Afghanistan in Retrospect: a List of Quotes

This morning I was digging through the little notebook I've been carrying around with me for the past nine months or so and re-reading a whole bunch of little quotes I've written down during my mobilization, to include the training beforehand, the travel there, and all of my running around. I failed to write down who was saying them, but they're all fun for their pointedness or ridiculousness.

Because I'm in a sharing mood, here's some of my favorites:

"Remember: no battle is won until the checklist is done"

"The barracks are fairly comfortable and there's wireless internet access available. Just don't harass the roaches. They live here, we're guests, and they outnumber us."

"While you're here you'll have plenty of time to bond. A little bondage never hurt anyone."

"The only thing left to say is: go forth, do good things, and play nice with your new green friends."

"Welcome aboard flight 695. Please place your rifles behind your feet and your pistols in the seat-back pockets in front of you."

"Those who destroy cannot defeat those who create in the long term. Shock and awe failed this test."

"This chart shows a breakdown of IED activity by month. As you can see from the chart, there's no good time to be in Kabul."

"If toilet paper were made of nails, there'd be a lot more assholes in the world."

"Why can't I use my Visa card here? It's supposed to be everywhere I want to be." "Did you want to be in Afghanistan?" "Good point."

"So what if it was on the floor? I'll eat it. You call it 'filth,' I call it 'fiber.'"

"I'm glad we were able to help you make your conference a success. In the future, if you need any support at all, please don't hesitate to look elsewhere."

"Really, we're building the plane while we fly it."

"We need unity of command, but we'd settle for unity of effort."

"I'm sorry sir, but I'm going to need you to explain that to me. I'm sure you made sense, it's just that I'm learning to speak Army as a second language."

"We're trying to sort out a common definition of the problem. So far we've only managed to agree that there is actually a problem."

"We can't measure all of the subjective factors involved. It's like tracking little kids shoveling clouds. It just doesn't make sense."

"It takes all kinds. I just wish it took fewer of this kind."

"We like to keep our budget small and closely restrict out reconstruction efforts. This is unlike the American model which is more like filling potholes with $100 bills."

"I demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty."

"You can't boil the ocean."

Logar Trip

Last week a group of us from the office decided to drive down to visit with the civilian-led Czech Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Lowgar Province. Logar Province is directly South of Afghanistan's capitol city of Kabul, so it's a pretty short trip. The PRT has been operating there for just over a year and in that time nobody from my office (which is supposed to be visiting all of the PRTs) has ever been there.

The drive itself was fairly routine. The main exception was that I was behind the wheel again:

Before we were out of Kabul Province we got stuck in traffic next to this charming little ice cream parlor (and butcher shop):

Once we arrived, we unloaded our gear and sat down with the PRT's civlian director, Ms. Bohumila Ranglova. Busy as she was, she set aside most of her morning to answer our questions and tell us all about the numerous reconstruction and development projects they've been running in the province. She was fascinating to talk to and has a tremendous amount of experience with humanitarian relief work and reconstruction projects. As far as I know, she is also the only female PRT leader in Afghanistan so far.

Small though it is, the Czech PRT is doing a lot of great work. They've upgraded schools and hospitals from tents to stone and concrete buildings, they've built government buildings from scratch, repaired dams, and established jobs and provided technical training for countless local workers.

After a long and fruitful conversation we took a walk around the base. The PRT is actually located within an American-run Forward Operating Base (FOB) called "Shank." It's a big place with lots of folks stationed there and a constant buzz of activity. We ended up getting a great view of the whole thing from one of the lookout posts next to the perimeter. Here's part of it:
From here there were also pretty impressive views outside the compound:

Here's Greg Scruton in front of the obligatory sign with directions and distances to the hometowns of soldiers stationed here:

Of course all of the signs point the same direction because all of the towns are in the Czech Republic. That's also why all of the distances are in kilometers.

Having wandered around and gotten the lay of the land, we had some time to spare before dinner. Somewhere in there I snapped a self-portrait:

The food there turned out to be some of the best food available in all of Afghanistan. If nothing else, the US military is doing a really good job of feeding folks on US bases. Before you ask, the HQ compound I'm stationed on is not a US base.

