head trauma.•

•SPC Lomas, a soldier at Bermel Forward Operating Base, departs funeral ceremony for fallen comrade as bagpipes play.•


2 comments

Rudy_Sanchez said...
Wow, I just found your blog, amazing stuff.

I'm glad you're writing about Afganistan, I think people here in t he States have quickly forgetten that we have soldiers there too, and that's not over in Afganistan simply because attention has turned to Iraq.

Thanks.
12:46 AM


Anonymous said...
It's great to see some stories about what's happening out in Bermel. I helped set up that base. I was an ETT with the ANA out in Shkin in early 2005. Got back about a year ago. I still keep in contact with my interpreter via E-mail. Afghanistan certainly stays with a person long after you leave it...
12:13 AM

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TALIBAN HUNTING - BERMEL, 23 AUGUST 2006

•Greeson giving the pre-mission briefing.•

BERMEL, 23 AUGUST 2006, WEDNESDAY

Bermel has been rocketed almost every day in the past weeks. It’s a given that on Fridays it will be rocketed. Friday is the Muslim holy day, their version of our Sunday. After the insurgents are all whipped up by the mullahs in the mosque they position their rockets towards the FOB.

Tonight there’s going to be a patrol outside the base to hunt down Taliban. Doug has arranged for both of us to go along. Taliban? Night patrol? Isn’t that the way the guy whose funeral ceremony we attended today died? I’m not so sure this is a good idea … for me. For the first time since we were stopped between Kabul and Bagram by the “Ministry of Finance,” AKA Taliban, I’m nervous.

I’m not scared of dying, per se. It’s just I’ve got all these pictures I’ve taken and stories I’ve been working on that I haven’t sent out or finished yet. So it would just be my luck that I’m finally on the cusp of something big career-wise in my life and I get blown up before anything get outs.

At dinner Doug and I talk to the platoon leader, Staff Sgt Greg Greeson. “The enemy is getting bolder,” he says in his deep smoky voice, with an aftertaste accent of his home state of Arkansas. “They’re attacking more often.” I’ve heard several times already that this year in Afghanistan has been one of the deadliest years for coalition forces. The Taliban is turning up the heat. Surely they have been getting practice in Iraq and have had ample opportunity to regroup and get support from friends in Pakistan and Iran.

I’ve heard rumors that this increase of violence has led to a misuse of “double-tapping” by U.S. forces in Iraq, which may infiltrate Afghanistan. The origin of double-tapping is when you shoot an enemy and they are mortally wounded but still floundering, you shoot again to put them out of their misery. The way soldiers are misusing double-tapping is after a battle they come across unarmed wounded insurgents and instead of taking them as prisoners they do the double tap. Clearly not what the original intention was.

I of course hope that Afghanistan never approaches the level of violence in Iraq to make such things as double-tapping seem worthy. On the other hand, I’m sort of afraid to find out and see first hand what violence really is in war.

•Greeson's office door.•


Regarding tonight’s foray outside the castle walls, several scenarios fill my head.

What if we’re outside the FOB and insurgents in hiding ambush us and launch rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) directly at our Humvees. There is a soldier manning a machine gun in the turret of the Humvee, but if he’s taken out, what’s to keep an insurgent from lobbing some type of ammunition through that open hole? None of the Humvees in Afghanistan are up-armored. And what about anti-tank landmines. If they can destroy a tank, what can they do to us if we roll over one? Or what if we’re surrounded like a pack of rats by rocket-launching, blood-thirsty, hate-crazed Tali’s (my nickname for the Taliban). Can a couple handfuls of U.S. soldiers take on a 100 bad guys?

But this group is very competent. Their full official title is the 3rd Platoon, Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade 10th Mountain Division.

•Humvee driver Wallace before starting 12-hour mounted patrol.•


Like crossing a high mountain pass by foot for the first time, I’m totally nervous and apprehensive but I agree to go. No use in breaking up our Abbot and Costello team. If one goes we should both go. (Oh God, do I really believe that?)

Doug and I meet up with the Humvee patrol after the sun has dipped below the mountains. The sky is slate gray and is pissing intermittent rain. I heard earlier that the locals think the U.S. brought the rain with them, and that that’s a good thing. Another piece of good news is that apparently these Tali’s don’t like to attack in darkness and they “don’t like to play in the rain.” The bad news is it was a raining the night that soldier whose funeral ceremony we attended today died.

Doug and I in separate Humvees. I feel a little like the English Royals who are split up on flights so that in case one goes down the other can assume the throne.

I’m with platoon leader Greeson. As I’m putting on my body armor I discover I’ve brought my passport in my camera bag. Before we walked out of the Hooch (the name they use here for Bee-Hut) I left my name and contact numbers with our roommate the chaplain in case anything happens. A passport in enemy hands could be a very dangerous situation indeed.

“I’ve got my passport here. Should I run back to my Bee-hut to leave it there?” I ask Greeson.

He pauses a moment. “Just keep it. I’m not going to let you get captured.” (So, does that mean if we’re ambushed and the Tali’s are taking me away, he’s going to shoot me?)

I don’t take the fact that I broke the Humvee door as soon as I slammed it shut as a good omen. ‘Great. Now the Taliban can sneak up on us when we’re parked somewhere, pull the door open and throw in a grenade. (Before we pull out of the FOB, the door is rigged to close and lock – whew.)

Our night-time convoy pulls out of the FOB. We drive through the ANA (Afghanistan National Army) compound adjacent to us. I snap a picture before we drive out of their gates into the wild. It’s the silhouette of the Afghani flag flying from a watchtower.

•Leaving the Bermel FOB through the ANA compound at dusk.•


I feel a little déjà-vu, like I’ve done this before. It actually reminds me of leaving the gates of a game park complex and going into the unrestrained park. Except here, instead of elephants, lions and leopards, you have landmines, rifles and grenades to contend with.

Since my healthy lifestyle has gone to hell in a handbasket – no gym or cardio since I got here, all my fruits, vegetables and grains being replaced by food I haven’t consumed since I was in High School (corndogs, Mountain Dew, cinnamon rolls), sleeping on average of five hours a night – I honestly don’t mind that the three guys seated in the Humvee all smoke. I guess the gunner in the turret would smoke too if he could. The iron-reinforced doors are kept shut for the most part lest a sniper gets a chance to take one of us out. The six-inch-thick, bomb-proof windows are kept rolled up.

We motor past muddy fields of knee-high corn and melons, past clumps of poplar trees, over rough terrain. I think to myself, Now THIS is what a Hummer’s for. Not piddling around in SOHO or the Upper West Side with designer sunglasses and highlights in your blond hair.

There’s precious little room to maneuver since the back of the vehicle is loaded with ammunition, drinks, and bags. The lack of leg room – which brings to mind my passengers when I worked as a flight attendant for World Airways – compounded by the lack of suspension, which majorly jarred my ass as we were steamrolling over the bumpy terrain, makes me want to fuck the danger and open my door and run around.

While we drive out I ask if we have to worry about IEDs.

“We’re pretty safe on this road. The main thing we’d have to worry about is a dashta. Those are evil-ass rocket launchers that can take out a tank. As for IEDs, it was just bad luck what happened last week,” Sgt John Sabatke, AKA Sabo, who sits across from me says.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“That Cole died,” Corporal Jeremiah Scott Cole is the funeral we attended today. Below his picture it said he was born 14 April 1980.

“I haven’t heard anything about how he died.

Sabo lights up one of his Camel’s. “It was exactly a week ago tonight. It was everybody here in this vehicle and Cole was sitting where you are now. We were coming off a 12-hour patrol, and, well it just was just bad luck.” Sabo takes a deep drag. “Two Hummers ahead of us didn’t hit the anti-tank landmine. Our front wheels didn’t set off the pressure plate. But the back wheel behind Cole did. We hit an Italian landmine with 6.6 kilograms of composition-B plastic explosives in it. There wasn’t any shrapnel but the blast blew the hatch 50 meters away and fried the inside of his body. He died from the concussion.”

“I lifted up his shirt and there was bleeding around the torso,” the gunner by the name of Pantoja, an ethnic Mexican, says. “He also had some lacerations on his leg.” Pantoja’s nickname is Doc because he’s trained as a medic, even though he’s only 22. When a bullet grazed him in the cheek during an attack last month he was able to dress his own wound.

I don’t ask for any more details than that. I don’t want to seem like I’m dancing over a corpse to get information. The oddness of being in the same place with the same people as Cole was exactly a week ago cannot be overly emphasized.

“It was real sad too,” Sabo continues. “He was just about to go on his mid-duty, two-week leave. His wife had a baby a month ago and he was going to see his son for the first time.” Sabo opens the window and flicks his cigarette out into puddle of mud.


ADDENDUM: 1 MAY 2008, For the record I received a touching email from a family member of Corporal Jeremiah Scott Cole. It reads as such:

Megan, Apr 23 2008

Mr. Paprocki,

I came across an article of yours at the following site http://thekabulguy.blogspot.com/2006/09/taliban-hunting-bermel-23-august-2006.html. As I was reading, about a third of the way down you discuss the death of Cpl. Jeremiah Scott Cole, better known as Cole. There is a comment at the end of this discussion by Sgt. Sabo that states that Cole's wife, Andrea, had a baby a month ago and Cole had never met his son. I would like to clarify this misgiving. Nicholas Scott Cole, Cole's son, was born on February 26, 2006. Cole was home and did indeed meet his son. In fact Cole was there for Nick's first few months of life. This story doesn't need to made sadder than it already is. Thank You, Megan

Cole/Clevenger family member

Hello Megan!

how amazing that you came across that story in the blog! soldiers of course don't have much going on their daily lives so whatever they hear becomes a story. I was mesmerized by the stories and scribbled notes then wrote them out when i got my laptop and published them on my blog when i could find an internet connection on the bases which was sketchy. Cole's death for me was particularly poignant because I was there for the ceremony of which there were several photos I took of military salute and the soldiers leaving the area. If you would like me to forward them to you I will do so. The story of Cole was made all the more memorable to me because I sat exactly where he did less than a week later in the same sort of vehicle with the exact same crew. Yes it was one sad story out of thousands and if just a few people read it and felt something then maybe the blog was worth something. How incredibly wonderful that he did make it home and saw his child. I will definitely add an addendum to the blog, but I don't think anyone is reading it at the moment, but when I get back to Afghanistan I will restart it.

Thank you so much for contacting me! Ken


•••

“Pull around here,” Greeson broadcasts over his mouthpiece when we get to a flat open stretch of land. I thought we were going to the foothills of the ridge where the bad guys have been launching the rockets, but we stop a few kilometers away as the last rays of cobalt twilight fade behind the black mountain range.

Pantoja the gunner jumps down from the turret and goes to the back of the Humvee. “Want a muffin?” he asks me. I say yes. “We always have muffins. Our team is known as the Muffin Men,” he says, smiling as he hands me a pre-packaged blueberry muffin. We get drinks, walk around a little then get back in the vehicle.

I’m considering peeing but it’s raining hard. I look at my watch. 7:00 PM. Then we hear Greeson repeat what he’s just heard from the command center. “They’re picking up on the scanner two groups talking. They’ve got five guys with them. One guy told the other to stay off the i-com, so they’re cutting off their i-coms. They could be coming for us.”

“Should I pee now?” I ask.

“That’d be a good idea,” Greeson says.

I’m not sure what an “i-com” is, but I assume it’s some sort of cell phone. I hurry and urinate in the pitch black, sure that a Tali is waiting behind one of the wheels to slit my throat. (I feel like American Werewolf in London when they’ve drifted off the road and are now on the forewarned moors.)

“I see some white light. There’s three cars hauling ass,” Pantoja says.

Oh shit.

Everybody in the Humvee lights up a cigarette.

“Maybe we should pop something over their heads,” Sabo suggests.

“They’ve stopped. At a wadi,” Pantoja updates as he looks through night-vision binoculars. (A “wadi” is a small oasis or dry gully or streambed.) “They’ve turned off their headlights. They’re just sitting there.”

`O.K. we’re in a country where people don’t drink, so they’re not a group having a party. And since women and men don’t mix it’s not a make-out session. There’s a 6 PM curfew in the area so it isn’t someone out for a joy ride. When it rains the jingle trucks go to high land, so it’s not some type of heavy transport. IEDs and landmines are laid almost exclusively under the pall of darkness, so maybe …

Shit. I bet these Humvee guys, all between the ages of 21 and 33, all high on testosterone because they haven’t had sex with women for months, all infantry men who love a fight, are going to head on down to that wadi and start something. Fuck.

But we sit. The glow of a computer screen showing the terrain illuminates Greeson’s face an eerie green. He opens the door to let in some air to clear out the cigarette smoke.

I do the same. I hear crickets. Dogs barking in the distance. A donkey braying. I look at my watch. It’s 8:30 PM. Only 8:30! We’ve only left the FOB a few hours ago. We’ve still got over eight hours to go. Oy-gewalt.

The Humvee stays quiet. There are a few transmissions with the operation center. “There are no ANA outside the wire,” they report. That group of cars at the wadi is seeming more foe than friend as the night progresses.

From the movies I always thought the military had these kick-ass, telescopic night vision goggles that allowed them to see a mouse moving from half a click away. Wrong.

The rain has tapered off. In the distance lightning reveals the mountain ridges. It’s the only brightness there is sincere there are no lights from the nearby villages. (Are they even hooked up to electricity?) I think of London during the blitz. Botswana at night, flat like the plain we’re on at the moment, the lightening turning the balmy black sky pink. I think of how the military should hire me because I have good ideas, like this one: outfit dogs with night vision cameras to their collars and train them to sneak up on people and remain silent as they sit quietly and film the culprits.

I drift off to sleep.

“Yo dude! Was that you, Doc?!” Sabo rings out.

“You smell that? Dude I did it outside the door,” Pantoja says, trying to defend himself against the accusation that he released noxious fumes in the cabin.

“You say that every time,” Sabo replies as all four doors open simultaneously. (Now there’s a sure-fire anti-terrorist weapon: mortars canned with soldier farts.)

“Dude you need some Beano,” the driver, Wallace, says.

“What man?”

“You know, Beano. It’s for people who have gas. And dude you always got gas.”

“Oh, I never heard of that. I thought you were saying something racial since I’m Mexican.”

“Dude, I said you need Beano, not Pinto Beano.”

Once the laughter subsides it gets for a few minutes, then Wallace the driver says, “I just hope we don’t see that monkey thing tonight.”

“Monkey thing?” I ask.

“Yeah, it’s some weird thing that howls in the night,” Sabo says.

“It’s probably a dog,” I say, feeling smart.

“A dog that climbs up trees?” Sabo asks. “We saw it in the nogs [night vision goggles] and I can’t tell you what it was. It was too big to be a possum. There are huge wild boars that run around here at night, but they also don’t climb trees. The thing yelps and then in the distance you hear other things yelping. It’s a complete mystery.”

“I think it’s something like a chupacabra,” Pantoja says.

“Goatsucker?” I say translating the words literally.

“Yeah, a creature that sucks the blood out of farmers’ goats in Mexico.”

“Well if you guys see the Howling-Monkey-Creature and I’m asleep, be sure to wake me up,” I say, thinking that one picture of the Monkey Thing could make me rich.

“I probably sleep better here than in my room,” Pantoja the gunner says. “There I just lay in my bed.”

Aren’t they all supposed to remain vigilant through the night? I wonder. Guess not. Soon the whole Humvee is completely silent. I think of the time I walked into the cockpit as our World Airlines MD-11 was flying over the Atlantic Ocean. The whole cockpit crew of three was sawing logs. I quickly exited the cockpit. It the plane was going to go down due to slumbering, I didn’t want to know anything about it.

I drift back to sleep. I think, God, I hate this fucking helmet. Doug lent it to me. It’s originally English. It has no upraised lip for the eyes like a U.S. helmet. The only thing good I can say about it is that it keeps my head warm as the night air turns chilly.

“There sounds like an explosion in the background,” Pantoja says after a lull.

“As long as it stays back there, it’s fine,” Greeson replies. “If they keep me awake tonight I'm going to be really pissed,” he adds.

Through the haze of slumber I catch sentences. “They’re playing drums.” “Sounds like someone's shooting.” “There’s music on top of the hill.”

Silence except for the patter of a few black raindrops on the window.

“Lights again! Put on your goggles,” Pantoja erupts. “There’s lots of vehicles out there now.” The cabin rouses to life. “Something flickered out there. It kind of moved and shined in my fucking face. That's a fucking vehicle, dude. There’s two vehicles to the right.”

Greeson gets on the radio and repeats Pantoja’s words to the operation center. “Cars linking up. 34 27.”

“27 34.”

“Another light’s going towards the wadi,” Greeson says.

“And now there’s another light 1/2 a click away. It's straight in front of us,” Pantoja says, his voice getting higher.

“My gunner is reporting lights in that area where we hit the mine. Please advise,” Greeson says.

After a pause, the guy on the radio comes back on: “Blow it up.”

Shit.

We sit still and wait. The Humvees don’t move. Nothing is fired. Nothing is blown up.

There’s the sound of two rocket blasts, followed by two swishes in the air. They come from very far away. “Shkin’s getting hit,” Wallace, the driver, says. In the distance are little flashes of light. Shkin is 11 kilometers from Bermel and only a few kilometers from the Pakistan border. It has mountains on either side of it. The insurgents easily bomb it at night then retreat behind a ridge in Pakistan for safety.

I go out to take a pee then freak out when I hear a shot. It turns out to be a can of soda being opened. I laugh at myself for being so freaked out. “We’re half paranoid in this country,” Wallace says. “The brain plays every scenario, usually towards the more negative ones.

“Someone in the next Humvee has stomach pains,” a voice says on the radio. “He just threw up.” Greeson gets out of the car and it seems hours before he returns. I can’t keep track of what’s going on because I can’t stay away. I don’t want to stay awake. Sleep is the only thing that’ll make this night pass faster.

•The gunner checking his machine gun in the first light of morning.•



•At the end of a long overnight mission, Sabo seeing if I'm coming.•

•Sabo saying, Screw it. I'm tired.•

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SKY ROCKETS IN FLIGHT AIN’T NO AFTERNOON DELIGHT - BERMEL, 24 AUGUST 2006

•Jon Hancock waiting out the rocket attack in a bunker at Bermel FOB.•

•Doug and me below. How to try to look good under a rocket attack.•




BERMEL, 24 AUGUST, THURSDAY

I’m sitting right now in a bomb bunker. Bermel has just been rocketed five times. There is no siren here on base. There was simply a yell: “Inco-o-oming.”

This bunker – a long square concrete snake padded outside with sandbags – can hold about 80 people. A group of guys is listening to football on a radio. It’s loud but they won’t turn it down so we can hear if more rockets are being launched. Earlier the same guys had been playing “Rocket Man” by Elton John. At least they have a good sense of humor.

Some guys have better hearing than I. They can detect that slight thump the enemy’s rocket launcher makes when shooting a new mortar. It has taken me 10 times to tell the difference between the sound of an incoming and outgoing rocket.

This is the second time I’ve been in this bunker today.

Those fucking inconsiderate Taliban bastards! This was my day to crank on my work. Sort my backlog of photos, caption the good ones and send them to photo agencies. Edit some articles I’ve written. Post to my blog. Doug is out on a patrol. I didn’t go because I wanted to be industrious.

So it’s a beautiful day, I’m inside the computer room, and at 11:45 I hear someone shout, Incoming! I see everybody scramble.

I surprise myself by how quickly I react. Pulling the plug to my laptop, closing it shut and putting it in my backpack in about 3 seconds. I credit my training as a flight attendant for that type of reaction. I went through three different trainings and there was always a great emphasis on what to do if the aircraft had a sudden emergency. (FYI: I did not yell, ‘Heads down! Grab ankles! Heads down! Grab ankles!’ when I heard the incoming shout.)

Once I had my backpack and camera bag with me, however, I was unsure what to do. Sabo had told me that if you hear the whistle of a rocket the best thing to do is lay flat on the ground, which gives you the best odds for not getting hit by shrapnel. “Don’t run around looking for shelter if none is nearby and don’t hover by a building because shrapnel tends to fly along surfaces,” he advised.

All that advice for naught.

First of all, in the computer room I didn’t hear the rocket whistle by. I just heard a slight boom.