FOB Shank was every bit as comfortable as any other FOB. What makes them fun is the little bits of silliness that you find when you look closely. Take for example the little stacks of bottled water pre-positioned all over the base:


On the plus side, I didn't have to sleep on the deck this time:


The next morning, Vic Vale and I mounted up with a Czech convoy carrying a couple of the civilian engineers out to check on some of the ongoing projects. Here's me about to climb into a up-armored HMMWV (pronounced "humvee"):

On the road I got the typical soldier's view of Afghanistan:


Still, there were plenty of interesting things to see if you kept an eye open:


Here's a run-down old house with a fairly new well in front of it:





Our first stop was at a nearby village where the PRT is funding and managing the construction of a girls school. Here you can see some of the Afghan locals at work:

A year ago classes here were being taught under a tree. Now there are several functioning classrooms in the building to the right and eight more being built in the building in the background. Because our convoy included men, we had to visit on a day when classes were not in session and none of the girls were present.

While we toured the facility, the Czech soldiers provided security overwatch:

The local children were very curious about us:



We also visited a local hospital, but I didn't take any pictures for fear of offending anyone. Suffice it to say that a year ago the facility was simply a tent and now it's a walled compound with several concrete buildings, electricity, ambulances, and running water.

During the drive back to the FOB I snapped a few more interesting pictures. Here's a local man crossing the street:

And here's an Afghan sporting goods store:

After a few more meetings with the various civil-military affairs folks working in FOB Shank it was time to call it a day. The next morning we packed up, took our time having breakfast and coffee, and rolled out. On the way back there was still plenty to see:

So taken for all in all it was a good trip. We got a lot done and got plenty of fresh air:

Of course as we got closer to Kabul, there was no mistaking the murky pall of smog clinging low to the ground:

*sigh*

Hopefully I'll get to leave this place soon.

A Quick Trip to Bamian (aka a HUGE Pile of Scenery Photos) Part One

I spent most of last week in Bamian Province, visiting with the New Zealand-led Provincial Reconstruction Team. The original plan was for Vic an myself to spend one full day there gathering information and situational awareness before returning to Kabul.

Because nothing goes according to plan, we spent three full days there before Vic went back to Kabul and I went on to Bagram Air Base in Parwan Province. I'm sure there were plenty of reasons for the change in plans, but I don't know enough about them to write about them. Apparently there were larger forces at work than me.

The trip started bright and early with a drive over to the USAID air terminal again. Unlike our last trip to the terminal, this time there was actually a flight that was actually going somewhere.

This is what Vic looks like when he's going somewhere:


Vic and I were the only two military personnel on the plane. The only part that made it wierd was all of the civilian folks who decided to take pictures of us boarding because they thought it was strange to see people with guns on a plane.

We flew fairly low over the mountain tops on the way, so it made for some interesting views:

As we were landing we also took a long lap of the entire valley where the town of Bamian (the capitol of Bamian Province) is situated. We landed on a gravel airstrip next door to the PRT compound and we were met by a major from the New Zealand Defense Forces who drove us to the compound.


Our first day was mostly spent talking to the folks working there. The Provincial Reconstruction Team in Bamian is led and mostly staffed by soldiers from New Zealand. There is also a detachment of Singaporean soldiers as well as a handful of Americans. They fund and manage a wide variety of projects ranging from road construction to communications infrastructure and everything in between. There's also an Afghan Police Recruit Training Center next door where a number of New Zealand Police officers assist in training personnel for the Afghan National Police. There's a lot more to it, but it would take a long time to explain all of the great work that they've got going in the province.

We got a quick walking tour of the facility and were shown to our accomodations, a modest room in a plywood shack across from the plywood shack where two of the three dogs on base lived. Here's one of them:


After we'd gotten settled in and acquainted with their operations, we caught a ride around the outlying area with a couple of their guys. As we drove into town, we passed a prominent statue of the martyr Abdul Ali Mazari. He fought against the Russians in the 1980s and then went on to fight against the Taliban during the Afghan Civil War. After prolonged fighting, the Taliban leadership invited him to discuss a peacful resolution. His convoy was ambushed by the Taliban and disarmed then he was arrested, tortured, and later thrown from a helicopter flying over Ghazni Province where his body was found:

Further into town I caught this blurry snapshot of an Afghan National Police (ANP) officer on traffic duty with one of the holes where the giant buddha statues used to be in the background:


A little later we saw rush hour over by the provincial hospital:

In addition to the holes where the giant Buddhas used to be, there is an ancient Muslim fortification called Shahr-e-Golgola (translated literally as "City of Screams") atop a conspicuous peak in the middle of the valley. The fortress dates back to the 10th century and was sacked by Genghis Khan when he invaded in the 1220's A.C.E..
The Mongol invasion of Afghanistan accounts for the predominantly Mongoloid appearance of the local ethnic group, called "Hazaras." Apparently when Genghis Khan invaded Bamian this fortress caused him such trouble that, when it finally fell, he ended up killing every living thing in the valley. The bloodshed was considered overwhelmingly harsh even by the standards of the Mongolian Hordes. Men, women, animals, and even the grass were dead by the time he moved on. So it goes.

He left behind one thousand of his men to keep control of the area. Incidentally, the Farsi word for "thousand" is "hazar."

Before the Mongols there had been countless skirmishes between local tribal warlords and before that, in about 330 B.C.E. Alexander the Great conquered the region (though it's worth noting that the locals mounted a guerilla campaign against him that he never managed to put down completely).

While we were driving past Shahr-e Golgola, we passed a local farmer tilling his field:


Whenever I see a scene like this, I can't help but chuckle at some of the misunderstandings that come from back home. A while back I had to answer some questions about the number of local schoolchildren in Afghanistan who have internet access. I had to be honest and say that I really had no idea and, more importantly, that I really didn't think it made any difference. It seems to me that before we should worry about getting a laptop computer for every Afghan student, we should get a building for every school. Then fit them with roofs. Then books, plumbing, electricity, and sometime in the next couple of decades we can sort out a few wi-fi hotspots.

Internet access or not, the local kids seem pretty happy:


Although we also got no shortage of wierd looks:


Along the way we stopped to take a look at the irrigation canal that he kiwis are working to rehabilitate. While we were stopped we picked up an audience:


Once we'd returned from our drive, Vic and I had some time to kill. We were cramming a one-day visit into three days, so there wasn't much of a rush. We decided to go for a walk. Just behind the PRT compound was a peak that climbed over 500 feet above the altitude where our room was. The kiwis call it "PT hill" and mentioned several times in our first 24 hours there that it was a decent workout. Everyone there agreed that it was worth hiking it.

They also told us to bring a rifle in case we ran afoul of any wild dogs. It turns out that the wild dogs in Bamian are readily identifiably by their ears. Once a local takes in a dog as a pet, they cut the ears off. Apparently they've never heard of dog collars.

So, burdened only by drinking water and weapons, we set off up the road. Along the way I spotted this unusually adorned abandoned building:

On the North face of PT hill, they've dug little ditches designed to trap snowmelt and keep the soil moist. There are also little divots where they apparently plan to plant trees that will take advantage of this moisture:

The hike itself was a bit of a pain in the butt, but Vic looked like he was having fun, so we pressed on:

About two-thirds of the way up the mountain, it was time to take a break:

But once we were on top of the peak, there were some fantastic views. Here you can see all the way across the valley, the town of Bamian, and the Buddha holes in the cliff faces to the North:

At this point, we were 9,250 feet above sea level (give or take 25 feet according to my GPS). After that, the rest of the day was downhill.