Second of all, the place where I was seemed pretty safe. It had steel beams and concrete walls, so I thought to myself, Should I just stay here? But maybe since it was next to the command center it was being targeted. So I ran, clueless, into the courtyard and across the FOB to the bunker near my hooch since I didn’t know where the nearest bunker to the computer room was. (Very UN-flight-attendant! We were trained to always know where you’re nearest exit is if you’re a passenger so that if there is an emergency you can help out the flight attendants.)

I didn’t understand how rocket attacks take place. The enemy lobs one. It hits near or in the FOB. Someone yells incoming and you seek a bunker. But what if they lob one when you’re seeking a bunker? Oh God.

So I get into this bunker, panting, and there’s a guy with his hand bleeding and another guy shining a blue light on it. I find out that Sgt. Robert Bass (28, of Modesto, California) injured his wrist when he heard the whistle of the rocket. He dove into a Humvee. Then when he heard the impact he dove out to get close to the ground. That’s when he cracked his wrist, which was getting very swollen.

• Sitting in a bomb shelter, Sgt. Manuel Villapando examines the injured wrist of Sgt. Robert Bass. Both are engineers of the California National Guard stationed at Bermel Forward Operating Base (FOB) near the Pakistan border. Sgt. Bass injured his wrist when trying to avoid being hit by an incoming rocket, launched by the Taliban from a nearby mountain ridge. Sgt. Bass, of Modesto, California, dove into a Humvee when he heard the whistle of the rocket.•


Sgt. Manuel Villapando holding the flashlight was trying to assess the injury. I immediately began to snap away. Wow, I’ve just been in a rocket attack, I’m in a bunker with a bunch of soldiers, I’ve got an injured guy next to me and my camera bag is around my shoulder. What more could a photojournalist ask for? O.K. maybe something more than a cracked wrist, say some shrapnel in the buttocks, but hey this was good for starters.

I found out that the soldiers in this bunker were all part of 145th Engineering Brigade from the California National Guard. They’re helping build and guard a road from here to Orgun-E. You couldn’t luck out for a better bomb shelter. These guys were hilarious. When I asked for Villapando’s name someone yelled, “Just put down Panda Bear.”

A white-haired black guy sat on a case of bottled water. “Hey do a story about him, he’s the oldest man in the military,” one guys yelled out laughing. The black guy gave him a mock dirty glare then shook his head looking out at the white lime powder poured all over the carpet of rocks.

•Soldiers listening for incoming rockets.•


For the most part things were quite jovial.

I asked one guy why he joined the army and he said, “So I could shoot people and get away with it.” Everybody laughed guiltily.

Some guys inculpate the ANA (Afghan National Army) for the rocket attack. “They let anyone walk into their compound,” says one. “Someone sure did their homework,” says another. Both believe that the rockets that entered the FOB area are because insiders gave coordinates to the bad guys.

When the TOC gave the all-clear signal I returned to the computer to download some pictures, then I was planning to getting lunch. We had been in the bunker for an hour.

As I started working there were some conversation on the phone near me. Calls to the U.S. are free at all FOBs. It’s a dividend for being based in such a dangerous place. Soldiers dial 9, the area code and phone number in the States and they’re connected. Though you’d imagine most calls would be upbeat, the truth is most are either bitching, nagging or complaining sessions. I just overhear a few tidbits, mind you. I’d never eavesdrop on the conversation like the one some sunburnt red-headed soldier was having with his wife.:

“You know that claim I put in about my accident just before I left? Well get this, now the insurance company is saying they’re unsure whether I filed the paperwork soon enough. And because my sister didn’t mail in my payments, my interest rates went from 5.9% to 21.9%. And then we get hit by rockets all around us, what a fucking awesome day.”

My thoughts exactly.

[By the way, I was told by my friend Nick at Bagram that when you join the military your interest rates automatically drop to a very low level and creditors can’t touch you. Hmmm. Am I too old to enlist?]

Everybody was just getting on with things when I heard incoming, again. Same scenario, grab laptop, stuff in backpack and then run like a dog with a paper sack on its head to the bomb shelter. Not because it’s the closest but because it’s the most fun.

Obviously these terrorists are ruthless. They want to fuck with our lunch!

This time it takes almost 80 minutes before the all-clear is called. Everybody was complaining how the military can spend $250,000 for a mortar but can’t cough up $250 for a siren.

“Just get a big ass gong,” says one guy.

“Or a triangle,” says another.

“Or a cow horn,” I suggest. “I bought one in Switzerland for $1.35. Think of the thousands of dollars we could save the U.S. government with just one cow horn. For a few pennies more we can have edelweiss painted on the side.”

“Yeah, I like that Swiss idea,” says a tall, brawny guy with a contagious laugh by the name of Ezequiel Acosta. “We could get cowbells for the Taliban so we know where they are.”

“And we could save the government more money by using cows as minesweepers,” I add. “Whenever one hits a mine we can have fresh hamburger in the chow hall that evening.”

•Jon Hancock points out the splash point or point of contact of a rocket inside the Bermel FOB. Although it didn’t leave much of a depression, it’s the flying shrapnel that is deadly.•


We hear that a rocket hit near the DFAC, AKA chow hall. So I go take a look with a few other guys. It was very close indeed. By the timing of the rocket attack and the location of this rocket it’s pretty obvious what those fuckheads are aiming at. The depression in the gravel isn’t very deep, but there’s a Silly-Putty-egg-sized piece of shrapnel on the ground. It’s extremely heavy, like led, and has very sharp edges from when it melted from the impact.

We see that shrapnel pierced a comex container used for showers. We go into the comex and see where the shrapnel exited the wall. A large black water tank by the comex is spouting water from a hole. The shrapnel punctured the very thick black plastic wall.

Rocket lesson 101: It’s not so much the rocket you have to be concerned about. It’s the shrapnel. Later I hear Sabo say, “Movies get it wrong, shrapnel moves too fast to see.”

•Debris from two rockets that landed inside the Bermel FOB.•


It’s 4 PM by the time I sit down in earnest in the computer room and start to concentrate again. And then. INCOMING!

Are those insurgents frickin’ kidding?! Now I’m pissed. A whole day wasted in a bomb shelter. This third bunker call lasts over 90 minutes.

I give up. When I get out of the bunker I put my computer in the Bee-hut and just go straight for dinner. Not my favorite choice tonight: spare ribs. Not easy to cut with a plastic knife and fork. I’m in the process of slicing off the first rib when … you guessed it … INCOMING!

Now I’m wondering what resources this FOB has to fight back. The bases rocket launcher was sending something into the offending mountain range. How effective those mortars are seemed obvious as the Taliban kept rocketing us. This bomb threat only lasts 20 minutes.

When I get back to dinner my lunch tray is still on the table where I left it. The knife and fork still stuck in the spare rib where I was struggling to cut it.

• A meal left in the “chow hall” at the moment the fourth incoming rocket yell of they day went out at Bermel Forward Operating Base. An hour later, after being in bomb shelter in full protective gear, the diner returns to find his spare rib and mashed potatoes exactly as he left it.•


For the first time since I've arrived in Afghanistan I crave a cold beer. Something big, like a Foster’s or a Sapporo. Oh God, I need a beer.

At the table are Doug, Sabo and Greeson, the two guys from the Humvee patrol the other night. They inform us that early tomorrow morning they’re going on another mission. Doug and I ask if we can join. They say sure.

Since I didn’t get any work done today I stay up all night until our Humvee patrol leaves.

I say, Let’s kick some terrorist ass! How dare they mess with the mess hall and my work.

•Version 2.•

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ROLLING BEER BOTTLES & BOMBING TALIBAN CAVES - BERMEL, 25 AUGUST

•Matt H, sniper, good guy, Bermel FOB.•


BERMEL, 25 AUGUST, FRIDAY

A small convoy of fully-manned Humvees is corralled in a grove of tall, crooked ponderosa pines. You’d think you’re in Yosemite or Yellowstone if it weren’t for the machine guns. I notice the bark of the gnarled tree trunk next to our Humvee. It’s white and waxy, like the quiver trees (kokerbooms) of Namibia, another place that’s arid and hot like Afghanistan.

Being able to only see out the side window, as I sit behind the front passenger seat, I couldn’t make out what the tall black shadows were outside as we drove here in the pre-dawn darkness. In the twilight of early morning, the trunks looked like specters. The gas fumes permeating the inside of this Humvee might be partly to blame for my seeing things.

•Scraggly pine tree with waxy, white bark outside Bermel FOB.•

•Humvee parked in pine grove outside Bermel FOB on mounted patrol mission.•


I was surprised to find out it was a forest. I thought the land outside the FOB was all baked, flat, barren scrubland until the foothills of the mountains. Instead the land rises gradually until you reach this forested point of beauty. From our vantage point I can see below a square the size of a cigarette box; Bermel.

The mission of today’s convoy is to take out the Taliban who rocketed the Bermel base yesterday. Under the pall of darkness, I thought we were going to drive up to the ridge from where the mortars were launched. Instead we remain parked by the trees and watch the sun rise and illuminate near-by mud-brick farmhouses.

“It sounded like outgoing from the FOB but I haven't heard splash,” Murray, the driver of our Humvee, says at 6:30 AM. Translation: It sounded like a rocket was launched from the Forward Operating Base (smaller than a regular military base but bigger than an Outpost (OP) which is a modern version of the wooden-stake fort in the Old West), but I didn't hear the rocket hit the ground and explode.

Next to me in the backseat is PFC Matt H, a 20-year-old professional sniper from Tucson. Manning the turret is Spc John St. Jean, AKA The Haitian Sensation, a 26-year-old originally from Haiti who now resides in Miami. The driver is PFC James Murray, 25, from London (Ohio), a standard military issue with the thin mustache and tin of Skoal in his jacket pocket. In the front passenger seat is our Humvee troop leader, Sgt Michael Emerick, 24, of Slidell CA, a 6'4," blond with a shaven head. He has two pictures stuck in the bottom of the inside windshield. One picture shows him in a navy blue formal army uniform with a new bride. The other shows his wife and 3-month old son.

The rockets being fired from the base sound like distant thunder. Between the lulls I hear chickens crowing and clucking. We hear over the short-wave radio that the Taliban is bombing Shkin, a FOB 11 "clicks" (kilometers) from Bermel. While Bermel is seven clicks from the Pakistan border, Shkin is only a few kilometers away. It is in a bowl. The Taliban likes to bomb it from the mountaintops on either side then scram back across the border into the safe haven of Pakistan. It would be nice if Pakistan allowed the Coalition Forces a 5-mile zone within its border where the military could pursue the bad guys, but they don't.

At 8:45 AM we cross a mostly dry, rocky river bed. The two-ton Humvees then ponderously climb up the spine of a mountain ridge. The edge of a precipice is uncomfortably near my window. We're tilting perilously to the right and I'm not sure I closed my reinforced steel door all the way. I'm afraid it might swing open, I’ll lose my balance and slide out, being then crushed like a garden-variety beetle by the Humvee’s bloated tractor-sized back tire or by the Humvee when it completely tips over. A Buddhist reprisal for all the bugs I killed as a kid for no reason other than to watch them die.

When our Humvee pauses for a half minute I reclose my door and lock it. We keep crawling up the ridge reaching a part that is narrower than the width of the Humvee’s axels. In my head, I can see us rolling over to the left side, down the mountain ridge like a heavy olive-green boulder.

“God, I could go for a 5-gallon bucket of Chinese pork and rice soaked in soy sauce,” Emerick says, unwittingly reminding everybody in the cab how hungry we are.

The front Humvee radios the Humvees to park. And there we sit, each Humvee 30 feet farther down the ridge than the other. On top this beautiful mountain range there are spectacular views of the flat plains on one side and mountain ridges on the other. I thought these infantrymen were going to go on foot and track down the insurgents, but it turns out it’s more practical for them to park on the ridge in clear view and say to the Taliban, ‘Come and get us.’

•Landscape outside Bermel FOB.•


The sun gets higher. We sit. The heat becomes more intense. We sit. We sweat underneath our body armor. We sit.

I nod off in the sizzling temperature. I'm afraid to open my door lest a sniper tries to shoot me. I’ve since learned in Afghanistan how to sleep sitting up. I’m an expert now; the 25-pound flack jacket pulling down on my shoulders and the annoyingly uncomfortable Kevlar British helmet barely bother me. The cigarette smoke and heat filling the cabin are of no consequence.

I pulled an all-nighter last night. What good is sleep when you have to get up at 3 AM? I sleep for about an hour then I wake up because I’m hungry. There’s a bunch of MREs (AKA Meals Ready to Eat, AKA Meals Refused by Ethiopians) to choose from. I choose the teriyaki chicken. I learn how to place the silver packaged entrée in “the oven,” a green bag with some type of chemical in it that heats up when a little water is added to the bottom. You then put them in a box that says “lean on rock or something” and wait for your meal to heat up. They’re actually not too bad once you learn how to make them. It’s like when I was a flight attendant, I got to a point where I craved the in-flight meals: Oh yum, beef!

While we wait to see what the enemy will do I ask Matt H. how in the world he became a professional sniper at age 20. “I’ve had guns since I was 9 years old,” the 6’4” lanky Arizonan explains. “It started with pop guns, then I joined the boy scouts, then because of 9/11 I joined the military.” I’ve heard lots of people say they joined the military on account of 9/11.

•Matt H’s official Sniper tattoo.•


“I would suppose there’s a lot of people who would love to become snipers and take out their aggression with bullets,” I say.

“Well, we have to through a battery of psychological evaluations,” he says.

“Speaking of psychological evaluations,” Murray says with a laugh as Sgt John Sabo comes sauntering up to us.

“Hey, fuck you Murray,” Sabo shoots back, his voice that of a brawler. We’re shooting the shit when I turn the conversation around.

“So, Sabo,” I say, “why did you join military?”

He pulls out his pack of Camel Lights, sucks in a deep breath of smoke and gives a thoughtful answer. “Well I didn’t have too many choices when I got out of high school up in Wisconsin. Either I could work a dead end job in a window factory or I could get a farm job where I’d paid like shit to shovel shit. The military seemed liked the right place for me. Also it runs in my family.”

“How so?”

“Well, my Dad grew up in a four-room house with nine brothers and four sisters. My Dad and all my uncles enlisted. Two went to Korea, the rest to Vietnam. We all had our thoughts about Shawn, though,” Sabo says about one uncle who wasn’t as ass-kicking a son-of-a-bitch as his brothers. “Whenever my family would together there was always one chair left empty for Mike, the only one who didn’t make it back.”

•"Now my uncle Larry, the one who was almost killed with a chainsaw, has a double wide." Sabo & Doug•
•••

If you don’t know John Sabo, a wiry, 5’10” guy with tattoos running down the length of both arms, you might be forgiven for thinking that the only thing missing to complete his look is a T-shirt that says, “Shoot ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out.” Sabo is a badass and good ol’ boy rolled into one, a veritable Rambo meets Lassie.

Don’t ever call him a red neck though. Not only would he kick your ass, it would be inaccurate. He’s not a person whose family tree looks like a telephone pole. And he’s not a hick, at least not in the sense of some uneducated hayseed who thinks the Confederate flag should fly from the top of every capital building in the South or some beer-bellied slob who thinks the only good thing about Mexico is Taco Bell.

Sabo is just a simple dude from Wisconsin. Yes, Wisconsin, the land that brings to mind green pastures, dairy cows, and round slabs of cheese. He just happens to have a family and circle of friends that tend more towards trailer than split-level.

At dinner the night before, Sabo shows Doug and me his “meat tag,” a number tattooed under his left arm below the chest that can identify him in case he’s killed in action. He talked about his family last night and also today. How he’s the puny one adopted into a German and Czech family of giants. There’s Uncle Larry who’s 6’10” tall and has a scar on his face from where a guy tried to kill him with a chainsaw.

“Since my dad broke his neck in a motorcycle accident he shrunk. He’s only 6’4” tall now,” Sabo reports.

“Can he still walk?” I ask.

“Oh yeah, he still drives a dump truck.”

When he was young he remembers while his uncles were playing cards and drinking whiskey after hunting they’d get to talking about their days in the service. One would say how tough he had it in Vietnam, another would say Korea was 10 times worst. “My grandpa would listen quietly then at a certain point stand up and pound his fist on the table. ‘Goddamnit!’ he shout. ‘Those weren’t real wars. Omaha Beach! That was war!’”

Sabo’s grandpa, who lost an eye in World War II, was the quintessential glue that bonded the big family. Sabo explained how his grandpa and grandma hated each other so much that his grandpa walled off the house into two sections so that he could have one part and she could have the other. “He put a hole under the stairwell in case he had to go see her for something important. Every Thanksgiving and Christmas they’d arrive in separate cars.” Divorce was out of the question for these devout Catholics.

“After Grandpa Brandenberg died, I couldn’t bring myself to go into his house for a couple of months,” Sabo says, looking at his dusty boots. “My cousin David – the one I told you who’s in the state pen now – stole one of Grandpa’s antique guns and sold it for drugs.”

If Grandpa Brandenberg was the mentoring OB1-Kenobi of Sabo’s life, then his Dad was the bumbling yet reliable R2-D2.

“When I was growing up my dad had a remote control for the TV. Me,” Sabo says followed by a laugh. “He’s was always doing stuff, usually when he was lit up. One time he emptied a 55-gallon barrel drum of half-empty aerosol cans into a burn pit, then sat down by me in his aluminum lawn chair, grabbed a beer out of his cooler and watched them whiz off into the sky one can at a time.”

“Not only does my Dad have a drinking problem, he has an attitude problem,” Sabo continues, smiling because he knows he has a rapt audience with me, Murray, Matt H. and few other guys from the other Humvees hanging on his each and every word during this otherwise boring mission. “One day we’re in my old man’s Chevy and he starts passing this car. When he’s even with the car we see it’s a state trooper. My dad lifts up his beer can to toast the cop then floors it. ‘Oh no. I’m going to prison with dad,’ I thought.’”

“So what happened?” I ask.

“Well it turns out the County Sheriff was in ‘Nam with my Dad, so they kind of worked it all out.”

Born in 1976, Sabo seems kind of young when he tells me he has five kids. He later explains that his wife is older than he is and had kids of her own. Sabo has one from a previous marriage and one with his current wife whom he met at a place called the Platinum String Club when she was swinging on a pole.

“She’s real pretty,” Sabo states, “but between the six of my in-laws there’s maybe one set of good teeth.”

We’re still laughing when Sabo asks where I was before Bermel. I tell him that Doug and I landed in Kabul then took a taxi to Bagram.

“You took a taxi in the country?” Sabo asks, his jaw dropping.

“Yeah, it was O.K., a guy at Eggers set it up through his translator.”

“Did you guys have guns?”

“Are you serious?”

“Hey, I don’t even travel in America without at least two guns.”

While they’re telling me how brave I am and my head concomitantly swells up, I notice something.

“Hey look, I see people down by the river,” I say, pointing at the mostly dry winding white-pebbled riverbed.

Sabo looks downstream. “That actually a good sign. When you see people in the fields, or kids playing, it means the bad guys are probably not in the area. You always see people along the river. There’s a madrasa Muslim school for boys nearby. Now, you see those women down there?” he points to two figures in black, orange and red dresses. “They wash their clothes in that water and 50 meters upstream someone will be pissing in it. Sick.”

I suggest that these people have lived like this for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. Other than their houses not having electricity, their kulots – high-walled, mud brick fortifications with huts inside – seem to be pretty well-maintained and clean.

“These people don’t want to change,” Sabo says dismissively. “And I can talk. I’ve lived in trailers that were so uneven you could roll a beer bottle down the kitchen floor. So I know how you can change your life if you want.”

I’m back sitting in my Humvee when I hear the radio squawking. “An attack is possible,” the TOC (Tactical Operating Center) announces. It's 1 PM. Emerick has been sleeping for hours already. Attack is imminent and Emerick’s large shaven pink head remains on his little brown tiger-striped pillow.

30 minutes later, Tim the prophet (a guy who translates messages into English) says that there are three terrorists out there. Their names are Ferouk, Marshay and Akbar. “They are on their way to us,” he says. The strategy to make ourselves visible and to tell the Taliban to bring it on appears to be working well. “One of them is going to pick up a heavy box,” the prophet informs us. I assume the heavy box is filled with explosives and not “I ♥ America” sweatshirts.

We hear that Cherokees and Blackhawks are coming and that a B1-bomber flying at 20,000+ feet will drop on the ridge some 500-pound “J-dams” (bombs), each costing the taxpayer between $1,000,000 and $2,000,000.