On our second day there, we joined a foot patrol on the way out to inspect one of the US-funded construction sites. To get there, we ended up walking right through the middle of town. The strangest part about the walk was the fact that we were fully armed and armored as we walked down main street and nobody paid us the slightest bit of attention. In fact, until I pulled out my camera, this guy didn't even glance at us:

While we were at the construction site, one of the engineers spent a lot of time talking to the construction foreman, asking him about mixing ratios for the concrete they were pouring and whatnot. I got tired of it all pretty quick, so instead of listening in like I should have I walked over to the bank of the river next to the site and snapped a few pictures of the local girls doing their laundry on the opposite bank:




Just a few yards upriver, a local shepherd was watering his flock:


As we walked back to the PRT compound, I snapped this winning shot of main street Bamian:

That evening, we accompanied some representatives of the US Army Agribusiness Development Team to a meeting at the Provincial Governor's office. These were soldiers from the Nebraska National Guard with a background in agriculture who volunteered to come to Afghanistan to teach the local farmers how to improve their methods of planting, harvesting, and marketing their crops. They're doing a lot of great work and they were pretty good guys to talk with. More on them some other time.

Unfortunately we arrived a bit early and had to wait outside for Afghanistan time to catch up with us. The local kids took a bit of interest in us:

Since we really didn't have any advice to offer on the cultivation of soybeans or grapes or anything else for that matter, Vic and I ended up hanging out in the anteroom outside the office and chatting (as best we could manage given the language barrier) with the Afghan National Police guards who were stationed there. They were pretty nice, albeit simple, guys and it was all I could do to convince them that I didn't want to trade any of my equipment or weapons for any of theirs.

It would've been nice to meet the governor. She's the only female provincial governor in the country and her province was the first one to ever have female police officers (in 2006), so she's picked up a bit of celebrity value as well.

The next day Vic and I started out with nothing pressing to do except wait for flights. Then it got interesting.

Stay tuned for the rest of this exciting adventure (and a heck of a lot more scenery pictures)...

An Amazingly Wasted Day

The plan was simple. Go to the airport, catch a ride on a USAID* plane headed to Bamian Province, get to know the New Zealand-led Provincial Reconstruction Team (NZPRT) there, then find your way back. I've been looking forward to visiting Bamian ever since I've been here.

If Afghanistan ever manages to build a tourist industry, it will be focused in Bamian Province. This is where the world-famous Buddha statues were carved into the cliff faces (the largest known examples of such statues anywhere) used to be before the Taliban decided they were idolatrous and destroyed them in March 2001. This is also where the Band-e Amir lakes, a group of amazingly clear, azure bodies of water, are located. The area is so safe that instead of the armed and armored vehicles that are used in other provinces, it's common for the NZPRT soldiers stationed here to travel by horseback.

In order to minimize our impact on their operations, we decided to keep our footprint as small as possible. This meant that the entire visiting team from the headquarters would be myself and LCDR "Vic" Vale, armed with pistols, rifles, paper, and pens. Since travelling in Afghanistan is a sketchy proposition at best, we were loaded with everything we might need in case our three-day tour turned into a week worth of waiting for flights to get sorted out.

Vic and I met up in the office at, oh, seven hundred or so to grab all of our gear, check email one last time, don our armor and set out. At some classified time in the morning we met up with a British convoy to travel from the headquarters to the USAID terminal at the western end of the Kabul Area International Airport. The Brits were very serious and drove aggressively enough that we got there with plenty of time to spare before the flight to Bamian was supposed to take off.

Once we arrived at the terminal the booking agent, a local Afghan employee, told us that our flight had been cancelled due to the weather. While it was overcast, there were still plenty of aircraft taking off from the airport, so I don't understand why these guys weren't willing to fly. All the same, the agent said he'd put us on the afternoon flight to Mazar-e-Sharif (which I'd like to point out is not Bamian) if we'd be willing to wait around. It was the wrong place, but it was in the right direction, and the agent suggested that we'd have better luck trying to travel from MeS to Bamian.

We dumped our gear in the passenger terminal, a 40-foot shipping container with a broken down heater, a water cooler, and a handful of wicker chairs, and set about waiting. After five hours one of the guys from the flight line came in and was surprised to see us there.

"You guys are still waiting here?"

"Is there somewhere else to wait?"

"Not really," says he, "but all of our flights for today are cancelled, so there's no reason to keep waiting."

He went on to explain that there were no scheduled flights we could use the next day and that all of the flights for the day after were booked solid. With no chance to make any kind of progress toward our destination, there was no sense in staying at the terminal.

This presents a problem. At this point we're sitting in a passenger terminal that nobody from the headquarters compound has any reason to visit. We're not allowed to schedule convoy movements using a telephone in case someone is listening in on our conversation. So there we were on the wrong side of the airport on the wrong side of town with all the crap we could carry on our backs and stranded.

The solution was the ISAF military airfield on the other end of the runway. There was a small chance that we could catch a flight to somewhere in our intended direction, but failing that there's always someone coming and going between the airfield and the headquarters. Since the USAID folks didn't have a driver to spare so we could hitch a ride and Kabul isn't the sort of place you want to go walking around dressed as an American soldier in one-sies and two-sies, the only way to get there was to walk the length of the runway.

When I asked the USAID booking agent if we'd be allowed to walk along the runway, his answer didn't exactly inspire confidence:

"You'll probably be fine."

Nice.

It was a long walk, and about halfway along we strolled past a couple of airliners mated up to the civilian passenger terminal. It's not the sort of view I'm really used to at an airport (normally I'm on the other side of this scene) but otherwise there was nothing remarkable about it. As we ambled by, an Afghan policeman came out of the building on our right and started yelling at us. We managed to ignore him long enough to get past and eventually found our way into the back gate at Camp KAIA, the military airfield.

We arrived at the military passenger terminal and found out there were no flights left for the day that we could use to get where we were headed. We also learned that we arrived just five minutes after the shuttle convoy departed for the headquarters. Since it was clear we weren't going anywhere soon, we ditched our gear, grabbed lunch, and did a little shopping.

As we were walking from the post exchange back toward the passenger terminal, I spotted a US Army major that I'd seen around at the HQ as she was about to climb into her vehicle and bummed a ride. Our little adventure ended early in the afternoon and we'd managed to accomplish little more than pissing off an airport cop, but now at least we're better prepared for our next attempt at the same trip.

Stay tuned and sooner or later I should actually have something interesting to write about. That, and pictures of some big holes where there used to be big buddha statues. In the meantime, we'll consider this attempt a dress rehearsal.

*USAID is the United States Agency for International Development. They have planes. We're allowed to travel in them when they're going our way.

A Series of Lessons Learned from Yesterday's Conference

Yesterday LCDR "Vic" Vale and I hitched a ride on a Blackhawk helicopter down to a construction and development conference in Khowst Province in the southeast end of the country. I'll be posting pictures from the flight there and back in the next day or two (I took a lot), but for now here's the Cliff's Notes version of what I learned while I was there:

Trees will win the war:
Afghanistan has a long history of success with tree-based agriculture. War is hard on trees, so after thirty years of conflict in the country there aren’t a heck of a lot of them left. Before the Soviet invasion, Afghanistan grew some of the world’s best walnuts, pistachios, almonds, apricots, and pomegranates (including a seedless variety). The widespread destruction of the local forests and orchards has led to the usual problems associated with deforestation; topsoil erosion, water runoff, air pollution, and so on.

It is not far-fetched to say that trees will save this country. The international community has implemented numerous programs geared toward the planting of fruit trees for commercial use and fast-growing trees such as poplar for lumber and firewood. In some provinces there are even programs in place to replant wild forests, though their limited financial benefits have mostly kept these on the backburner in favor of more immediately profitable projects.

Grapes:
Grapes are one of the most successful crops in the country and have been for a long time. When Alexander the Great’s armies invaded, his staff identified at least a dozen different varieties of grapes. Seedless grapes were invented in Afghanistan. Much of the world’s raisins come from Afghanistan. Despite this legacy, there are many basic concepts they have not yet grasped. For example: trellises. In California whenever you see a vineyard it is trademarked by rows of trellises that stretch for miles and miles. In Afghanistan most grapes are grown on the ground, making them more prone to pest infestation and yielding less fruit.