Tim the prophet speaks up again. “Right now two guys are reminiscing about their childhood and how much fun they had. And how they will be going to heaven.”

“Abdul you remember how much fun it was having sex with that goat,” Murray says. Murray’s deceptively funny. He reminds of Dan Aykroyd from old Saturday Night Live skits when he had a bushy mustache. (I always recall that skit where Aykroyd is a toy salesman and wears wire-rimmed aviator sunglasses while being interviewed by Jane Curtain who challenges him about the safety of one of his toys: crushed glass in a bag.)

A guy walks past us carrying a black tube. I follow him. He goes up to the first Humvee where a few guys are pulling out fin-tailed 60mm mortars from a wooden crate. The guy inserts five of them in the tube and shoots them towards the ridge in question. Each impact sounds like a clap of thunder. I’m not quite sure what the reasoning is behind the mortars. Are they trying to scare the Taliban insurgents? Isn’t it pretty unlikely that they’ll actually kill anybody from so far away?

At 1:50 the FOB sends out high-charged 120mm rockets, adding to the eight they’ve already launched today.

“Just where are these Taliban guys?” I ask Sabo.

“We think they’re up by the ridge in some camouflaged caves, but in actuality we never know. They can blend in with the locals and you can’t tell who’s who. We used to use another ridge for surveillance and launching rocks [rockets] but they landmined it. This area isn’t that safe. We’ve had ambushes down there.” Sabo points to an idyllic old mud building on a tiered high point of land. “The insurgents herded all the townspeople in that village into one building then proceeded to carry out their ambush.”

“Air support is the biggest deterrent,” Matt H. says. “Shoot and scoot keeps the Taliban at bay for a while.”

As we wait for the aircraft to arrive, some of these fight-loving infantrymen get impatient. “Being here is in Afghanistan is like dog years,” one soldier says who joins us. “One year feels like seven.”

“What is the goal of all this?” I ask. “If there are only five ridges and four kilometers between Bermel and Pakistan, what is to keep these bad guys from coming back in a week or even less?”

“Our goal is to get local confidence and teach the local army and police how to patrol their area,” Sabo says, taking a deep drag of his Camel. “How do we keep the insurgents from returning, I can’t say.”

In the distance two dots appear above the green and tan valley. They look like black dragonflies. There are two Blackhawk helicopters followed by a wasp-looking Apache helicopter.

The two Blackhawks drop smoke bombs on the ridge while the Cherokee zips all around like an angry hornet looking for possible enemy fire. “Whoa, look at the Willie Pete!” Murray says.

“Willie Pete?” I ask.

“White phosphorous. Tear gas,” Emerick says, having finally roused himself to consciousness.

“They’ve buzzed the mountains. Now the enemy is either going to attack or wait and see what happens,” Matt H. says.

•Matt H looks up at Blackhawk helicopters ready to attack a ridge containing Taliban caves.•


The helicopters disappear for 20 minutes then return. This time they lob rockets on the ridge. And the Apache shoots rounds of ammunition into it.

Hey St. Jean what was he pumping it with?” Murray asks regarding the ammunition the Cherokee helicopter used on the ridge.

“Some shit,” St. Jean replies, being as specific as possible.

We’re told the B1-bombers are on their way and even though we’re over a kilometer away we’re ordered to pull back. As we head down the mountain ridge, St. Jean the gunner shouts to Murray the driver to watch out.

“The Humvee isn’t going to flip,” Emerick yells up.

“You don’t have the feeling I have,” St. Jean yells down.

When we reposition ourselves, not so far from where we were this morning, we hear on the radio that the B1s will be dropping their bombs in five minutes. I can’t see the planes in the sky but I can hear their far-away whoosh. The bombs on the other hand are truly loud, like a clap of thunder a stone’s throw away.

All the guys whoop it up as a fire ball consumes half the ridge. “This is one of the few things I truly love about this job: high explosive bombs dropped from aircraft,” Matt H. says, beaming.

•SGT Michael Emerick, 24, of Slidell, CA, looks up at B1-bomber as it drops 500-pound bomb on Taliban caves.•


The B1s drop three bombs in all. All spectacular in their phenomenal strength, tree-uprooting and stone-throwing fire balls and supersonic booms. But all are off target. I’m told that if they put a radio locator on he spot it’d be a 100% direct hit. The question is who would be willing to climb up to a Taliban cave to place the locator. And what about those people whose houses and farms are near that ridge. If we had to move three kilometers away to have a safe distance between us and the bombs, what happens when you’re only a half kilometer or less from the impact zone.

So did the $3,000,000 to $6,000,000 worth of bombs dropped, which have filled the air with a sulphury, smoky smell, snuff out the Taliban?

Answer: Soon after the last bombs have been lobbed on the ridge, three rockets in quick succession fly out of a ridge and explode near the FOB. (So now can anybody donate $300 to $600 to Bermel so that they can get a rocket-warning siren system installed?)

“They're getting really ballsy now,” Sabo says, his voice dripping with acid. “They said over their intercoms to us, ‘Keep bringing the wood.’” In this case “wood” means rockets. It doesn’t refer to the jingle truck that was stopped earlier by Emerick and then forced to unload all the old wood from the bed to see if there were rockets underneath. (There have been reports of jingle trucks transporting rockets underneath the loads on their beds. Sabo says they even use camels to move missiles.)

• A jingle truck being unloaded by its three drivers. They were ordered to unload the contents by the U.S. military at a checkpoint in order to conduct a thorough search. These brightly painted and decorated Afghani trucks are nicknamed “jingle trucks” by the U.S. military on account of the sound the ornamental chains that hang from the bumpers make when they are driven. The Taliban has been transporting rockets and ammunition on the bottom of such loads.•


“So are you guys going to go back up that ridge we were on to follow-up on today’s operations?” I ask. “It seemed like a perfect vantage point.”

“We can’t go there again, that whole ridge will be mined in a day or two.”

While we wait to pick off any bad guys that might be coming down the ridge, I talk with Emerick. He tells me that since he’s been in Afghanistan he’s only been scared two times. The first time is when he was almost ambushed. And the second time was a recent bullet to the head. They call it the Million Dollar Shot because the bullet hit Emerick’s Kevlar helmet on one temple, went around to the other temple and bounced off. (Although Emerick says nothing happened, some will attest to the fact that he hasn’t been the same since.)

I thought we were going to have to stay out here all night, but the TOC tells us to come back in. The sun is still in the sky.

•After a long hot day in a heavy hot flak jacket and helmet, time to go back to the FOB.•




That night, after sleeping one night in a Humvee and going the other without sleep, laying down in a bed is better than sex – not that I remember what that is or anything.

Before I fall asleep I laugh to myself at something Sabo said this afternoon, which I’m not so sure I understand, “Even the sun shines on a dog's ass sometimes.”

•The side mirror of a detained jingle truck•

• Inside of a detained jingle truck. The jingle truck’s three drivers were ordered to unload the truckbed of wood by the U.S. military at a check point in order to conduct a thorough search.•

• One of three drivers detained by U.S. military at roadblock and instructed to remove all wood from truck bed in order to conduct thorough search.•

•One of three drivers detained by U.S. military at roadblock and instructed to remove all wood from truck bed in order to conduct thorough search.•

•A jingle truck being unloaded by its three drivers. They were ordered to unload the contents by the U.S. military at a check point in order to conduct a thorough search.•

•Sgt Michael Emerick, 24, of Slidell, CA, stops a “jingle truck” and does a weapon search on one of the three drivers.•

•One of three drivers detained by U.S. military at roadblock and instructed to remove all wood from truck bed in order to conduct thorough search.•

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ATTACK OF THE KILLER HERSHEY SQUIRTS - BERMEL, 26 AUGUST

BERMEL, 26 AUGUST, SATURDAY

"Put on all your gear, they say they're going to attack at 1730," I overhear one soldier tell another in the internet room. It's 1420 (2:20 PM). A minute later I hear rockets being launched from the FOB towards the mountain ridges where the bad guys are located.

Oh fucking great! Today was the day I was going to get caught up on my backlog. I had an opportunity to go with one of the patrols and walk up to the caves and do a follow-up walk-around. They say that 15 Taliban were killed. It would’ve been cool to see. But now our base is going to be attacked by the bastards. Don’t these people have jobs they have to go to for Christ’s sake?

At 3:30 two more rockets are fired from the base. (I’m so proud of myself that I can distinguish between outgoing and incoming … at least I think I can.) I’ve learned a lot since the first day of being attacked by rockets. My backpack and camera bag are by my laptop. I’m ready to close my Powerbook, stick it in the backpack, grab my camera bag and run at a moment's notice to the bomb shelter.

At 4 PM I venture out to the Chow Hall (gratefully open 24 hours) to get some coffee. Everybody in the camp is bustling around. Everybody has their body armor on. I eat three pieces of fish surreptitiously by my laptop – it is expressly forbidden to bring food or drinks in the computer room. I think the reason is because of the flies, five of which are buzzing around me and annoying other people in the room. Oops.

“Make sure you put on all your gear by 1730,” I hear a soldier tell another in the computer room. “It’s mandatory.”

At 5:30 PM I go to my hooch to get my flak jacket and helmet. The camp is a ghost town. There are just the local workers, the three dogs and a handful of soldiers.

"Out of the three platoons in camp, two and a half are deployed," one soldier tells me. This must be serious because the two phones that the soldiers can call America for free on are both unused for the first time. No men fighting with their wives using 'fuck' for every other word, no quiet-as-a-Catholic-confession conversations, no complaining about the military.

I’m typing away when all the sudden my heart starts freaking out. I feel like I’m going into cardiac arrest. Maybe it’s all the coffee I’ve been drinking. I think I have high blood pressure because when I drink coffee back home my heart races. But here it’s been fine because I’m always so tired. But maybe I made I mistake. Then I feel horrible hunger pangs. I vaguely recall having this feeling before, though I can’t place my finger on it.

Then I feel my brakes giving out. Oh shit. Literally.

I try to look at the bright side. No more constipation problems. I feel temporarily O.K. when I come back from the outhouse. Then my stomach feels like a roiling sea of vinegar. I decide I have to get this rotten fish out of my stomach and try to induce vomiting, but mainly orange juice that tastes like curry comes up.

As luck would have it I’ve lost my little flashlight. Probably left it in the Humvee the other night. Unlike Bagram or Kabul these FOBs are blacked-out. In other words I have trouble finding the shitters, which are all placed at the far end of the camp, in the pitch black. I pray I don’t lose my brakes or stumble on a rock and involuntarily do a Hershey squirt in my pants.
Inching my way towards the toilet I’m afraid that one of the dogs in camp will maul me since I’m not carrying a flashlight.

Zeus is the head dog. He was brought here on base as a puppy by the marines. He apparently hates the sound of Pashto or Dari and if he hears them will bark his head off or worse. I’ve been told if he barks at you, just speak English and he’ll chill out. But when you’re blind and disabled you get worried about ‘what ifs,’ as in what if I talk English and Zeus bites my leg off because he thinks I’m an insurgent sneaking into camp because I don’t have a flashlight.

Or what if the dogs have been killed and an insurgent is actually on base. I can see him slitting my throat as I’m zombie-walking my way to the head.

I go into the chow hall to get something effervescent. Diet Coke is the only thing I can find that’s suitable. I haven’t drunk soda in decades, but this is no time to be concerned about being healthy.

I see both of the girls based on camp in the computer room when I come back. One girl has a stick permanently lodged up her ass (the other day I tried to ask her a question in the internet room and she acted like she didn’t hear me because she was wearing headphones. I was like, watch out honey when they yell for incoming rockets.) The other girl works in the kitchen and is very sweet. I tell her that her fish was bad and has made me very ill.

“Sir,” she says very sincerely, “I highly recommend never eat seafood in a landlocked country.” Advice well taken. “I make it but I don’t touch the stuff.” I then recall how it was the end of lunch and all the other food was eaten but the fish tray was practically full. Even the local base workers were smart enough not to touch that putrid fish.

An officer coming out of an adjacent room overhears our conversation and says to me that he hasn’t had a hard crap since he got to Afghanistan. “I could shit through a screen door,” he says.

Another soldier says it could be the water they use here in the bathroom. “There was a platoon out on a three-day patrol and they had worms coming out of their asses,” he reports. (Did I mention that the farther you get from large, safe and bureaucratic bases, the more relaxed, straight-forward and normal the people are, using dirtier language – even though they’re in substantially more danger. I’ve heard that in the Outposts (OPs), which is the only thing smaller than a FOB (which is line or company-sized), the soldiers walk around in T-shirts and shorts and have BBQs.)

I think back and recall that I did brush my teeth that day using the water from the sinks. You’re actually supposed to used bottled water. I was too lazy to get a bottle – which are free and lay in boxes all over the bases here – and now I’m perhaps paying the price. One guy says he was testing the water in a well from a nearby village and he found that it contained fecal matter. Yay.

When I pack up and stumble ever so carefully to my hooch, I barely make it to the can. Being a prisoner to the toilet seat I start getting these crazy paranoid fears that a camel spider could be lurking below me in one of those half-cut oil drums ready to pounce on my pooper. Oh the misery of it all. (At least the bathrooms have lights.)

Notes to self: next time I travel to the Developing World, pack Imodium AD! Use only bottled water to brush teeth and rinse toothbrush. And NEVER eat fish on a military base again.

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I SAVED $15 ON A TAXI BUT ALMOST LOST MY LIFE - BERMEL, BAGRAM, CAMP PHOENIX, 27, 28, 29, 30 AUGUST 2006

•Little Coochie goat herder with lazy eye with one of his flock.•

BERMEL to BAGRAM, 27 AUGUST 2006, SUNDAY
BAGRAM to CAMP PHOENIX IN KABUL, 28 AUGUST, MONDAY
CAMP PHOENIX IN KABUL, 29 & 30 AUGUST, TUESDAY & WEDNESDAY

I’ve been told I’ll love one thing one moment and swear it’s the best, then the next moment I’ll discover something else and swear that that’s the best.

There is, of course, no validity whatsoever to this statement. But I will say, that although I didn’t particularly care for the first FOB I visited – Orgun-last-one-to-leave-please-turn-out-the-lights-E -- I really, really liked Bermel.

Sure there were a few rockets and tales of an imminent attack. But the people there were great. I still had at least 12 more relatives of Sgt Sabo to hear about. When I found out Doug and I were leaving I was sad to go. In Bagram or Kabul you can’t wash your own laundry for free like here. And there’s no 24-hour chow hall like here. The only thing I was looking forward to was a fast wireless or DSL connection.

Sleep-deprived as always, on my final morning in Bermel, I saw one of the Engineers from the bomb shelter, that tall brawny Hispanic, Ezequiel Acosta, as I was headed for the shower. He was clipping his nails outside his barracks. I chirped, Good morning, then proceeded to walk straight into his barracks instead of the showers. Oh God, I’m a tard.

Later Ezequiel would be joining Doug and I for the Chinook to Bagram.

I made the stupid error of trying to take pictures of the helicopters when they landed. Dust flew everywhere like a Depression-era sand storm. My camera was totally 9/11ed with dust. I had a feeling this was going to cause me problems. And of course it did. My sensor (the mirror in the camera) is covered with dust, so now on my pictures there are some black specks. Poop! It’s really hard to clean a sensor too. Live and learn I guess.

The Chinook flight was a frickin’ odyssey. First we stopped in Bath (a FOB) to drop off some people and pick up others. Then we stopped in my favorite place, Orgun-E, to refuel. Then we landed in Salerno (another FOB) for another troop and cargo exchange. From there it was another two hours to Bagram. It’s not like you can read a book or something in the windy, cramped, dark Chinook cabin. So I tried to sleep.

•Back to Bagram.•



At Bagram Doug and I had to haul our combined 10 tons of luggage ourselves. Doug finally got a hold of Sgt Shaughn Cullop (the guy who resembles Mr. Big) and he picked us up and got us our accommodations, which on a Sunday at 5 PM was no small feat.

It was great to see all the good-looking people back at the DFAC (chow hall). Yes Bagram is truly the New York City of Afghanistan military bases. It was also great to use the wireless in the USO (or UFO) building, which offers free popcorn and cookies and has DVDs playing on a large screen TV in front of rows of cushiony couches.

The only glitch I had is when I was coming back to the accommodations, where we had 2 roommates, I couldn’t remember if it was 2B or 2D. After fumbling around at 3:00 in the morning for 15 minutes, I chose door number two, 2D and found my bed. (Earlier I was laughing how when Doug and I were at Bagram last time for five days we were meticulous about always locking our door with the combination lock. It wasn’t until the last day, when we were about to leave our accommodations, that I opened the back door at the other end of the room and discovered it had been unlocked the entire time.)

The next morning, Monday the 28th, Doug and I get onto a convoy to Camp Phoenix in Kabul. When I see that we’re riding in open air trucks covered by olive canopies, I turn to Doug. “We’re sitting ducks in these. I think a taxi would’ve been safer. We should’ve just called Shaviola, wore “man jammies” [the U.S. military’s nickname for the local garments worn by men] and took the taxi. But hey, we’re saving $15 each by going in the convoy, and in the end that’s the important part.”

•The view from the back of an open air truck driving from Bagram to Camp Phoenix.•

•In an open air truck from Bagram to Camp Phoenix.•

•Doug with safety glasses in the back of an open air truck going from Bagram to Camp Phoenix.•

•The view from the back of an open air truck driving from Bagram to Camp Phoenix.•


We start gabbing with two officers about the safety of the roads. “When we first got here, Doug and I took a taxi from Kabul to Bagram and were stopped by the Taliban,” I boast, my chin rising in the air, my chest inflating.

“They weren’t the Taliban,” Doug (gain)says.

“Oh yeah, right, they were Ministry of Finance. They were totally Taliban.”

Doug rolls his eyes as I try (miserably) to uphold the awe of the two men, who are now not paying any attention to me.

We’re told that the most dangerous parts of a convoy are when you first leave the base and when you get close to the gates. When I see that we’re sandwiched between two armored SUVs I feel better.

At Camp Phoenix, Doug and I are given the keys to our OWN rooms!

It’s the first time since we’ve arrived that we’ve had separate accommodations. I admit, I suffer from withdrawal after sleeping in the same room for two weeks with my colleague. Those pangs last about two seconds when I lay down on my own bed in a reconverted comex trailer. Never mind that the room smells like an old pickle.

Major Arnold Stone, our media contact at Camp Phoenix, introduces us to Scott Custerson who does beloblog.com, a blog about his interaction with the military in Afghanistan. He’s in Afghanistan for year doing only coverage on the U.S. armed forces. He’s imbedded with and paid by the military. I let Doug do all the talking as I observe this journalist: thick red beard, Palestinian scarf around his red neck, weathered and burnt complexion.

Later I see Scott the journalist eating in the middle of a group of soldiers with an expression that screams, I carry a gun not a camera. I thought about a thing I heard a woman say last week when I asked her if a visiting photographer from the New York Times had a beard. “Don’t they all have beards?” she replied. I’ve always had a strong distaste for people who dress, act, and talk a certain way because they think that’s what you do when you’re in a certain group and that’s the role you’re supposed to play. This pseudo-rugged, I’m-so-cool à-la-Sebastian-Junger, journalist persona shit doesn’t wash with me, but whatever. Do what you gotta do. Be all that you can be. (Did I mention I’m growing a beard and am looking for a shop that sells Palestinian scarves?)

Doug and I go out on a foot patrol on Tuesday the 29th of August and I get not only an opportunity to move my ass for the first time in two weeks, but I get to see the locals close up. Being on base all the time makes me feel like I’m missing the point of Afghanistan. Whenever we drive through the city or countryside, all I can think about is how much I’d like to hop off the transport and meet the people, hang out with them, learn about their culture, try to speak their language, understand their mindset. Maybe even find a stash of booze, perhaps left over from the Soviet occupation.

Sure there are no bars to hang out in and loosen things up a little. And yes it’s true that Afghanistan is the most landmined country in the world. And admittedly the Taliban upswing in Afghanistan has increased the danger of being kidnapped and getting your head cut off live on El Jazeera, but hey, people are killed in Nebraska, the safest place around, every day. You can fall into a pile of dry grain and suffocate, get run over by an errant truckbed, be crushed by a toppled tractor in a ditch just as easily as you can be hit by mortar rocket or step on an IED.

• A little boy surround by mud walls outside Camp Phoenix.•

•Near Camp Phoenix a boy and his puppy play.•

•Near Camp Phoenix a boy and his puppy play.•


During our foot patrol I got some great pictures of local vendors, children and cops. Among my favorite images is a picture of two brothers who have a little stand that sells white grapes. The grapes are probably from the Shomali Valley by Bagram that is famous for its vineyards. When Doug and I first arrived in Afghanistan two weeks ago, the whole country was drowning in oblong dark green watermelons and football-shaped yellow melons. Now in the past couple of days everything has gone white grapes.

I might add that the massive amount of food the U.S. military consumes is all shipped in from outside the Afghanistan on account of health and safety issues. A pity really when you think of how much money could go into the local economy if the U.S. bought all those melons and grapes up from those impoverished vendors.

•This kid broke my heart. When we approached him by a trash dump on the side of the road he was taking a break. But when he saw me aim my camera at him he started working again. His job is to sort out plastic rubbish by colors. If you ever want to complain about your job or wages again, please take a look at this picture.•

•Plastic trash being sorted out by color.•

•A young boy stacks bricks on a hot and dusty day.•

•A boy hard at work outside Camp Phoenix•


Another picture I took that I really like is of a little, skeletal Coochie boy who has a lazy eye. He was herding his sheep in a barren patch of dirt behind a police check-point building along the highway where we had stopped for a few minutes. While the policemen were offering melon to the American soldiers, the boy kept on repeating something to me that I didn’t understand. But he was glad I was taking his picture. He thought it was funny how I kept on photographing his sheep, which in Afghanistan have plastic flowers and bows around their necks and are not branded but are instead dyed colors, in this case with spots of fuchsia. (One soldier told me that one morning he saw an orange chicken running around, which would be a great name for a bar or restaurant.)

On the way back to base we walked though a neighborhood to enter by the back entrance.

This area, in the middle of the city, had fields and mud houses and children, children, children. Here in Afghanistnn kids work. I saw a 7-year-old boy carrying bricks that they were drying on the ground. I saw little girls carrying bags of grass and hay on their head that were literally three times bigger than they were. Another little girl, no more than six, was alone watching a bunch of sheep. And another girl around seven or eight was weeding a field.

•A soldier and a girl attempt to pick something up while a little boy with a torn tunic looks on. Outside Camp Phoenix.•

•2 Coochie girls wait for handouts from soldiers outside Camp Phoenix.•

•A Coochie teenage boy, outside Camp Phoenix.•

•A teenage Coochie boy outside Camp Phoenix.•

•A skeletal Coochie herder boy.•


All the boys ran up to us. They know the soldiers have candy. A few Coochie girls ran up to the soldiers as well but their older brother started hitting them. They reminded me of little dogs. He’d hit them. They’d back off for a moment, then run back to the soldiers. I tried to distract the older brother by taking his picture so the girls could get their desired candy. Other girls would just stand and watch the commotion. It’s hard to emphasize how odd it is to see boys and girls so segregated at such an early age.

The two-hour walk was a great way to clear my head. But, as is this entire trip, it’s on the go again tomorrow. Doug and I will be taking another convoy, this time into the mountainous area of Gardez, 3 ½ hours South of Kabul.

•Kids outside Camp Phoenix.•

•An (ANA) Afghan National Army guy prepares dinner for him and his colleagues.•

•An (ANA) Afghan National Army man at a checkpoint on Jalalabad Road in Kabul.•

• An (ANA) Afghan National Army man having fun with one of the Camp Phoenix soldiers.•

•The dog from hell, seen during a foot patrol around Camp Phoenix.•

•Puppy outside Camp Phoenix.•

•Selling the ubiquitous white grape, two brothers at the their little grocery stand in Kabul off Jalalabad Road.•

•Makeshift construction smokestacks outside Kabul.•

•The only name harder to pronounce than Paprocki. Camp Phoenix.•

•An ANA soldier on road outside Camp Phoenix.•

•Soldier towards end of foot patrol outside Camp Phoenix.•

•My favorite design so far painted on a truck: an Ariana Airliner.•

•2 boys in dirty tunics outside Camp Phoenix.•

•ANA soldier, Kabul.•

•Mosque outside Kabul.•

•A billboard in Kabul.•

•I love the folk art quality of the painted commercial sighs in Afghanistan. Would be a great photo series.•

•A big, long building in Kabul.•

•The obnoxiously tight, ass-hugging pants of the French. Here at a ceremony for French going back home after their tour in Afghanistan.•

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THE BASE OF DOGS & APAWLING SPELLLING, GARDEZ, 31 AUGUST to 2 SEPTEMBER 2006



•Seen outside vehicle window in Kabul: this van is the ultimate in rear tail lights.•


GARDEZ, 31 AUGUST to 2 SEPTEMBER 2006, THURSDAY to SATURDAY

Something sinister is going on at the Gardez FOB (Forward Operating Base). It's right under everyone’s noses. If anyone has noticed anything they've kept their mouths shut. I’m talking about a pox we’ve all confronted, something we’re often too embarrassed or too ashamed to talk about: bad spelling.

Everywhere you turn in this camp there’s something misspelled.

You’ve finished working in the internet hooch, you’re on your way out and what do you see pasted on the door? A sign. A sign that says: "ABSOLUTELY NO FOOD, DRINKS, OR TOBACCO PRODCUTS ALLOWED IN MWR FACILITIES."

Go to the HQ on base, pour yourself a coffee machine and what do you see taped on the icebox? A sign. A sign that states in bad English: "If you take a bottle of water out of the refridgerator please replace it with a warm one from the box!"

It’s so bad that even the buildings are misspelled. Say you have important guests on base and you need to discuss matters as well as do a presentation. Where will you go? To a B-hut with a wooden sign on the door that reads: "Confrence Room."

How can we expect Afghanis to learn English when we don’t even know it ourselves?

•Apawling Spellling, Gardez: Piece of Evidence #1.•

•Apawling Spellling, Gardez: Piece of Evidence #2.•

•Apawling Spellling, Gardez: Piece of evidence #3.•


Perhaps this is all sabotage. A deliberate effort to foil the attempts of Afghani local nationals on base to learn good English. Or maybe this is all the work of one sick and demented enlisted individual who finds spell check about as useful as a chocolate coffee pot. Whatever the truth is Gardez must stand up and bear arms against bad spellers. It must fight this illness before it pulls down the entire base into a dark, scary hole of derelict grammar and erroneous punctuation.

Overlooking the appallingly bad spelling, Gardez is a little slice of Paradise.

It’s a three and a half hour drive to get there. Once you get out of Kabul, there is a black top that the Turks are making. It must be the best, if not the only, good road in Afghanistan. There isn’t a pothole from the outskirts of Kabul to Gardez on the black top. There is only one part that isn’t paved and that’s on the top of the mountain pass that it goes over, before you get to Gardez. It’s 9500 feet high at the pinnacle, so high that water flows everywhere since the ground cannot absorb it all. The culverts the Turks had built up there began to sink so now they’re redoing that section of the road. The 2-ton Humvees and 5-ton trunks barrel right on through the mud, bumps and depressions.

There’s about five “choke points” on the road, places where insurgents can attack rather easily. Six ANA (Afghan National Army) checkpoints are along the way, but there’s a long stretch, after you reach the top of the pass where there is no checkpoint. That’s also where most of the choke points are located. So you have to be on constant ready alert.

•I love this picture. Look at Grandma. The black lump in the middle. Outside of Kabul.•

•Roll out the wheelbarrow of eggplants and we’ll have a barrel of fun.•

•Kabul.•

•Kabul.•

•Fields and mud brick houses outside Kabul.•

•An area of Kabul to the south that deals only with wood for burning and lumber.•

•Dog on quiet street in South Kabul.•

•Damn, which Padkhab did I want to go to?•

•Going up mountain pass to Gardez.•

•Something you don’t see everyday. Detour on mountain pass on way to Gardez.•

•Coochie herders on mountain pass detour on way to Gardez.•

•Row of young trees on mountain pass on way to Gardez.•

•The town of Gardez. Take away the vehicle and your back in the 1700s.•

•Gardez.•


Things that struck me as we were driving:

On the far southern end of Kabul there’s a vast area filled with open stall upon open stall of merchants who deal in wood and lumber. Here is where Afghanis obtain their heating. Why import oil when you can do it the medieval way? As I saw in Africa, old trunks and branches of trees are cut up and then bagged for sale. I saw scales used to weigh light load. I wonder where all the wood comes from in (what I’ve seen) this rather treeless country.

There was also an area where manufacturers made only mud and clay bricks and concrete cinderblocks. The blocks were stacked in towers with designs made out of the bricks and cinderblocks on top to announce their wares.

Farmers/peasants were in the fields uprooting purple onions everywhere. I have yet to see a tractor or any other type of farm machinery other than a donkey or mule and even those are rare. It’s all done the old-fashioned way, as in Stone Age old-fashioned way: by hand.

We pass a madras, a religious school only for boys. Seeing hundreds of boys streaming out of the building for lunch or recess or whatever it was I couldn’t help but wonder what all those sponges, also known as minds, are soaking up every day. Who are the teachers, what credentials do they have, what do those boys learn about government, women, roles in society, religion, foreign relations, what is right and wrong, what is accepted in society and what is not. Oh to be a fly on one of those ubiquitous green-painted walls and be able to understand Pashto and Dari, maybe Arabic and Urdu as well.

There were lots and lots of graveyards along the way. The Afghani version of a cemetery includes various types of markers. The simplest is a plain rock. The next is a piece of slate (or similarly shaped stone) stuck in the ground like a megalithic tombstone. Above some of these markers are long sticks with faded and tattered colored flags flapping in the dry, dusty wind. According to one of the ‘terps’ (interpreters) the color of the flag tells how the person died, red, for example, means that they were killed unjustly, that they were innocent. Top-of-the-line grave markers are white marble headstones – of the Victorian-era look -- that have long inscriptions on them in Arabic.

Riding in the back of the Humvee for over three hours, my ass sore from the inability to stretch my legs, I watched one mudbrick, Mesopotamian-like rectangular house after another pass by me. They like to tier things here if the elevation rises or drops, and they mark property, like fields, by upraised mounds of hardened mud. There wasn’t a satellite dish or antenna to be seen. Not even telephone or electrical cables running on poles. Even the most outlying districts in Namibia and Botswana had those or were in the process of hooking up to a main electrical line.

I fantasize what it would be like if out of this uniform earthen terrain there sprung up a typical new U.S. housing subdivision, complete with the furnished model home, gaudy flags flying over it saying, “Buy now while interest rates are low.” Like I witnessed in Tucson this summer, I wonder what if this one brand-new subdivision, with its newly laid bright concrete driveways and streets, and uniform lawns and manicured landscaping, existed in the middle of the bleak scrublands, one gated community where locals could live and get a feeling of what it means to be middle- or upper-middle class in the United States. Toilets instead of squatting somewhere in a dirt field to pee or take a dump; central unit a/c and heating instead of burning up or freezing to death; carpeting, couches and lazyboys instead of thin Styrofoam cushions, battered rugs, or dusty mats on the floor.

The city of Gardez is something out of a Marco Polo journal. Men with long white or hennaed beards and exotic turban-like headdresses walking around. Merchants with all their wares practically on the street. Men and more men sitting, conversing, conducting their business. Boys, children. But women? Forgeddaboutit. Not even a blue burka to be seen. They were probably all at the gym working out on the treadmills or catching up with each other at Starbucks over their iced mocha frappés.

We are met by a Master Sgt Lopez who resembles Sammy Davis Junior when we arrive at the FOB of Gardez. Lopez shows Doug and I to our tent – there are no Bee-Huts available. We are with a Lt Fraker, a media person from Camp Phoenix who wants to see a new base. She gets a Bee-Hut. Master Sgt Lopez walks us and a small group of soldiers around the whole compound, explaining every building, hesco wall (barriers filled with dirt, gravel and pebbles) and watchtower. “And over there, no disrespect to you mam, is what we call the “Twin Tits,” Lopez points out. We look towards the East and see two mound-shaped mountains upon which each has a pastie: ANA watch tower complex.

Doug is hankering to get to the TOC to find out about a patrol he wants to join. Master Sgt Lopez insists on driving us first however around the perimeter of the ANA (Afghan National Army) base, called Camp Thunder, in which the Gardez FOB, named Camp Lightning, is located. Lopez expatiates about the camp, saying that one time a camel got loose in the FOB. That there are Romanians based in this FOB and they are referred to as “Vampires.” That we should know where our bunker is because they do have rocket attacks. Some at night. That such attack at 3 AM hit in the middle of the FOB but the shrapnel went down to the end of base hitting one soldier in a tower and cutting the gun of another soldier in his barracks in half. “One soldier was injured when the explosion caused the air conditioning unit to fall on top of him while he was sleeping in his bunk,” Lopez relates. (Can you get a purple heart from fallen air-conditioning?)

“We have the best bathroom and wash facility in all of Afghanistan here,” Lopez explains. Hyperbole it is not. The contractors that came out here did it up right: I have yet to see such a clean-smelling, well-maintained, gorgeous toilet, shower and washroom (free by the way) facility as the one at Gardez.

I haven’t had an orientation this thorough since I went around the University of Nebraska Campus with a group of green Freshmen while we tailed a welcoming-guide.

•Master Sgt Lopez giving us the grand tour of Gardez.•

•Orientation at Gardez by Master Sgt Lopez. Man, does that bring back my first day at college.•

•The “Twin Tits”. Gardez.•


Outside one of the gates of the ANA is a Coochie encampment. Like an Indian Reservation in the States you can only go there with an invite. I was thinking of checking it out.

“What are the rules for saluting?” Fraker asks when Lopez points out an outdoor seating area. Operating by the books, this is something the 30-year-old accountant who lives in Colorado would need to know. When we get to the TOC center, Fraker tells Doug and I to wait by the entrance because “due to lack of security clearances, you’re not allowed in here.” Doug and I don’t mention that we’ve been in every TOC office of every base we’ve visited. When the commander of the base comes to meet us, Doug asks how many people are on the FOB. Fraker answers for the commander, “He can’t answer that because of security issues.” The correct answer is 320 we find out later from the same commander.

Thus far Doug and I have been able to pretty much set our own itinerary once we get to the bases, dealing directly with people in charge of the operations. Like if we want to do a foot patrol, we contact the troop leader of the foot patrol. In this case everything has to go through Fraker. I have discovered that in the military, once you go through a middleman, or in this case, a middle-by-the-books-woman, it’s over. There’s so much miscommunication between parties and things change so rapidly that if you try to go through a middleman chances are it’s not going to happen. But that’s Fraker’s job and she doesn’t mess around with gray areas.

I stand down.

I don’t want to bump heads with this woman. I’d like to have an opportunity to come back to the poppy and killing fields of Afghanistan and the general Middle Eastern theater if possible, so I don’t need any black marks in my conduct. I let Fraker decide what she wants me to report on. After the first two hours of going back and forth from the TOC to HQ to another office and not getting anything accomplished, I make myself scarce and let Doug deal with it. I instead do laundry (I LOVE doing laundry! Only I can wash my clothes correctly) and hang out in the internet café.

At dinner I discover that Doug will be doing a foot patrol tomorrow but there’s no room for me. ☹ Fraker says she’s organized for me to meet with the Coochies. She will accompany me because I “cannot go there unescorted.” Hmmmm. I’ve been running around hospitals, neighborhoods and police complexes so far without someone taking me by the hand, but like I said, no making waves.

•Place settings left out for fallen comrades. Gardez.•


The next morning I’m supposed to meet Fraker at 8 AM. I can’t remember where she said so I go to the TOC and HQ but can’t find her. At 8:35 she comes into the computer room and asks if I forgot about our appointment. I explain what I thought she had said. She informs me that since it’s Friday, the Muslim holy day, the military “off-tempo” (slow) day, it will be impossible for me to meet with the Coochies. Normally I would do what Lopez suggested when I asked, “How do I meet the Coochies?”

“Stand in front of their gate and wait,” he said. But when I suggest to Fraker that perhaps I’ll just take a walk around the ANA compound surrounding the FOB, she informs me this would be impossible. I’m too worn-out to start any arguments. So I offer a lambent smile, shrug my shoulders, and go back to working on my PowerBook.

I had hoped to at least do a run/hike up the mountain in the background that looks like a miniature version of Table Mountain in Cape Town. The base has an elevation of 7800 feet, the mountain tops out at 9800. I haven’t moved my ass since I got here, so I look forward to doing that hike even if the mountain is chocolate-chipped with landmines. If I go up to the top I’ll surely get some amazing pictures. Plus I’ll get a T-shirt, which every person who reaches the top receives. (Whether the T-shirt reads ‘I climbed up and came down this mountain without having a leg blown off,’ is uncertain.)

Talking about blow. There’s a guy on base whose velcroed-on-the-chest nametag reads Blow. Like Austin Powers in Goldfinger, being unable to control himself when he sees the mole above Number Three’s lip -- Bloody mole. We aren't supposed to talk about the bloody mole, but there's a bloody mole winking me in the face. I want to c-u-u-t it off, ch-o-o-p it off, and make guacamole – I want to go to Blow and say, ‘Hey, your first name wouldn’t be Joe, would it?’ ‘What’s your job, Blow?’ ‘You know how to whistle don’t you – just put your lips together and, well, you know the rest.’ What do you do, Blow?

I make a point to always read a soldier’s last name, usually because you can’t recognize the person if you see them after a patrol without their helmets, goggles and chin straps. I’ve seen names like Butt, Sweatt, Freakie, and Love. You could make a haiku out of their nametags.

•Moi at Gardez under the silvery moon•



I have lots of time to think of things like that since the mountain climb is a no-go. In fact the only thing I see on Gardez is my tent (with heat and a/c!), the Bosnians in our tent (they love heat and polyester sweat clothes), the computer room (only 4 computers and 4 lines for laptops – a constant battle for the snail slow internet connections), the Chow Hall (pretty cool, in the evenings guys hang out there and play cards while the TV plays) and of course the 5-star toilet, shower and washing facility.

The thing I end up getting great photos of at Gardez are the dogs, another thing I like about FOBs.

The one thing I really wanted to see in Gardez, besides experiencing the exotic remoteness of the people and town, was a fortification on a peak in the city that was built by Genghis Kahn. Now that would’ve been cool. Maybe I’ll get back there and have that opportunity. Like I’ve said before, if this country ever stabilized it would be a prime spot for intrepid explorers. Afghanistan is the only far-away country I’ve been to where I haven’t come across a million German tourists – it’s worth visiting here just for that reason alone. ☺

If I do come back, though, I’m definitely coming armed with an inkmarker and will wage a campaign for better spelling on this base.

•Gardez FOB at sunset.•

•Cloudy Gardez.•

•Gardez by moonlight.•

•Zeus.•

•Friend of Zeus.•

•Zeus, the alpha male dog at Bermel FOB.•

•Zeus. Where are my frickin’ sunglasses?!•

•Dogs are to be fed far away from DFAC (chow hall). How can you resist this face?•

•Zeus by evening•

•Zeus in the MWR (Moral, Well-being and Recreation area) at Bermel FOB. He deserves his sleep because during the night he cases the base to make sure stray dogs, which might have rabies, do not enter, as well as looking out for insurgents.•

•Gardez dog at sunset.•

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THE LITTLE RAG PICKER & A JAY-LO-ASSED GOAT - CAMP PHOENIX, KABUL, 3 & 4 SEPTEMBER 2006

•A handsome grape vendor and his ugly cousin.•


•12-year-old Ahmed showing me how to fly an Afghan kite.•








CAMP PHOENIX, KABUL, 3 & 4 SEPTEMBER 2006, MONDAY

It all happened so fast that my brain barely registered what was going on before my eyes until it was almost too late.

I had gotten up at 4 AM to join a foot patrol that was leaving Camp Phoenix at the crack of dawn, just as a mullah somewhere was chanting over a loud speaker to give the first call to prayer for the day. I was talking to the ‘terp’ (interpreter) about what the Taliban expected by trying to come back to power, when I saw a truck slow down and stop on the side of the road as five little girls ran up to it, climbing up and clambering over its side. One little girl, maybe 7 or 8 years old, was too small to grab onto to one of the rungs on the truck’s side so she tried standing on top of one of the big tires.