Alternative crops are the key to eradicating opium:
Every year in Afghanistan, local farmers grow roughly $4Billion worth of Opium poppies. That $4Billion worth of poppies becomes $16Billion worth of heroin on the streets of Europe and the United States. Since the demand for this crop will remain high, the only best way to get the locals to stop growing it is a coupling of a “sharper stick and a bigger carrot.” The ideal way is to make sure that everyone knows that poppy fields will be burned while also making sure everyone knows that we will help them if they opt to plant alternative crops that will yield a higher profit instead. Opium is very easy to grow, so we have to work to incentivize the growth of more challenging crops (pomegranates, saffron, apricots, etc).

Afghans are very nationalistic about their food:
An Afghan will pay more for an egg laid in Afghanistan than they will for an egg laid in Pakistan. The anecdotal ethnic-suspicion-fueled rumors that Pakistanis try to poison Afghans help to drive this aspect of the market. There are a few programs in place to train local farmers and widows in the care and feeding of chickens, but they could all stand to be expanded.

There’s no shortage of water:
Despite the general impression to the contrary, there isn’t a shortage of water in Afghanistan. In fact, there is more water per capita in Afghanistan than there is in Switzerland. The problem is that all of the water flows freely out of the country and there are not very many people in the country with water management knowledge. The US Army Corps of Engineers has been trying for some time to get funding for a nationwide watershed survey in Afghanistan that will allow them to plan the construction of reservoirs, and dams as well as hydroelectric and irrigation projects. A number of international donors have expressed an open willingness to fund the myriad number of water usage projects that this survey will provide for. So far, nobody is willing to shell out the $4.5million required to conduct the survey itself.

Afghans love sheep and goats:
In addition to the plant-based agriculture, the local economy depends a lot on animal-based agriculture. This is primarily comprised of goats and sheep. Wool from the Ghazni province (in southeast Afghanistan) is world-famous. The main obstacle to developing this niche in the market is that the country lacks the infrastructure necessary to effectively distribute their products. Most Ghazni wool is exported and made into finished products in Pakistan. It’s not uncommon to find rugs in high-end department stores worldwide marked “Made in Pakistan, 100% Ghazni wool.”

In addition to the wool, Afghanistan makes some of the world’s best cashmere. Cashmere comes from certain types of goats and the Afghans have a shit ton of them. The main problem with their production is the manner in which they harvest it. To get the optimal yield of cashmere from your goat, you need to brush out the fine undercoat and use that part. When the Afghan goatherds do it, they shear the goats and then try to separate the fine undercoat from the long, coarse, topcoat. This is labor-intensive and consumes much of the profit that would come from the final product. How much profit? One ton of raw cashmere is worth approximately $12,000US. In a country where the average person earns barely one dollar a day, this is a very significant amount of money.

One of the more successful projects instituted by USAID (the United States Agency for International Development) has been the development of Veterinary Field Units. These are one-man travelling vaccination stations built into a truck with a solar-powered refrigerator that can move from village to village and treat livestock. Each one is basically a self-contained, Afghan-owned veterinary clinic. This leads to the next problem…

Charity is ruining this place:
Whenever a foreign donor comes along and gives something away for free, it puts a local out of business. Case in point: wheat seed. Last year there was a big push to distribute wheat seed to help the locals kick off their planting season. As a result, none of the farm supply distributors in the country carry wheat seed anymore. Since the international community is giving it away for free, there’s no longer any profit in it. As a result, we’ve inadvertently shattered a little piece of the privately developed supply infrastructure.

This same thing happens whenever we show up and do a VETCAP (essentially a free visit from Army veterinarians) or MEDCAP (Army doctors) or hand out food as part of a humanitarian aid project. While all of these things make us feel good in the short term, over the long term they undermine the locals’ ability to provide these goods and services for themselves. This is why we need to stick closer to our own policy of providing direct assistance in only the most extreme cases, while simultaneously supporting the development of infrastructure that will allow Afghans to buy Afghan products from Afghan sources. Our aim should be to increase the value chain and improve Afghan business practices. We need to stop fixing problems for a day or a month and set them up to be fixed for decades to come.