That’s when the truck started to pull away. She screamed. The other girls screamed. The driver kept rolling, but hesitated then stopped. The little girl jumped off the tire and started crying as eight little skinny arms and hands above her were shaking, coaxing her to try it again so they could pull her up.

The little girl froze. She was terrified and crying. Realizing that the truck might take off, separating the little girl from her group, I quickly threw my camera over my shoulder, hurried up to the truck, and lifted the girl up to her friends, who in turn pulled into the truck. Seconds later the truck had disappeared in a belch of black smoke down a crumbling asphalt road, five little heads bouncing around the top rim of the bed.

The thing that lingered with me afterwards was how light that little girl was. She had to be as old as my niece Kayla, who will be eight this October of 2006 but if I tried to lift Kayla up to the top of a truck I’d be in traction for the rest of my life. Kayla’s not fat, mind you. She’s simply a normal American child.

•5 girls scramble up a truck on their way to pick through trash at a dump.•

•The little rag picker who couldn’t get up into the truckbed.•


I’ve heard more than one soldier say that the thing they’ve gotten out of this tour of duty in Afghanistan is a heightened awareness of how good, how incredibly good, we have it in the U.S..

I’ve seen this grinding poverty before. In Southern Africa. The only difference now is the skin is white and olive here instead of black and brown.

The interpreter told me that the girls were on their way to a garbage dump out of town where they would pick up trash that might earn their families a few Afghanis (pennies).

I began to wonder about that little girl. Where does she live? How did she end up doing this type of stuff? Has she ever been to school? What did she eat last night, this morning? Who are her parents? People may be forgiven for being uneducated but can they be forgiven for being reckless, for bringing children into the world because they’re too scared, lackadaisical or stupid to prevent it.

Perhaps the UN should start its biggest push ever to teach about birth control, contraceptives, infantile and childhood diseases and simply the concept of the injustice to a child who is not able to be cared for, nurtured and loved to the degree necessary for her or him to grow up into a well-adjusted, productive human being.

Walking through the impoverished neighborhoods around this Camp Phoenix you see children in every corner. It’s reminds me of the rabbit explosion in my hometown of Columbus. Everywhere you look, you see little bunnies hopping around, nibbling succulent blades of grass, squeezing themselves under fences to scurry away, pausing in a clear patch to warm themselves up.

I don’t know where their parents of all these children running around the streets are. I have yet to see one mother reveal herself from her domicile cave. It boggles the American, the Western, mind that there are this many kids living on the edge, fending for themselves at 8 when we do it at 18 or in the case of Europeans sometimes 28.

•A soldier doing a foot patrol at sunrise.•





•A quiet mosque in the pre-dawn.•


Going on a foot patrol that begins before dawn is great for understanding this place. At 5 AM only a few people are stirring. Dogs bark, of course, loud enough to wake up the whole neighborhood, or in this case small kulots (high walls made out of straw and mud that encase individual mud huts.)

One soldier this morning was close to shooting a barking dog. “50% of the dogs here have rabies,” he told me. He was telling a boy in English to put his dog inside the gate or he’d shoot it. I told the ‘terp’ to hurry and deflect this situation before a potential public relations fiasco occurred.

Walking through a fielded area of clover, eggplants and tomatoes, we witnessed the sun rising between two mountain peaks. A family of gypsies – a mother and a half dozen children, some with pots on their heads – passed us. The scene was idyllic until we reached deep pits where trash is burned. “In the summer these holes fill with water and even though there’s sewage and trash inside the kids swim in them. It’s the only thing they got,” said one soldier.

•Sunrise in Kabul with the smoke of burning trash.•


•A soldier on a foot patrol passes a gypsy and her children balancing some of their belongings on their heads.•

•A morning foot patrol through fields.•

•Jay-Lo assed goat.•

•A soldier patrolling chaotic Jalalabad Road.•


An old man dressed in a white robe with a thin white blanket wrapped around him as a coat was herding his three sheep. They had the weirdest asses: big, bulbous, bouncing backpacks. One soldier called them “Jay-Lo asses.”

When the soldiers crossed Jalalabad highway they stopped traffic by gunpoint to make sure everyone crossed safely from one side to the other. We entered a very poor neighborhood.

“That’s Shit Creek,” a soldier pointed out to me. “You see those little trap doors at the bottom of the walls,” he asked. The walls that abutted the creek, separated by a little alley, had metal doors that opened from the bottom in them. “That’s where they pull out their shit and dump it in the creek.” I didn’t really see any human waste – other than the turd I stepped on, which for the first time in my life I was hoping WAS a dog turd – but the deep ditch (creek) was filled with trash and intermittent pools of green and gray water. Not the thing you want kids – which numbered along Shit Creek at least 100 – to be near, let alone play in.

We stopped off a little store, about the size of a large bathroom (or a studio in the East Village of Manhattan) so that the squad leader could buy a lichi juice (which was my favorite in South Africa). I took a picture of a guy nearby whose only source of income seemed to be selling a lap full of white grapes on a wobbly wooden cart and a small pile of tomatoes, things that every merchant in the area sells. I wonder how people survive here. I’d love to explore this town, this country, with a personal interpreter and find out just what the reality of life is for someone like that.


•A bridge over Shit Creek•

•Like lots of kids, all this girl wanted was to shake a soldier’s hand. She had the most radiant smile.•

•Little kids hanging out at the rim of Shit Creek.•

•One of the trap doors from which comes the namesake for Shit Creek.•

•This little kid has those beautiful emerald Afghan eyes.•

•This little girl in orange was adorable.•

•This little kid didn’t look at all well. He kind of resembled Christina Ricci.•



•Kids and wheelbarrows go hand-in-hand in Afghanistan where many children work from the age of six onwards.•


Likewise I want to return to the school we visit that afternoon to give out backpacks and school supplies donated by people in the U.S..

Before we head off the base at 4 PM we are told that Udekylhs School is the worst school in the worst part of Kabul. To get to the school, which is basically a three-minute bike ride away out the front gate, it takes a dozen soldiers on foot to check and secure the road, then three vehicles to drive with maps, constant radio contact and weapons ready to go off in a split second.

Excessive? Normally I’d say kind of. But The British newspaper, The Telegraph, reports what happened only a kilometer from Camp Phoenix on Jalalabad Road, the main thoroughfare into Kabul, a few hours before our driving out the camp gates:

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Bombers target our soldiers on patrol in lightly armoured Land Rovers, By Richard Westmacott, (05/09/2006), Kabul

It was just after 10.30am local time when the white, four-wheel drive Toyota Hilux suddenly accelerated out of the congested streets of Kabul. Its target was a convoy of two lightly armoured British Army "snatch" Land Rovers.

A British soldier manning the open turret of the rear vehicle in the convoy waved the driver away and trained his weapon on the car. But it was too late as the Hilux swerved between the British vehicles and exploded.

"When the Hilux exploded it flew high in the air," said Abdul Wahab, 11, who saw the blast.

A statement released by Nato in Kabul later confirmed the death of one British soldier. It added that another was critically injured and two others lightly hurt.

Four Afghan bystanders also died and four others were injured. The disfigured bodies of two brothers, Naim Rashat, 19, and Sardat, eight, were laid out in a mosque 50 yards from the rudimentary puncture repair stall they ran at the roadside. Their remaining brother Razak, 10, was taken to hospital with critical injuries.

"This is not the work of a human being," said Hashim, 25, the boys' cousin, gesturing at their bodies. "A Muslim would not do this."

A higher death toll was averted because the wreck of a heavy goods lorry, which had crashed next to the site of the explosion days earlier, absorbed shrapnel that would otherwise have raked a line of workshops. It was pitted with metal shards, and pieces of flesh and bone from the bomber.

Kabul has long been seen as a place of relative tranquillity compared to the south. But recent months have seen insurgent activity creeping closer to the capital.

Two policeman died in a attack in Kabul province yesterday, while the provinces of Wardak and Loghar that lie immediately south of the capital are now the scene of regular fighting.

Several rocket attacks have also hit the capital in the past two weeks, causing little damage but considerable unease among an expatriate population several thousand strong in the city. Suicide bombings were rare before September last year, when Afghanistan held its first democratic elections for more than 30 years.

But they have become increasingly regular since that time. There was a spate of small roadside bombs in June which targeted government workers in the capital.

(Subsequently: Pte Craig O'Donnell, 24, who was due to become a father this Christmas, was killed by a suicide car bomber in Kabul on Monday while serving with The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, 5 Bn the Royal Regiment of Scotland. "He was looking forward to moving into married quarters and setting up home with his girlfriend, Jessica, and to the birth of their first child," his parents Robert and Lorraine said in a statement yesterday. Following a roadside bomb that penetrated their "snatch" Land Rover Gunner Wright and another unnamed soldier became the latest victims of the vehicle's lightweight armour.)
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Every time you leave the gates of the base it seems like you’re taking your life into your own hands. When you go into an area you don’t know, like the Udekylhs neighborhood, you are admittedly nervous. It’s so close yet there’s so much stress on which road to turn onto.

We don’t know anything about the school when we arrive, but once the gates open and I see a large courtyard with little wood huts for separate classes lining the perimeter and a shabby brick building in the middle with broken windows, I feel very safe. I dealt with this in the Cape Town townships.

The principal was a thin man with a sunbeaten face, white beard and a few teeth. He wore an old double-breasted jacket and a wool-hat.

From the beginning this operation was disorganized. Soldiers were filling backpacks with school supplies in the middle of the courtyard between two trucks. As I recall Nick Clutinger telling me from Operation Care in Bagram, when they were donating things the first time it was sheer chaos when they let everybody in at the same time. The only way to distribute donations is in a closed area with controlled entry of the number of people. There was some 2-star navy general involved so everybody was more nervous about that than a potential attack.

Apaches, Blackhawks and even Chinooks were flying all around like pissed-off hornets as the general, a large man with white hair and glasses, arrived. I quickly swung into position for the photo op: the general presenting backpacks to the two or four best students in each class (since there weren’t enough backpacks to go around to all the 1st through 12th graders. There are 2000 boys in the school one boy told me, which might be an exaggeration, but I can say the joint was jumping with hordes of boys).

In my element:

•A kid on a bike takes my favorite picture of myself thus far.•

•A kid on a bike taking my picture with a few of his friends.•

•I love the tomato in this picture and I love the smiling boy to the right.•


Third-world green walls, shoddy wooden desks, old blackboards that can hardly register chalk on them. Boys with no money, wearing their traditional tunics, or western clothes that were clearly donated … from the 1970s (My favorite article of clothing were some stove-piped-legged, striped, brown pants that I had in 1975 when Greg Brady set the fashion trend for pre-teen boys).

I tried to take pictures in every class. One teacher, a plump cream puff, with a wispy beard and chipmunk cheeks, who wore a blue turban and white smock, wouldn’t allow any pictures of him or his class. If he wasn’t Taliban then I’m not a Pollok.

Floodgates of sadness: a guy around 22-years-old sitting with a class of 12-year-olds to try to get his education, kids begging me for a pen (see Donny Snezení in Gay Police Regime and Coochies), beautiful children sitting in classes without books or paper or qualified teachers, the eyes of all the students who didn’t get backpacks as the big General shook the hands of the valedictorians with a stock “Keep up the good work,” “Stay in School,” “Word hard.” Probably not the best way to touch the hearts and souls of boys who can’t speak English and see America as a super-rich country who belittles them. (Nick Clutinger, where are you when we need someone to organize such things?)

•Every time I see a kid with those electric afghan green eyes (as in National Geographic Afghan girl cover) I try to capture it. This boy, who’s got those eyes didn’t look in the camera for this picture. But I like the composition. He resembles a young Mia Farrow.




Bottom line, I think the boys appreciated the donations. But one asked me, “How come you don’t give backpacks and supplies to everybody?” I told him that there were only so many donations, but I would try to bring the attention of people to this school and maybe backpacks and school supplies could be a possibility in the future. I don’t blame the boy for having a cynical look on his face.

One teacher, with only one good eye, kept asking the soldiers for a marker. Just an ink-marker, but as the minutes ticked away things became more chaotic. Children started pouring out of the classrooms. Teachers allowed it because they too wanted a piece of the donation pie.

•This kid on the right had those beautiful Afghan green eyes. Unfortunately I think there was something mentally wrong with him because his expression never changed, his mouth never closed.•

•You know what they say in Afghanistan: “Spare the rod, ……”


A few instructors and chosen students carried wooden switches and swung at the kids, but when those disciplinarians as well wanted something from the backs of the pick-ups the scene got a little out-of-hand. The 2-star motored out. The students – some of which looked way too old to be hanging out in a school – began to close in on the trucks. A few stones were thrown (tossed). The soldiers got nervous and started yelling. One grabbed a switch and start waving it.

The boys – as boys will do – kind of made fun of them by acting like they were going to be defiant. (Look, if I were 10 again and had a group of my friends around me and there was this foreign occupying force visiting my poor school, which usually sucked, was boring and lacked much hope, I’d do the same goddamn thing).

•Entrance to a complex of classes. I love the garden with sunflowers.•

•I took this through a window from outside. I love the position of his hand.•


The major in control decided to head out. I couldn’t get the one-eyed teacher even a marker, although I tried to ask one of the soldiers to give the teacher a whole bag of school supplies which he could certainly use, if the figure of $70 a month for a teacher’s salary is true. But the major decided not to dispense with all the donations and return back to base with them instead. Totally retarded reasoning if you ask me. He said he’d give out the rest on Saturday. I was like, Why? You wouldn’t need to come back on Saturday and perhaps be a target since you’re expected if you simply dispensed with the rest of the donations now by entrusting them to a few of the headmasters.

I really enjoyed talking to the boys and having the opportunity to get a glimpse into their lives.

On the road back to the base, we encountered children, beautifully dressed little kids, almost always in bright colors – orange, purple, mint green, lapis lazuli blue – playing and hanging out. The little girls have such full heads of hair. You wonder what they’ll look like when they grow up. I have no idea since I can count the number of women’s faces I’ve seen here on one hand.

I snapped pictures the entire way. One boy, named Ahmed – a 12-year-old in Fifth Grade – spoke almost perfect English with me. He told me he lived in a house right outside the camp gates. I asked him why he wasn’t in school. He said his teacher decided they didn’t require classes today even though Ahmed wanted to stay.

•Backpacks being flung by soldiers as the only female on the schoolgrounds tried to get three backpacks.•

•Sadaqat is the Pashto teacher. I told him I’d be joining his class next week.•


After seeing the Udekylhs school, I have a little insight into this boy’s life. I become very angry. What destiny does a nice-looking, well-mannered, sweet-acting boy, who’s already got language skills that adults in the west might kill for, have in a place where landmines, suicide bombers, IEDs are everywhere. Where shit flows down a ‘creek’ a few blocks away. Where dust and violence blow around his life with the same frequency.

Ahmed, shows me how to fly a kite when we pass a neighbor kid who’s holding one. I let him try on my English helmet which he gets a big kick out of, asking one of the soldiers to pound him on the head really hard because now he has head protection.

We step behind the safety of Camp Phoenix’s metal gates and 10-foot-high, dirt-and-gravel filled hesco walls. Ahmed passes a mudbrick house where three little girls dressed all in emerald velvet crawl out a second-story window onto a ledge. He continues a short ways down to his house, which he pointed out to me: a whitewashed structure with a blue-rimmed roof.

I wonder what his evening and night will be like. And I wonder what that little girl who almost got run over this morning on her way to the dump is doing right now.


•The one-eyed instructor who only wanted a marker. In the end he did not receive one.•

•Sheeraqa's bark is worse than his whip ... I think.•

•The better looking you are, the cleaner and more pressed your clothes are. That's how you have attitude here at school in Aghanistan.•

•A warm smile, a shining face amongst the chaos of the U.S. military's donation departure.•

•Like I was told when I went trick-or-treating in Seventh Grade: Aren't you a little old for ... in this case ... high school?•

•(Heterosexual) Affection between boys and men is considered normal in Afghanistan.•

•If this kid doesn't look like Nathalie Portman then I don't know who does.•

•Taken through a window. Love the light in this picture.•



•The military joins in the switch action while a local student gives the thumbs up.•

•One boy topples in the dust as others run from schoolmasters bearing wooden switches.•

•2-star bestows a backpack to this adorable kid. Can a kid be happier?•



•

•I love the school greeting on this wall.•

•The original meat rack: How beef, mutton, goat (never pork) is sold at a meat market in Afghanistan. FDA stay away!•

•Outside the school gates, this little girl dressed in a beautiful colorful dress is not shy to talk to soldiers.•

•This kid only wanted a handshake.•

•Fun with tomatoes.•

•Transportation however you can get it is the name of the game.•

•A father and his son. The father sells things off his pushcart.•

•Boys having fun with soccer ball with U.S. military patroling Jalalabad Road in background.•

•I love this girl's smile.•

•Ditto.•

•Shy little girl watching the pandemonium. In general, little girls are angels in Afghanistan. The boys can be terrors.•


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THE MINISTRY OF MARTYRS & MIDWAY REPORT - CAMP PHOENIX, KABUL, 5 SEPTEMBER 2006

•Women at Ministry overlooking our Humvees from balcony.•


KABUL, 5 SEPTEMBER 2006, TUESDAY

The mission: To go to the Ministry of Martyrs and talk to a woman who is in charge of widows and try to recruit these women into non-combatant jobs in the ANA (Afghan National Army) as a way of rehabilitation. According to custom, a woman cannot remarry when she loses her husband. (Women, by the way, are married off in pre-arranged matrimonies.) A widow receives a stipend of 400 Afghanis a month. That’s equal to $8 or two Ministry of Finance stops on the road between Bagram and Kabul.

Doug and I are accompanying this ‘mounted’ mission. How successful the mission will be, remains to be seen. I see, however, a virtual goldmine for the person who designs and manufactures camouflaged burkas.

We go past the site of that suicide bomber attack on that British convoy yesterday that took five lives. It’s like one of those meteors that hit Jupiter. Clouds and dust swirl over the impact zone, quickly rendering it invisible. I can’t tell where the attack happened. There is no debris or evidence that the trauma ever occurred. All we know is that it was on J-Bad (Jalalabad Road) by a construction company.

•The gunner in the turret getting ready for our 9-minute drive.•






Although the Ministry is very close to the base, the soldiers in our vehicle are somewhat disoriented as we barrel down the road. You can tell the good drivers – taxis, trucks – who pull to the side of the road to let our Humvees pass, from the dipshits, who risk being rammed or worse, by staying in front of us, driving slowly when they have ample opportunities to pull to the side. After the suicide-bombing yesterday, hair-trigger soldiers might get over-zealous.

Even I got nervous when a van didn’t pull over into the next lane as we pulled up behind him. I was ducking just in case it exploded.

A solider in our Humvee knows where the Ministry is and tells the driver where to turn. When we drive into the compound, I see a sign for the Iranian Embassy. Hmmm. Our bestest, most closest of friends.

•Discussing the route to the Ministry of Martyrs.•


•A guard in front of the Ministry. When somebody in Afghanistan doesn't want their picture taken - and usually people LOVE to have their picture taken here - I think of 2 words: Al Qaeda.•


•A picture on the guardhouse at the Ministry.•




If there is corruption going on in the Afghan government, it sure isn’t being poured into the office buildings. I thought the school in Udekylhs was bad, but this was worse. At least the school was ventilated by the broken windows. Here, in the dark concrete building, the air hung heavy like a morning fog above a stagnant pond. The smell oscillated between musty, mildewy and rubbishy.

A shaven man, who looked kind of Turkish, kind of Indian, greeted Major Roper (no connection to the landlord on Three’s Company) and said Roper could not meet the minister with weapons. He refused. And I guess I don’t blame him. With the Iranian Embassy lurking somewhere, who’s to say he couldn’t be ambushed? Of course it sounds worse than it actually is. A kind-looking woman in pink and black greets him and offers him a seat. Karzai looks over Roper’s shoulder.


•Women waiting in Ministry of Martyrs. Weird to see adult women without burkas.•



•Nice woman in black abaya looking at Humvees below from Ministry balcony.•


•Islamic robes for women and a tea maker on the balcony at the Ministry of Martyrs.•


•SW Saraj, Advisor to the Minister of of Martyrs (the only shaven grown man in Adghanistan) greeting Major Roper.•


•Doug taking notes at the Ministry of Martyrs•.


•An unburkaed woman at the Ministry of Martyrs.•


•My favorite object in the Ministry of Martyrs office: a pink plastic pencil sharpener.•


•A UN car renown for their rude driving among the military.•




Chai is brought up. I love tea and take a glass. I take some pictures of the meeting, as well as one of the pink plastic pencil sharpener attached to the side of the flimsy desk, then walk out onto a little balcony where two women, one in black and one in lavender, are hovering. I ask the women how many children attend the school that’s in front of this building. One woman says 700.

I snap off a couple of pictures of unveiled women, guards and the minister and her assistants then it’s back to camp. Everything goes without incident. I can see the sky outside the windshield: kites, dust, and pollution.

•Doug in the Ministry of Martyrs trying not to be a martyr.•



When we get back to Camp Phoenix I realize that today is my mid-point in Afghanistan. Three weeks down, three to go.

Afghanistan has been the most enriching thing to happen to me since I lived in South Africa. I feel very alive and useful here. I see things that need to be done, people who need help, problems that need to be solved. I feel energized and want to jump in and do what I can.

One thing I thought of today, is I’d like to go back to that Udekylhs School and have each boy fill out a slip of paper with his name, address (if those exist), age, and then answer some questions: What does your father do? How many siblings do you have and what are their ages? What would you like to get into after you finish with school? What are your biggest challenges? What do you see as the biggest difficulties to getting an education? What would make school better? What do you see for the future of Afghanistan and Kabul.

I would take the portrait of each boy in a class room set aside for that purpose (I see it now, light filtering in through a window on the boy’s face with a green-painted, peeling wall as a background) and then (in my dream world) after the portrait I would hand each boy a bookbag containing a set of pens and pencils, and some notebooks. How to organize something like that may not be so difficult if I can enlist the help of military relief organizations and maybe some donors. I’d have to get an exact number of students from the school and consult with teachers and students as to what are the best kind of notebooks and writing utensils to give out. Each notebook could perhaps include the names/addresses and maybe some letters from students in the U.S. who’d like to correspond with Afghani counterparts. Plus I could include a little care packet with maps of the U.S. pictures of typical people, like from my home state of Nebraska, and include scenes of what life is like in the States. I’d personally put this together to ensure that no propaganda or frickin’ candle-appled shit seeped in. I want it to be honest. To show these people who we are, not what they think we represent or are told to believe.

•The irony of war. This pick-up suffered shrapnel damage during a nearby blast. One piece of shrapnel pierced the truck directly above a Be Safe! Bumper sticker.•






This idea kind of dovetails with what I think could be initiatives to start turning the country around. And they are:

1) Pay the police (and army) real salaries. A well-paid police force will make policemen less apt to expect bribes or be involved in corruption and would lead to a dedicated force.

2) Pay teachers real salaries. The only chance this country has is its youth. Rehabilitating someone who’s already in his 20s doing a shit job is probably unrealistic. Giving children a solid education where they learn about their country and the world, and of societies and history, and where eager minds can be put to work is the best way to invest in Afghanistan’s future.

There should be a new concerted school program. I say open a new type of school and give children the choice of whether they want to attend or not. Hire teachers who have credentials. Use some U.N. (Unicef?) sanctioned curriculum (if that exists). Be sure that these children have school supplies and classrooms that are conducive to learning – real chalkboards, authentic desks, heating and cooling, a frickin’ lunch program(!) As I saw in Africa, among the chaos and danger of daily life, a child should have one sanctuary where he or she can go to and feel safe and unafraid. I think school buildings should double as possible boarding houses or host night-classes to keep them in use as much as possible on a 24-hour basis in order to not allow them to be attacked or undergo theft by being unoccupied.

3) Pave roads and install traffic police. A good road with orderly traffic is much easier to defend against bombers.

4) Employ the military to carry out more humanitarian services, namely distributing donated goods from the U.S.

5) Try to get a few companies to invest in building factories in outlying districts to dry-up some of the inner city ghettos and to start pumping hard cash into the economy.

6) Have the military employ more local labor, material, and food. Buy Afghani produce. It’s cheaper than importing it. Have FDA people continually monitor its quality. Buy locally made dishes and flatware instead of using paper and plastic that just end up as pollution when it’s burned daily. Employ locals to wash and scrub those pots and pans. The military pays them $4 – 6 a day. Pay them real wages so that they can maybe push their lives up a notch.

Currently the military uses contractors, KBR, to do all of this side work. Somtimes it irks me how ghettoey and white trash some of the employees are. Everybody on a base represents the U.S. I reckon many of these KBR people will come here and leave listening to their same ghetto music wearing their same ghetto and white trash clothes, eat their same corndogs and cheeseburgers and spare ribs, without ever having had interaction with a local or the culture. The military for its part should require classes or at least distribute learning materials to each and every soldier and civilian employee about the history and culture of Afghanistan, including a mandatory 100 to 500 vocabulary and phrase list of Pashto and Dari. As a guy who speaks Italian, German, French and Spanish, I can attest to the fact that knowing a few words can go a long, long way into earning someone’s respect and trust.

Being a person who’s in possession of a Master’s degree in International Relations, which is basically worthless because the education was based on theory rather than history, facts and practical issues, I am constantly amazed by how incredibly little it takes to destabilize a country.

Afghanis are good people. They work hard. They have good attitudes and good values, albeit sometimes very different from ours. Most are simple agrarians or merchants. But it takes only a few thousand Taliban bad guys to make a lovely country become a dangerous, chaos-mired shit hole. The Taliban take money they get from poppies (after striking deals with druglords) and funds they receive from Iranian, Saudi, Paki and other Middle Eastern investors, to pay hired local tribesmen $12 to $15 a day (2 to 4 times their regular pay) to help fight with them.

I think in order for a society to work you need two very solid bookends: strong security with well-paid police and military forces, and a well-running education system with properly paid teachers, available school supplies and books, and a decent standard for classrooms. Low corruption and good ideas are hopefully the outcome, which can in turn might create the fertile ground that allows a healthy economy to take root and flourish.

Personally, I want to run around and do all kinds of things here after I’m done with my military embed on 26 September. But the constant reminder that my head might be sliced off on El Jezeera TV and broadcast to the whole world and be forever available on the internet and websites like rotten.com makes me step back and ask myself if I really want to do that.

But who’s to say what might happen.

I keep on thinking what Teri Hatcher said on Oprah (Oh God, I admit it, I like Oprah). She was talking how her career sky-rocketed just as she hit 40. “You never know where you’ll be in a year.” For the first time in my life, I think I know what she means.

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POL-E-CHARKI HIGH SCHOOL, WITH KIDS LIKE THESE, WHO NEEDS THE TALIBAN? - 6 & 7 SEPTEMBER 2006

•Pol-E-Charki village.•

•Gravesite in Pol-E-Charki. I'd like to find out who are in these graves and how they decide where people are buried.•

KABUL, 6 & 7 SEPTEMBER 2006, WEDNESDAY & THURSDAY

I put my helmet down to take pictures of kids at a high school we were visiting in the village of Pol-E-Charki, within walking distance from Camp Black Horse here on the edge of Kabul. When I picked my helmet back up I didn’t know that my beloved army all-weather field book had been ripped off, which had been inside it. (Did I mention that I used to suck my thumb and carry around my ‘blanky’ everywhere when I was a kid, and I still develop attachments to material things, like little notebooks?) I also didn’t see some kid(s) pull my sunglasses out of the basin of my helmet. The kids were acting like I was passing around a plastic pumpkin with candy in it for trick-or-treaters.

I was in the common area of the school waiting for Staff Sgt William Ellis of Muskogee, Oklahoma, to finish his consultation with the headmaster of the school.

Now, let me say I LOVE kids. But in all my years of hanging out with them, from the townships of Cape Town, to the slums of Sevilla (where I was an English teacher to children from ages 5 to 12), to even the ghetto school the other day by Camp Phoenix at Udekylhs High School, to the Halls of Montezuma, I have NEVER had a kid lift one thing off me or even try. But these Pol-E-Charki kids had no qualms about it. In fact I feel like it was expected for them to steal. Or maybe it was just a game: Who can get the most valuable thing off the visiting American, be it soldier or civilian.

Hands were in my pockets, on my camera, and on other places where no hand has ever been before. One kid gave me my sunglasses back. Not realizing they were mine I hesitated. Another rugrat grabbed them out of his hand and still another grabbed it out of that kid’s hands and then there were 2 – the Oakley frames and the lenses. I borrowed these $50 sunglasses and if the kids broke them all the rest of my spending money would be gone to replace them. I tried to calm the little savages, but there were like three kids trying to grab for each part. It was worse than a scramble for a baseball in the bleachers at a major league game.

And for what? What was a kid going to do with half a pair of sunglasses? Maybe retool them? Maybe sell them? Afghani adults I’ve heard have poor vision, not only because of a nutrient-deficient diet but also due to the constant glare from the light-colored, dry clay earth. Maybe one out of 10,000 people wears sunglasses in Afghanistan. How many burkas have you seen with sunglasses for instance?

IDEA: A U.S. firm donates thousands of cheapo (but UV protective) sunglasses to Afghanistan as P.R. and friendship campaign. Come on corporate America, loosen your goddamn money belts and do a little something to help the world.

•This little girl is the most scoop-upable-and-give-a-big-hug kid of the day. She lives in a refugee camp outside Pol-E-Charki. Locals don't like refugees because they say they ran instead of staying and suffering.•

•Refugee children from a nearby camp outside the gates of Pol-E-Charki High School.•


Anyway the last time I saw anything approaching the mayhem at Pol-E-Charki High School, police riot gear and tear gas were involved.

When I was a teacher in Spain I could usually tell the good eggs from the bad ones right away. I still can. In this crowd of kids the little roughnecks were the ones with shaved heads. They had suffered from head lice and their hair had been shaven off. This means they are the poorest of children and have the hardest lives. I don’t even want to think about what their young lives are like.

Some of these kids will latch on to you and ask a 1000 times for money, chocolate, pens. I’ve got to learn the Pashto & Dari phrases for, “Which word didn’t you understand when I said no?” and “Go away kid, you bother me,” (said in a WC Fields voice of course).

•Oh sure, it all looks innocent enough before you enter.•

•God, I hate these kids. An elder at Pol-E-Charki School.•

•I love that Afghan look. I say bring it to New York.•

•Doug took this photo while I was being pillaged.•

•If only saved by the bell applied to Pol-E-Charki High School.•

•I want a piece of the sunglass action.•


Later, in the same village, we went to visit the “mulik,” the chief elder of Pol-E-Charki. We knocked on a random blue gate and entered a beautiful courtyard with an enormous tree in the middle and a little grove of trees in the background. We were offered seats at a table. I really didn’t know what was going on as Doug, I and two other soldiers sat down. I’m sure it had something to do with “intell” but I so easily zone out of conversations when I’m taking pictures that unless I’m actually talking I’m clueless.

The mulik’s name is Barbarkh Babakarkhil. He was a reporter in the 1980s. He’s in his mid-50s I reckon. The main reason we were there was because of his wife, Debra, an American originally from California. Debra has been in Afghanistan for 33 years. She looks pretty young for a woman who must be in her 50s.

Debrah was previously married but when she saw the turmoil in Afghanistan caused by the Soviet invasion she became involved and never left. She got the ball rolling by writing a letter to Henry Kissinger and Kasper Weinberger. Kissinger wrote her back. Weinberger didn’t respond. (I never liked that guy.) I like how she explained her forays into the humanitarian field: “It was like Mickey Rooney, Let’s make a show in the backyard.”

•Barbarkh Babakarkhil, Chief and Mulik of Pol-E-Charki, in his home courtyard.•

•Debra Babakarhkil (right) and her friend Kathleen Rafiq, two women who are committed to help change the world for the better with their NGO, Afghan Women First.•

•One of Barbarkh and Debra Babakarkhil's dogs.•


Debra drove in the courtyard with her friend Kathleen Rafiq in the car behind her. (Both had personal drivers and guards.) Some people you immediately like and Debra is one of them. It was like that scene in West Side Story when Tony sees only Maria in the crowd and the rest fades into shadow. Except in this case it wasn’t amorous love but rather a common love for humanitarian issues in a country I’m quickly finding myself loving, amorously.

I didn’t realize how involved Debra and I were into our conversation until Doug barked at me for stepping on the military’s time. I told the soldiers later that I didn’t know what was going on and they said it was cool. Doug has a long fuse so I guess I was really a Chatty Kathy. I want to hook up with Debra very soon.

In a nutshell Debra and Kathleen both live in the outskirts of Kabul, with Kathleen residing on the other side of the city. Debra has an organization called Afghan Women First, which tries to help women earn money by getting them contract work from on-line commissions (if I understood that correctly). Kathleen, who’s been involved in Afghanistan for 30 years and has lived here for 5 years, is involved in Women’s International Democratic Shura (WIDS), a women’s rights forum.

I hope to see these two women again because I’d love to pick their brains to start unlocking the many mysteries of this culture. And their stories of living in this culture would be as savory as a filet mignon with a bottle of cabernet sauvignon … which by the way … I NEED A DRINK! HELP!

After we were treated to tea, Pepsi, cake, grapes and plates of candy, we took our leave. There was always the simmer of tension that there might be some ambush or pistol fire erupting. I liked our terp (interpreter) who refuses to wear a flak jacket and helmet, preferring a Crocodile Dundee Aussie hat, beige shirt and khaki pants.

Back in the safe, clean, comprehensible, confining hesco walls of Camp Black Horse, I witnessed another installment on the outdoors nature network that's been showing this week: a full, glowing, hennaed then buttery moon rising above the black saw-toothed mountains. It’s the closest the moon will be to earth this year. Clear, windless, warm skies make you want to climb on top a mountain, like people do on Lion’s Head in Cape Town, to greet the rising of the full moon. Well, that is if you could avoid the scorpions and landmines.

•A life-or-death grab for U.S. flag patches.•

•Proud owner of a U.S. flag decal.•

•Give every kid in Afganistan a U.S. flag decal and watch the Taliban run.•

•Little boy showing soldiers where an unexploded ordnance is. A huge danger in Afghanistan is children getting maimed or killed by playing with or picking up bombs and mortars.•

•Look at this little girl's hennaed hand. Cool. Lots of boys and girls have hennaed fingernails here.•

•When Doug saw this kid in Pol-E-Charki village he said either he's an albino or a Russian.•

•Heading back to base after Pol-E-Charki High School visit.•

•An ANA (Afghan National Army) iPod.•

•ANA soldiers outside their compound by Camp Black Horse.•

•An ANA soldier.•

•The ANA (Afghan National Army) which surrounds the Black Horse Fob.•

•You see that school? That's Pol-E-Charki High School. Watch your coin purse there.•

•Tiger Beat magazine readers.•

•Typical scene from Humvee window here.•

•Soviet era jingle truck.•

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DEADLIEST SUICIDE BOMBING IN KABUL SINCE FALL OF TALIBAN – KABUL, 8 SEPTEMBER 2006



Funny. The biggest terrorist action to happen in Kabul since the Taliban blew out of here 5 years ago and I'm literally only miles away and the only way I know about the bombing is through John Jordan, a friend mine in Omaha, asking if I'm alive. Funny how isolated I am on a military base.

The TV here, like in the chow hall, is always on sports -- have I ever mentioned how much I loathe televised sports and men who gawk at the screen and salivate instead of actually doing something active themselves? If the TV is not programmed on sports, it’s set on the Pentagon Channel, which the other day had the audacity to underscore a program with these words "award-winning." Who gave the program an award? The program whose daily feature was: “An army field ban in Japan.” Could maybe possibly by chance the Pentagon have given the shitty program an award? If there is news, like at Camp Phoenix here in Kabul, in the morning, you can't hear it. If you can read lips you only hear about reports on stocks or perverts being arrested. I have no idea what happened to Lebanon after I left on August 13 or what's going on in Iraq.

The article below says the following about Afghanistan: ''The fighting is extraordinarily intense. The intensity and ferocity of the fighting is far greater than in Iraq on a daily basis,'' Brig. Ed Butler, the commander of British Forces in Afghanistan, told British ITV news.

Today Doug and I got up early to do a road sweeping mission to look for IEDs (Improvised Exploding Devices) on a back road that comes into Kabul. Our Humvees got lost and ended up going around this immense fortification, which looked like a pre-World War I army fortress, before we found the road we were looking for.

I learned that ditches below the level of the road are great venues for terrorists to plant bombs. Terrorists like to have landmarks, like telephone poles, so they can have accurate points of reference when they communicate with each other. They like to hide behind big pieces of debris, like destroyed trucks, so they can detonate their bombs.

We didn't find any IEDs. Just some wires, probably from an old bomb somewhere, which washed downstream. There was also some mortar debris: tailfins of an old rocket that looked pretty cool.

•Staff Sgt William Ellis of Muskogee, Oklahoma steps down into an open culvert to look for hidden roadside explosives (IEDs) on a recently targeted back road to Kabul.•

•While searching for hidden roadside explosives (IEDs) on a recently targeted back road to Kabul, Staff Sgt William Ellis of Muskogee, Oklahoma, finds a potential dangerous old mortar.•

•Staff Sgt William Ellis of Muskogee, Oklahoma checks an open culvert to look for hidden roadside explosives (IEDs) on a recently targeted back road to Kabul.•


When we got back to Camp Black Horse, I took a nap. Doug went to Camp Phoenix and Bagram with the platoon we were with. I didn't want to go. I avoid Humvee long trips if I can because the seats are murder on my ass. I straightened out my blog then went to the bi-weekly Bazaar on base, which was totally wonderful. I love having interaction with the locals. I came back to my room afterwards and sorted through photos, looking for ones to send to Polaris in New York, then I got the email from my friend John regarding the Kabul bombing.

Right now it's 12:17 PM in New York City. 8:47 PM. The story below was filed exactly 4 hours ago. So the accident must've happened around 3:30 PM, when I got back to my room from the bazaar.

It figures the attack happened on Friday, the Muslim holy day. Today as we looked for bombs we found a van and car stopped in the middle of a gravel road. 15 men were in the gravel … clapping and dancing. This is the day to chill out. It’s also the day to hear the mullahs expatiate about what ever is getting their goat. So you get a Taliban-leaning mullah who whips up his impressionable charges and you get a bomb

I'm at a base on the outskirts of Kabul, about 8 miles from Camp Phoenix. The American Embassy is less than 3 miles from Phoenix. Part of me says, I wish I had access to news and had transportation and could be on the scene to take pictures and get my name out there. I read the bylines of the 3 photographers who have pictures in the article and they're all Middle Eastern, perhaps Afghani, names. I think, Wouldn't that be something if Ken Paprocki, Polaris, was behind the photo.

Another part of me thinks, Shit, you were just on that road a few days ago. Every time I leave the base I calculate what my risks are of being attacked by a suicide bomber. The back doors of the Humvee I was in today has broken door handles inside and can only be opened from the outside - Dukes of Hazard like -- so that's not good if you're a target. I talked to a new soldier friend, Tim Fagan (born and bred in Johannesburg!), and he said in Iraq if a car tries to pass, get in between a convoy or drives toward you too fast, the military has a right to put a bullet in his engine block.

As I've said before there are good drivers here (usually taxis and trucks) and there are lots of bad drivers.

Today as we were driving one pick-up came barreling past us. That could've been a terrorist. A gunner in the turret only has seconds to assess the situation. Often there is dust flying around, the sun is glaring, he's sweating. It's not an easy call. And as you can imagine few if any gunners have shot at such vehicles. If you fuck up and shoot an innocent car, the public relations mess afterwards is murder. If a pick-up is rushing towards you, you have to quickly see if there is more than one person in the vehicle. More is better. Bombers are usually solo.

In the article below it says the bomber was overweight. It reminds me of this fat creampuff teacher I saw the other day in the ghetto school of Udekylhs School who looked totally Taliban. I don't trust a fat man in this country where everybody is thin (and pretty good-looking I might add). If they’re fat, chances are they’re not a native. Afghanis are not suicidal types. Those extremists come from outside the country, and if they are Afghanis they were trained in Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Saudi, Iran – take your pick.

Our interpreter these past two days thinks the solution is that Afghanis unite and say they will no longer tolerate these foreign extremists using their country as a killing field. Destabilization is the outcome, something the Taliban uses to its advantage. The simplest way to understand the Taliban is to compare it to the Mafia in Sicily. You have a weak central government and you have a group of bad guys who want power and money. They use intimidation and scare tactics to get what they want. They play hardball. If they know you've squealed on them and they catch you, you will die, and not quickly. (Two interpreters were found with their faces cut off a few months ago.) And it only takes a few horrific incidents to scare most everybody else, ergo terrorism.

The thing is nobody wants the Taliban back. People know they do not represent Allah. The Taliban's only saving grace was that during its rule there was little crime. If you did something illegal you were butchered. Our interpreter told us that one day in school they told him his hair was too long. They cut off his hair in front of everybody. One person told me the Taliban liked to constantly keep people afraid of them as a way to maintain power. He said that the Taliban cut down the trees by a bus stop just to make things unpleasant for people waiting in the sunlight.

The Taliban is now turning on the heat. They want to shake coalition and U.S. forces. I can't imagine what type of explosives were in the pick-up to be able to make a 6-foot-crater in the earth. It would be interesting to find out where the pick-up was outfitted, who the men were, how they obtained the explosives and who paid for it.

In a little village called Pol-E-Charki, where Doug and I went on a mission yesterday, to talk to the headmaster of the village's main school that has 4000 (!) students, the soldiers were trying to get information on an IED factory that is operating somewhere in the area. At Camp Phoenix they discovered that a cellphone factory was actually making IEDs. So things are happening right underneath the military's nose.

Towns and neighborhoods here are so insular that I imagine everybody knows or has an inkling of what's going on in their area. The one word to describe Afghanistan would be "tribe." They're very close-knit and since there's no TV, radio, phones or electricity in many, if not most, places gossip and talking are the main forms of information and entertainment.

So the country is getting more unstable and I'm here to witness it. Winter will put a stop to most of this -- remember, snow leaves tracks. Rain, snow, cold are all in an army's favor. But until then I wonder how bad it will get. To be honest I'm a little worried, but on the other hand, when you get outside the wire (off base) and you're with a great group of guys, you kind of think, If something happens, we'll deal with it.

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2 GIs Among Bombers' Victims in Kabul
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: September 8, 2006
Filed at 8:17 a.m. ET

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- A suicide car bomber struck a convoy of U.S. military vehicles in downtown Kabul on Friday, killing at least 16 people, including two American soldiers, and wounding 29 others, officials and witnesses said.

The blast, near the U.S. Embassy, came as NATO chiefs appealed for member nations to send reinforcements to combat resurgent Taliban militants fanning the deadliest violence in five years. A top British general said the fighting in volatile southern Afghanistan was now more ferocious than in Iraq.

The bomb, one of the worst in Kabul in recent years, blew pieces of an American Humvee and U.S. uniforms into trees, which were set ablaze by the explosion. The blast shattered windows throughout downtown, and a cloud of brown smoke climbed hundreds of feet into the sky.

The bombing came three days ahead of the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and as Afghans remembered Ahmad Shah Massood, the fabled Northern Alliance commander who fought Soviet forces and the Taliban and was assassinated by suspected al-Qaida operatives posing as journalists on Sept. 9, 2001.

The Kabul blast went off about 50 yards from the landmark Massood Square, which leads to the main gate of the heavily fortified U.S. Embassy compound. It dug a 6-foot-wide crater and left body parts, Muslim prayer caps, floppy khaki-colored military hats and shoes scattered on the ground.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack, saying, ''Today's heinous act of terrorism is against the values of Islam and humanity.''

A witness, Najibullah Faizi, said he saw a blue Toyota Corolla driven by a young, heavyset man speed past another car on the inside lane before ramming one of two U.S. Humvees in a convoy.

''I fell to the ground after the blast. American soldiers started shooting at another car nearby. There was smoke and flames everywhere,'' Faizi, 25, told reporters.

Sixteen people were killed and 29 were wounded, said Ali Shah Paktiawal, criminal director of the Kabul police. Two American soldiers in the vehicle were among those killed and two were among the wounded, said U.S. military spokeswoman Lt. Tamara Lawrence. The attacker also died.

Among the victims was an elderly woman who had been sitting with her granddaughter in a small yard outside a Soviet-era apartment building.

''My mother just went to the park for some fresh air with my daughter when the explosion happened,'' said the woman's son, Farid Wahidi, 40. ''Shrapnel hit her in the chest and killed her.''

An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw the bodies of two coalition soldiers lying yards from the Humvee. U.S. troops stood guard around the bodies, one of which was slumped in the gutter, the other covered by a plastic sheet.

Dozens of U.S. and British soldiers cordoned off the scene as investigators sifted through the wreckage of the charred military vehicle.

Soldiers retrieved body parts, apparently from the suicide bomber, and placed them into plastic bags for further investigation.

Afghanistan is facing its deadliest spate of violence since U.S.-led forces toppled the hard-line Taliban regime for hosting Osama bin Laden. Hundreds on both sides have been killed each month this year.

A roadside bomb hit an Italian military convoy in western Farah province Friday, wounding four troops, one seriously, NATO and the Italian Defense Ministry said.

Some 20,000 NATO soldiers and a similar number of U.S. forces are in Afghanistan trying to crush an emboldened Taliban insurgency. The heaviest fighting takes place across vast desert plains in southern Helmand and Kandahar provinces, also center of the country's massive opium trade.

''The fighting is extraordinarily intense. The intensity and ferocity of the fighting is far greater than in Iraq on a daily basis,'' Brig. Ed Butler, the commander of British Forces in Afghanistan, told British ITV news.

He echoed NATO commander Gen. James L. Jones' call Thursday for more troops. Jones, who said the next few weeks would be decisive in the fight against militants, was expected to press officials from the 26 NATO member states for more soldiers and air support at talks in Poland this weekend.

Butler said more soldiers would allow operations to be carried out faster. ''It will continue to be tough and we will continue to take more casualties, but morale is extraordinarily high,'' he said.

Also Friday, a would-be suicide attacker killed only himself when his bomb-packed car exploded prematurely in Kandahar, said police official Rehmat Ali.

The car was parked on the main road to the Kandahar Airfield, where NATO vehicles, Afghan security forces and government officials regularly pass. None were in the area at the time of the blast.

Afghan security forces, meanwhile, found four bombs near a northern Kabul high school, defusing two and safely detonating the others, said police official Mohammed Arif.

About 70 Taliban fighters fired rockets at a district government headquarters in the central province of Wardak early Friday before police repelled them, said provincial police chief Mahboobullah Amiri.

Eight Taliban were killed and four wounded according to witnesses, Amiri said, but police had retrieved no bodies. One policeman was lightly wounded, and eight militants were arrested.

NATO forces launched airstrikes and artillery and mortar barrages on Taliban positions in Kandahar's Panjwayi district overnight, inflicting an unspecified number of Taliban casualties, said Maj. Scott Lundy, a NATO spokesman. No NATO or Afghan forces were hurt.

Lundy said NATO would press on with Operation Medusa, which began Saturday in Panjwayi, until it had ''removed'' all the Taliban militants. NATO says it has killed more than 270 insurgents since the offensive began and that hundreds more are massed in the district, west of Kandahar.

Farzana Wahidy/AFP -- Getty Images An Afghan policeman secures the site of a suicide car bomb blast.
Syed Jan Sabawoon/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images A suicide car bomber struck a convoy of U.S. military vehicles in downtown Kabul on Friday, near the U.S. Embassy.
Ahmad Masood/Reuters - A U.S. soldier at the site of a suicide blast in Kabul, Afghanistan. The attack was the deadliest suicide bombing in Kabul since the fall of the Taliban five years ago.

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HEY EVERYBODY! I’M LOOKING AT GAY PORN! – KABUL, 10 SEPTEMBER 2006

•Downtown Kabul.•

•Downtown Kabul.•

KABUL, 10 SEPTEMBER 2006

The King and Queen’s Palaces in Kabul must’ve been stunning, with their gardens and fountains behind walls, before the Soviets blew them all to hell as they began their siege of Afghanistan. The boys from Camp Black Horse brought Doug and me to Camp Cobra, which is near the two palaces, today before dropping us off back at Camp Phoenix. Like Bermel, I was really going to miss the close-knit group of guys. Soldiers – like international charter flight attendants – bond very quickly and deeply. You can tell these guys would do about anything to make sure the other remained safe.

•Outside the bombed-out King's Palce in Kabul. It reminds me of the Reichstag in Berlin at the end of WWII.•

•Doug•

•The partially destroyed King's Palace as seen through a fence. The Soviets tried to kill the King one night but missed.•


There was a lockdown on all internet communication because some soldiers were killed and their families needed to be notified. I had heard that if a soldier is injured the internet is down for 12 hours. If there’s a death, it’s 24. But this has been longer than 24 hours. Without the internet I feel like fish with no fins. I can’t propel myself in a direction. When we got back to Phoenix I looked up Major Strong, the media guy here at Camp Phoenix.

Strong was upset because he had lost a friend of 4 years. So there were two soldiers who had been killed in separate incidents in Afghanistan and that was the reason for the lockdown. It wasn’t the two soldiers killed by suicide bomber in Kabul. By the way when we got back to Phoenix, we were shown the Kabul Humvee, which was on a truck bed. It was virtually unrecognizable. Apparently the turret was found 30 feet from the blast. And one of the tires blew over a 4-story building. Someone said the suicide bomber had 5 “105s” in the vehicle – so enormous mortars. Yet I still can’t comprehend how such a blast can occur.

I overheard one guy say at Black Horse that the two soldiers in the Humvee that survived were no doubt “crispy critters.” But in the newspaper today one of the soldiers was being interviewed. He survived with only a few wounds to his arms. There’s no mention of the other guy. Just as there’s no mention about the two soldiers killed.

•If the Taliban doesn't succeed in taking over Kabul, Coke will.•

•If you ask me, these two in the center of Kabul are opium addicts.•

•Taxi burka - Kabul.•

•A long-assed building in Kabul.•


I feel very honored that in Bermel, I got to witness the funeral ceremony for the soldier killed in by an IED, Cole. It was a death that had a face, details, and facts. It makes death very real. When you know only that someone has died it makes the whole concept of dying in combat vague (at least to me).

Around dinnertime the internet came back up. So it was back to the ghetto internet Bee-Hut at Camp Phoenix, full of ‘nigga’ this and ‘nigga’ that as the guys who man the office there have their friends come in. The military is very conservative, but as long as you’re not a threat to national security, it seems you can do whatever you want as long as you’re not in uniform. Personally it really irks me. It’s like, Guys, you’re in Afghanistan. You’re out of the ghetto and in a war zone, why don’t you maybe try to change your lives to move it up a notch. But whatever.

If you look around at the computer screens in the internet café you’ll see basically two things – ads for women and men on myspace.com and similar sites and messenger programs with ping-pong messages going back and forth. Since sex is a no-no, soldiers will try anything to be able to surf for porn. But there are a lot of barriers and filters to try to stop it but still they keep trying. Today a guy apparently tried to get a on a porn site and something in it was booby-trapped so when the url when through, instead of hot babes there was a flashing screen accompanied by vociferous words, “Hey everybody! I’m looking at gay porn!” The whole room erupted in laughter.

I really liked Black Horse. It was less dusty, and serene and the mountains were beautiful. It’s only 8 kilometers away, but it was also way warmer. I don’t know if that’s possible, but it was gorgeous at night there. Here it’s freezing. Temperatures can now fluctuate 50° in a 12-hour period, going from 100° in the early afternoon to 50° at night. I hate the cold. Give me the heat. Doug and I will make it out of Afghanistan just before the really cold temperatures hit these high elevations …. I hope.

•An ad for a gym in Kabul in one of the 5 poorest countries in the world.•

•A huge IED unexploded mortar. Too dangerous and unstable to touch, it is near the Camp Cobra FOB by the King and Queen's Palaces in Kabul.•

•Soldier Schrack looks on as an unexploded IED mortar lays on the other side of a wall in a ruined building near Camp Cobra in Kabul.•

•Screw Anderson Cooper. Use Doug Grindle!•

•Has Afghanistan really changed me that much?•


K-Oh said...
Hey-- a friend in KAbul told me about your blog. I'll be reading it to keep up with stuff there.
3:36 AM

Kristin Ohlson kohlson@en.com
Gender: Female
Industry: Communications or Media
Occupation: writer
Location: Cleveland : Ohio : United States
About Me
I'm a fiction writer, essayist, author of the memoir "Stalking the Divine" and co-author, with Debbie Rodriguez, of "The Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Beyond the Veil," published by Random House in April 2007. I'm also a general interest freelance writer who's been published in The New York Times, Salon, Discover, New Scientist, American Archeology, Utne, O, Poets & Writers, Tin House, and many more. In the Book of Marvels, I write about all the things that intrigue me without fretting over who wants to buy. I borrowed the title from one of my favorite childhood books. It seems an apt--if daringly optimistic--metaphor for both life in general and a life of writing. Welcome-- and feel free to comment.

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I ALWAYS FEEL LIKE SOMEBODY'S WATCHING ME - 9/11 KABUL 2006

11 September 2001

10:30AM: SY IT’S CRAZY, CRAZY, CRAZY!!!! I LIVE ON CENTRAL PARK WEST AND 83 -- 120 BLOCKS NORTH -- AND THE STREETS ARE PACKED WITH PEOPLE WALKING NORTH. PHONES DON’T WORK, ALL FIRETRUCKS HAVE GONE TO SITE. THE TVs GIVING OUT. A FRIEND OF MINE WAS GOING FROM BOSTON TO LA TODAY WITH HER SISTER ON AMERICAN -- THANK GOD SHE WAS ON PM FLIGHT. I CRIED. PEOPLE ARE CALLING ME CRYING. THE 2ND TOWER COLLAPSED WHEN I WAS PHONE WITH MY BROTHER. I HAD TAKEN A PHOTO OF IT JUST MINUTES BEFORE ON THE ROOF. PEOPLE WERE JUMPING OUT THE WINDOWS 90 STORIES AFTER PLANE STRUCK. I HAVE FRIENDS THAT WORK AT WORLD TRADE CENTER. ALL SUBWAYS, BRIDGES, TUNNELS ARE CLOSED. I WORKED AT WTC WITH AMEX. ALL PLANES DOWNED. I THINK WAR IS ON THE AGENDA. I’M AFRAID THERE COULD BE A NUCLEAR EXPLOSION. MORE LATER. KEN


Five years ago today the above was the first email I sent out. It was to my friend Simon Carter in London. We became friends when he lived in New York. At the time I remember so much was happening – one plane after another hitting something, the towers coming down, incoming news changing by the minute – that I was thinking this might be all a precursor to a nuke. And what better place than New York to detonate one? Where on earth could you do more harm in such a small area?

Today I’m in Kabul, Afghanistan on a military base, Camp Phoenix. I couldn’t have imagined at the time when I was glued to the TV set that I’d be here, taking pictures for national photo agencies, five years down the road.

Since 00:01 this morning two groups of soldiers, 7 in each group, have been raising and lowering U.S. flags here in honor of those killed in the terrorist attacks. All day soldiers and KBR contract workers here on base have been bringing their flags to be raised over Afghanistan, a country that unfortunately was involved in the 9/11 tragedy.



A cheapo flag is $3, a nice nylon one is $15. Guess which type I bought three of? There were moments of silence for those times that many of us have vaguely memorized. 8:45 AM first jet slams into the south tower, 9:03 second hijacked airliner hits the north tower, 9:43 American Airlines Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon, 10:05 AM the south tower collapses, 10:10 AM United Airlines Flight 93 crashes in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, 10:28 a.m. the north tower collapses.

I got goosebumps today when over the loud speaker (like on M*A*S*H) these words spilled out: “Attention Phoenix personnel, at this precise time, 0845 hours in New York City, 1715 hours local, a hijacked passenger jet, American Airlines Flight 11 out of Boston, Massachusetts, crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. This act was supported by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. It was an act against America and mankind.” It was so weird to think of all my friends in Manhattan starting their day as the sun was rising, while the same sun was setting here.

•An Afghani kitchen worker on Camp Phoenix in Kabul watches American soldiers raising and lowering U.S. flags in honor of the victims of 9/11.•

•A U.S. soldier discussing 9/11 with one of the Afghani workers on Camp Phoenix in Kabul. Ranjid, who works in the commissary, wears a New York baseball cap.•


I wanted to see the ceremonies in New York, but besides sports being on one set of TVs in the chow hall, the Pentagon Channel was on the other set of TVs. So guess what was being broadcast? I thought Dick Cheney was dead and stuffed until he actually moved and approached the mic. And Rumsfeld, was he on medication or something? Half of what he said was incoherent and the other half was laid on so thick you’d need chainsaw to cut through it.

I watched the Afghan locals today who work on base to see what they thought of all this U.S. patriotic flag-raising-and-lowering. I don’t think a lot of them really understood much of it. Flag going up. Flag going down. Towers were hit by planes. Taliban involved. Maybe those parts they get. But I wonder if they make the connection to the army base they’re working on and 9/11.





I’ve been told in the past 24 hours by two people who live in Afghanistan that my emails are being “lifted” by military intelligence. Last night I answered my backlog of emails, some of which had been in my box almost a month. I never write anything that I think could be incendiary. On the other hand, the thought of some military intelligence guy sitting in a darkened room reading my emails, gleaning them for information, is unsettling.

My thought on the subject is if you have the Taliban and insurgents operating in the ridges near Pakistan and in the poppy fields around Kandajar, wouldn’t the military’s time be better utilized to try to unlock the secrets of the next IED to be laid on a busy road or a suicide bomber waiting for a U.S. convoy?

When my partner Jean called me 5 years ago while I was writing at my desk overlooking Central Park and told me that a plane just flew into the World Trade Center, I was pissed. “Goddamnit, why do you always have to joke around when I’m busy,” I barked.

“Turn on CNN,” he said. OK, so I was wrong I didn’t believe him. He was telling the truth.

I likewise don’t want to believe that someone is digging into my personal files. 9/11 opened all kinds of cans of worms. Let’s hope the craziness that it unleashed doesn’t start hacking away at the foundations our country is based on. Freedom and liberty are what differentiate America from most other countries. Not Big Macs, Mountain Dew, Corndogs, canvas lawnchairs with beercan holders, SUVs, bubblegum and ghetto blasters.

9/11 was our century’s Titanic, peppered with Pearl Harbor. The Titanic and Pearl Harbor led to our country becoming wiser and stronger. Let’s hope 9/11 leads to the same results.

•The sun sets on 9/11 in Kabul as it rises in New York.•

•As the sun disappears behind the mountains in Kabul a flock of birds darts across the sky.•





•Nothing says "Remember 9-11" like baked ham.•

•A popular commissary decoration strawberries inside of pineapple leaves. Very affective indeed.•



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ANDERSON COOPER, WHAT A CREAM PUFF - HERAT, 12 SEPTEMBER 2006

•Doug getting ready to board an E130 Hercules aircraft owned by the Dutch at the Kabul airport.•

•Instead of going to Herat, I mentioned to Doug that I wanted to go to Farah Fawcett, but he axed my idea.•

Boy, am I glad 9/11's over.

I feel the future of 9/11 will be similar to Christmas and Thanksgiving. You kind of look forward to it, but it turns out to be so draining that you can't wait for the 12 to drop down in the number slot of your 1970s clock radio. I'm sure 9/11 will become a national holiday. I mean if you can have President's Day, you can have 9/11 Day. A few years down the line there'll be greeting cards: Happy 9/11! And in decades to come, the whole 9/11 origins will be vague and fuzzy and people will celebrate by stringing twin tower lights (à la red plastic pepper type) all around the their front bay windows and around their kitchens. People with have twin tower cakes for dessert and of course there'll be the Ground Zero BBQs with coals that take months to extinguish.

Doug and I each got 90 minutes sleep last night. We got up at 4:45 AM to make a transport at 5:30. Well it didn't show up so when Doug called the Major in charge, he came out to the post office where we had been waiting for an hour and ripped us two new holes, saying that 5:30 is when the truck LEAVES and that we need to think and work with him and know that we need to be there at 4:30. Well jumping gee-hoe-se-fat, how the fuck am I (are we) supposed to know that? I never heard that before. If the truck "leaves" at 5:30, then we're there at 5:20 to leave with it. Live and learn. Next time there's a flight somewhere I will make damn sure I'm in on all the details and will verify WHEN we are supposed to physically be there so as the avoid any more confusion.

In the end the major got us on a ride on a few pickups that were heading to the airport. In the requisite pre-briefing, the troop leader said, "If I'm hit by an IED and my truck is burning, wave as you go past." In other words it's too late for him but save yourselves. Valiant of the man.

The Kabul military airport was great. You just put your bags on a cart that says your destination. You stick on a handmade-inkmarked luggage tag with the city name on your luggage then wait in a broken down waiting room.

Our plane was enormous. A Hercules plane owned by the Dutch military. I loved hearing the Dutch accent as the crew explained to us mere 8 passengers what we needed to know. My flight attendant side kicked in and I started doing my, "In case of emergency you're exits are located here and here. Always remember your nearest exits my be located directly behind you." I'm glad I was a flight attendant. My experience has always come in handy in past years.

We flew an hour and a half to Kandajar - the HOTBED of Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. Flat and dusty and golden. Where the hell are the poppies? I want to see blooming pink and red poppies against a cerulean sky! Anyhoo we then flew another hour to Herat, apparently the richest town in the safest area of Afghanistan. I heard today that this country is the 2nd poorest in the world. That's surprising. Poor, but the poorest?! Iran, 45 minutes away from the border is the reason for Herat's prosperity and stability. Iran is also the country in charge of soaking up Afghanistan's poppy/opium harvest then packaging and sending it to get Europe majorly stoned. Iran's a card - it needs to be dealt with.

A super great guy met Doug and I at the Herat airport. A tall, handsome, sweet guy with a genuine smile. 23-year-old Matt Leas is originally from Chicago, and moved to Sacramento 5+ years ago, where's he's based in the Airforce. It was the first time since Doug and I have been in Afghanistan that an actual smiling face on actual human being met us as we arrived and then helped us, like getting us accommodations, without Doug and I having to sit like Lenny and Squiggy, trying to call all over the pace to try to find out what's going on.

We drove for 10 km on a great road to Camp Stone. It was renamed in March after a doctor who was killed “blue on blue.” The base was attacked one night and the ANA got in on the action and shooting in the dark hit the 54-year-old medic. Previously it was Camp Victory. Matthew, our guide, showed us around the FOB and then we had lunch. Since the camp is full at the moment with visiting commanders he set up 2 cots in his tent where there are 3 other Airforce guys.

There are loads of Italians on this base. They are allowed to grow beards, which is a good look. I'm beginning to like Italians again after seeing the group assembled here. In total there are 300+ Italians, Americans and Slovenians here.

It's great to be back on a FOB (Forward Operating Base) after the bureaucratic and impersonal atmosphere of Camp Phoenix. Here it's easy to talk to the soldiers and everybody is more laid back. For example, you're supposed to always have your t-shirt tucked in your shorts (PTs) but here the soldiers just let it all hang out. They even where different colored T-shirts rather than the standard gray PT (Physical Training) T-shirt with Army on it. When I was at Phoenix, sitting with a group of guys who had driven us there from Camp Black Horse, an office commanded one of our soldiers to take the sunglasses off his head while we were eating. Apparently that's not allowed. One of our guys commented, "He needs to stay in his own lane." I like that term.

In the tent where Doug and I are staying with Airforce guys who arrived here a month ago, one fellow told me he's stationed in Japan and we had a grand chat about the country. I told him about my glorious international flight attendant days with World Airways and about my trips to Tokyo and Okinawa - an island that is renown for the world's best sake.

The same guy warned me about watching where I walk if we visit nearby villages because this area was very, very heavily mined. He said the Russians sometimes laid two to four mines on top of each other to give them that extra zing. Watch out for exploding grazing sheep

Anderson Cooper I found out is in Afghanistan, exactly where Doug and I were, in Bermel (The posting is below on this blog). He's with the same soldiers Doug and I were with. I asked one of they guys at Bermel, Matt H, if he's doing anything that Doug and I did. "He's not doing half the stuff you guys did," he wrote. That made me feel REAL good. Basically the network is afraid the army guys are going to ruin the live feed so they want them more in the background, whereas Doug and I highlighted them. When I think of Anderson Cooper I think of a cream puff with white hair. Bring back Walter Cronkite if you want serious journalism and not some puffed-up spineless little blowfish.

I witnessed the Big Dipper tonight for the first time this year as I headed to the tent to go to 'cot'. That was nice. The mountains around here are lower than where we've been. 3000 feet instead of 7000 or 8000. The day was really hot, but it's chilly tonight. It's also windy and dusty here, par for the course in Afghanistan.

Doug and I will be in this territory for about a week. Can't wait to explore a new area in this groovy country. Maybe we'll run across some Tali's and I can finally sell some pictures to Polaris. Would be nice to get some money rolling in while I'm here.

I need money, booze and sex. Not necessarily in that order.

•I couldn't believe it when I went to the bathroom and saw this anal retentive sign, taped on a stall door, about cleaning out the shitter after using it. Sometimes I think only Germany could produce such signs in its attempt to control everything from how to ride a bike down to bodily functions.•

•Kabul airport. Big Dutch plane.•

•The only thing missing on this Hercules aircraft was a beverage and lunch service. It was an awesome flight. Clean plane. Nice crew. Smooth flying.•

•The safety briefing from the Herat airport to Camp Rock, 10 km away. The road was smooth and wide and there wasn't one problem. Kabul REALLY needs to get a road like Herat.•

•HUGE Russian plane and other views from the window in front of my seat.•



•Herat's 60's style airport.•

•Camp Stone in Herat near Iran border.•
•Sunset from a FOB.•


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TATOOINE MEETS PLANET OF THE APES, ZENGALON (HERAT), CAMP STONE, 12 – 16 SEPTEMBER 2006

•Tatooine … I mean Zengalon.•

When you see the village of Zengalon you half expect Luke Skywalker to come walking out of one of the domed mud buildings. This place is the spitting image of Tatooine, the desert planet home of Skywalker. Zengalon lies only a few kilometers from Camp Stone, a FOB (Forward Operating Base) within an ANA (Afghan National Army) compound, 30 minutes from Afghanistan’s second largest city, Herat. If it weren’t for a few plastic bags and a lone bicycle lying around on the dusty outskirts of the village, a mere outcropping of tan-colored mud brick buildings, you could be forgiven for thinking you had stumbled into a page of the bible.

As our retinue of two Humvees and a pick-up near Zengalon, trailed by a dust bowl, I ask the Hummer driver, Sean Gustafson if he called someone in the village beforehand on their cell phone to let them know we’re coming. Gustafson is the soldier at Camp Stone in charge of dispensing military funds to local causes. He’s an extremely educated man who speaks a few languages, including Swedish. He’s a staunch believer in “The Four Universal Freedoms”: freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

“No, I didn’t have time to call anybody,” he says, his blond crewcut head turning to answer me.

“I was ki-idding,” I say.

Gustafson, Ramirez (the soldier in the passenger seat), and Doug start laughing.

It was so obvious I was joking. There are no telephone poles in Zengalon. No water or sewage pipes, no propane tanks, no TV antennas or satellite dishes, not even a tree or bush in sight, just turbaned heads beginning to peak over mud walls, a hazy blue sky as a backdrop. A dog lounging on top of one of the domed houses watches us while his tongue hangs out.

•Pleasant Zengalon boy, still looking good before life in the village makes him look 20 years older than what he is.•

•Zengalon local, terp, Captain Weaver.•


“There’s someone standing on top of that building,” Ramirez says, waving his black-gloved finger towards the inch-thick windshield, his lips moving, the only thing other than his nose visible through his helmet, headphones, sunglass goggles and neck protection

A second peg of a silhouette appears on another dome in the distance. The rays of late afternoon sun turn the village tangerine in color.

The soldiers are on edge.

We had planned to go the village earlier in the day but our media guy, Matt Leas, a 23-year-old Airforce Staff Sgt who lives in Sacramento, said something weird had been going on, that the locals looked like they were keeping scarce, which usually means something insurgent is going down.

But the villagers reappeared and Lt Colonel Elliot, the main-ranking officer at Camp Stone, told us we would be dropping off six steel beams for a mosque the village is building. We would return to the FOB as soon as the beams were dropped off. Zengalon is trying to complete its only mosque before Ramadan, which begins in two weeks.

Zengalon’s sad history and bad luck are on par with Afghanistan itself.

Located too near the new base they put up, the Soviets in 1980 destroyed the original village of Zengalon, which had over 4000 residents and 1000 buildings. “The original village had many two-stories structures,” Gustafson mentions. That’s a big deal for a village to have veritable skyscrapers in this Afghan Outback.

The Soviets mortared the Zengalon’s dirt walls, threw grenades in the wells, mined access to other sources of water, and in a few seconds blew up an ancient dam that the community had used for centuries. Their scorched earth policy was very effective up until 1983 when the muhajadeen regrouped, finally driving the Soviets out in 1989.

The city of Herat suffered 24,000 casualties in one Soviet onslaught in 1979. I was told most are buried in the same graveyard. Herat, with the aid of stable Iran, is said to be the most prosperous city in Afghanistan, where the women historically are the most educated and were most loathe to burka themselves. Many women were in government before the Taliban. Khaled Hosseini, the writer of The Kite Runner, is from Herat.

When the Taliban overtook Herat in 1995 many people streamed into Iran and became refugees. Tajiks are the majority here and the Taliban are mainly Pashtuns. Anybody suspected of being involved with “the Muj” (as Gustafson calls the Muhajadeen) was slaughtered. During the Taliban, where the population in some places of the province dropped by three-fifths due to deaths and emigration, life expectancy hovered around 42 years of age.

Zengalon was resuscitated by former villagers and some refugees and now contains 60 families -- about 300 people.

•On top mosque wall in Zengalon.•

•Men on top of mud brick walls of mosque to move beams.•

•A smiling face in Zengalon.•

•Taxi service in Zengalon.•

•This little boy with the only pair of sunglasses in Zengalon will surely grow up to be a rock star.•


Once we pull into the village, two-dozen children charge toward us. I can imagine that in this barren spot, cow-pied in the middle of nowhere, the presence of a visitor is about as unusual as a space ship landing.

Gustafson and Elliot greet the local men who display wide yellowed and toothless grins when they see the metal beams. The pick-up backs up to one of the mud walls of the mosque and men walking on the walls heave the weighty beams on top of the structure.

There are no women to be seen and only a peppering of little girls on the flanks of the village.

Gustafson explained to Doug and I the night before that the person he replaced, a Robin Truman, worked closely with the women in the village. Truman, a Vermont guardswoman who works full-time for the IRS, served 14½ months at the camp. Her philosophy was simple: listen to the people, write down their problems, jot down their names, take their petition to the appropriate ministry and military funding unit. Truman asked one woman villager, who had 11 children but wasn’t very old, what she needed. “Birth control,” the woman whispered.

Women become virtual phantoms after the age of 12 in villages like Zengalon. Once the mother hands her daughter her first burka, the girl for all practical purposes disappears from society. She will live out the rest of her life in the mud caves of the village. The Taliban’s terrorizing reign kept this traditionally progressive region under the blue veil. For those women who came of age under the brutal regime, they will pass on the burka tradition, this woman’s rite of passage, until it can be broken by more moderate winds.

The filth in some of the huts can be mind-boggling. There are no toilet facilities. No sinks. No toilet paper. One soldier commented that the living conditions of some villagers were the closest thing to Planet of the Apes that he had ever seen.

For its part, the U.S. military, which will soon pass the baton to the Italians, is trying to help the villagers of Zengalon by getting them fresh, safe drinking water. Recently two children died in the village due to amoebic dysentery. After the Soviets destroyed the traditional water source, the villagers excavated a ruined well and dug out little trenches in the arid land for water to flow to each house. The water collects in pools during the day then at night sluice gates are lifted and the water trickles down the mini-canals to each mud hut. The problem though is that the water source is a kilometer from the village. So the flowing water carries goat shit, urine and other refuse that collects in the open trenches during the day.

The villagers do not boil their water. They haven’t the wood – their principle fuel source – to do so. The military has urged them to drink dried milk and to be careful with their non-pasteurized goat yogurt that’s enhanced with mint. It’s believed that the villagers take little heed of such recommendations.

Like my home state of Nebraska, Afghanistan lies above a huge aquifer. It’s hard to imagine, but a hundred years ago, before goat herding, before the land was denuded of trees, before the Soviets, droughts, and civil upheaval, the desolate, scrub valley before me, was a verdant breadbasket, a virtual Shenandoah Valley. An ancient system of reservoirs, cisterns and irrigation maintained a forested valley that grew peaches, grapes and wheat.

Coming from the rural Midwest, I know a little about soil and I can tell that this fine, clay-rich earth, especially the former silted-up parts behind the dams must be very fertile. If a water source could be once again built-up and maintained maybe the destruction of the past century could be reversed.

To assist the villagers, a well was dug for them. But the contractors skimped on the depth, so instead of a steady flow of water coming from the earth when pumped, a mere trickle pisses out of the pipes. The children and a few men bench-pressed the well handle to show me how dismal their pump performed. The military plans to patch up the hole that the Soviets punched in the damn and supply pipes to move the water from its source to the village. Since the village’s livelihood is based on goat-herding, they stay on their flat piece of earth, rather than moving closer to the hilly source of the water.

As I saw in Africa, the villagers claimed, as soon as the six steel beams were in place, that they needed more beams for their mosque. “I was told you only needed six,” Elliot protests, his ‘terp’ (interpreter) relaying the message to the gathered men. Looks of desperation, uproarious laughter, and pleas all take place in the span of a few minutes.

Content to be with these local villagers, after being stranded on FOB island for three days, I was elated when Elliot decided to drive down to the damn and take a look at the water situation.

We pass two windlasses, which I understand are like winches (whatever those are). Elliot bought the pair for the village out of his own pocket. At $300 each, that was very generous of him.

•A meadow in the dessert.•

•28-year-old in Zengalon meadow.•

•The hole in the dam wall.•

•Entrance to the kariz.•

•Zengalon elder regarding destroyed dam.•

•Two relatives looking at their water supply in Zengalon.•


The dam – a stonewall that’s about 12 feet high – has a SUV-sized hole blown in it. About 6 feet up are little slits that were originally carved into the wall and were meant to irrigate fields when the water behind the dam reached a certain level. Stone Age ingenuity.

Pass the damn the locals showed me something that called a kariz (or kareez). It’s a cistern. A huge cave dug out in the earth with water on the bottom. I don’t really understand how they draw the water out, how extensive the cave branches go, or how old it is, but it was pretty cool to go into it and look up and see a hole at the top – very Indiana Jones.

“Watch out for dragons,” Gustafson yells from above. Dragons are what the locals call the large cobras that dwell in the cool wet environs of the karizes. Luckily I have no close encounter with the poisonous kind.

Past the kariz is a little spring and then a micro wetland, replete with miniature frogs and even a crab. “A half mile down is lush valley,” Gustafson says, pointing past some big golden slopes. If the sun wasn’t setting, and the locals weren’t about ready to do their prayers, and Gustafson didn’t have to meet with some contractors on base, and we lived in a perfect world, I would have ran over those slopes – Born-Free-like -- in search of the tiny Garden of Eden. To be among nature in this landmined moonscape of a country would’ve been a very welcomed change.

The elder kept on talking to me, explaining everything about the shoddy well in the village and the inefficient karizes. I nodded my head, not understanding a word, but grasping the idea. Gustafson reminded me to always ask for permission before taking a picture. … He don’t know me very well, do he? I snapped off over 200 images in Zengalon.

Before we dropped the men back off in the village, Gustafson asked each man how old he was. A guy with the black beard said he was 28 – he looked more like 38. The two-fisted gray beard next to me said was 44 (!). The guy looked more like he was 22 years older than me rather than two. And the toothless elder with the white beard was 50 (!!). It’s almost like they suffer from that disease Progeria where you age prematurely. In this case a life harder than any of us can conceive of is the mitigating factor.

Gustafson said that when the military first came to this village a few years ago, these people had literally nothing. It’s hard to imagine having less than they have now. But currently, in addition to the mosque they’re building, they have a tent school. One soldier donated the textbooks to the school, which currently is only for the village boys. There’s no teacher. Just a village elder. But it’s a start. It’ll probably be a while before any 7-11’s or Drive-Thru Taco Bells open up.

•So where’s Osama?•








In addition to trying to up the living standards of Zengalon, Gustafson works with injured veterans who have a disabled center in Herat. One of the terps gave him a heads up about it. After 32 years of war – there was a civil war in 1974 before the Soviets started moving in – there are many, many men who qualify for benefits. Out of 300,000 eligible “martyrs,” 45,000 have applied, and 15,000 actually receive their stipend, which comes out to $8 a month, the same amount widows receive from the same ministry. (For a comparison: a teacher earns $35 a month (when they’re paid). ANA (Afghan National Army) and ANP (Afghan National Police) personnel earn $70 a month. A worker on an American base earns $4-6 a day. An interpreter for the army, most of whom are under 24, and most of whom are treated like rare precious pets, earn $900 a month, 4½ times the national average income.)

When the military made its initial call on the Disabled Center, a run-down, urine-and-garbage malodorous, little compound in Herat with a garden in the middle, they found 93 men, who like Zengalon, who like the majority of Afghanis, had nothing. They are in some respects the Untouchables of this society; unseen, hidden, injured men who can no longer be productive in their traditional roles as breadwinners. But when asked what they wanted, the military was surprised by the answer. They didn’t want mattresses or ovens, as the military thought they would. Instead they wanted to work, more specifically to make metal doors and windows. The walls here may be made of mud and straw, but the doors and gates are usually metal.

One man at the veteran’s center has only one leg and one arm, but he’s learned to build prostheses out of aluminum and bike brakes. “The guy told me to shake his prosthetic hand and he nearly crushed my fingers; the grip was that strong,” Gustafson related. The veteran wants to manufacture these false limbs on a larger scale. He’s certainly a story waiting to be written.

Although Gustafson says he could easily appropriate $4,000,000 for all the causes in the Herat Province, the veterans received $10,000. They were able to purchase two welding machines, two saws, two sheers and enough seed metal to get started. The military will purchase some of the gates from the veterans to help them get started.

Likewise the CERP (Commander's Emergency Response Program) funds that Gustafson distributes were also used to purchase items for five vocational centers for widows. Each center received three sewing machines, three zigzag machines, three embroidery machines, four irons, three fans, plus work tables, embroidery hoops and thread. The hope is that by the women making rugs, embroidering, tailoring, weaving straw mats and creating decorative plasticine flower hangings, they can earn enough money to get by, if not even prosper.

Like the veterans these widows are in dire straights. They have few outlets to earn money and are usually saddled with kids. If a widow in this hyper-male-dominated society is not mercifully chosen by her dead husband’s brother or cousin as one of his wives, then she’s really fucked.

One woman in a women’s center has no arms. She’s the cook for the center, which normally house 40 women and 40 girls. Now that’s another story waiting to be written.

Hopefully these women, who currently earn 80¢ for working the entire day on making rugs that sell for thousands of dollars, won’t be exploited by the males who oversee the centers. This currently is the case in one center.

CERP funds are also used to help a boy’s detention center in Herat (most of the boys are there because of theft) and several schools in the area. One school has 7000 girl students. In all, there are 300,000 students in the Herat Province alone.

It’s these children who are Afghanistan’s only real hope for a stable and prosperous future. Trying to indoctrinate adults who are already married and have set thought patterns will be difficult if not impossible. The children -- this malleable clay of endless possibilities -- are not only a cost effective way to move this country up a notch, they are also the surest way to create a progressive populace. The materials and costs are relatively inexpensive when you take into consideration that one 500-pound bomb dropped by a B1-bomber costs in the neighborhood of $1,500,000. With that kind of money a lot of text books, notebooks, writing utensils, and desks could be bought, not to mention schools being built, and qualified teachers being paid. There could be international overseers to help maintain a high caliber curriculum. And there could be a drive to bring in teacher volunteers from Developed World countries.

Schools, and the education they sow, are such a threat to the retrograde and primitive ideology of the Taliban that they have made them a principal target in their campaign to destabilize the country. The Taliban blow schools up at night. In fact I just talked to a soldier the other day, Pantoja, whom Doug and I met on the Bermel FOB, and he said a few days after we left the insurgents destroyed a school the military had built for the children of Bermel. “They set three bombs in the front, back and side of the building and detonated them all at once,” Pantoja said.

•A poster of arcane signs inside ANA complex.•