Women’s empowerment has a long way to go:
In a contest broadcast on Tolo Television Network, contestants were brought in to showcase their business plan proposals in the hopes of winning cash prizes to put toward the establishment of their businesses. The second place winner was an Afghan woman who had a very promising business model for a textile factory. Although she always appeared on television covered in her burkha, residents in her village were able to figure out who she was and set about regularly attacking and beating her father and her brother. Local police refused to intervene unless they were given half of her $10,000 prize as “protection money.”

This is a high-profile example of misogynistic sentiment in the country, but the driving forces behind it are not especially rare. While it is imperative that we strive to improve women’s standing in Afghanistan, it is vital that we remain sensitive to the long-standing cultural resistance to women’s rights. Too much too soon will only make it harder.

There was a lot of useful information that was put out and there was an official photo taken of the whole crowd that showed up (suitable for framing). Unfortunately Vic and I had to catch a ride home before the conference was over, so we missed a couple of the lectures.

With a Little More Practice, I’ll be Able to Nail Jell-O to the Wall

For the past few days my section of the headquarters and I have been deeply mired in our quarterly Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) Conference. This is intended to be an opportunity for senior members of each of the 26 PRTs in theater to meet and exchange ideas and information.

The planning for this conference began at about the same time as I arrived and has been taking up a steadily increasing amount of our time ever since. As the various chores were divvied out, I was thrilled to learn that I would be responsible for coordinating lodging for all of the folks who were unable to find lodging of their own.

The headquarters compound where the conference would be held (and, incidentally, where I live, work, and eat) was built to accommodate 800 personnel. There are currently over 2,300 people stationed there. In the midst of all of this, they've been tearing down some of the housing buildings (don't ask why) and making even less space. Needless to say, the conference guests would have to stay elsewhere.

"Elsewhere" turned out to be Camp Souter, a British base on the other side of town. They too are pretty well crowded, so "accommodations" mostly turned out to be a collection of tents they had sitting empty in the base. Good enough I suppose.

For my part, I was to be at Camp Souter to show folks around once they arrived and arrange transportation to get them from Souter to the HQ compound on the days of the conference. To ensure I was there before any of our new friends arrived, I got dropped off two days before the conference was scheduled to begin.

The Canadian detachment on Camp Souter put me up in one of their few spare rooms and set me up to use their clubhouse as a reception area as folks arrived:

I really wish I'd've thought to take some pictures of the inside of this place. They've got a pretty good setup in there. There's a pool table and a decent sound system with a Wii and a couple of TVs and such. There's also a foosball table, hockey game, darts, a bar, two big grills, and more. Even though I woke up frightfully early and stayed up ridiculously late waiting for people to arrive, I couldn't exactly call it a hardship during my two days there.

Especially since only four people showed up at all in my first day there.

On the second day another sixty or so arrived. Mixed in was a sizeable group that had a meeting at HQ that afternoon. To facilitate this, we’d scheduled an armored bus to come and pick them up. I was expecting the bus at 1400 and told them all where to meet up when the time came around.

The time ended up coming around at 1230 when an Army 2nd Lieutenant in full combat gear walked up, saluted, pointed out the armored bus with four armed and armored gun trucks, and told me they were ready to go but my passengers hadn’t shown up. So I said, “Well, you’re awfully early, so if you guys want, you might as well stand down and grab lunch or whatever. It’ll be a while yet before everyone comes back.”

“Early?” says he, as he pulls a paper out of his pocket and shows it to me. “The order we got from you guys said to be here for a pickup at 1230.”

Oh dear.

I gave him my cellphone number and started rounding up the folks that needed to be on the bus. Since they were all off running around and thinking they had another 90 minutes to do whatever, it took a bit of time. About fifteen minutes into this little quest, my phone rang. It was an angry caller, but in hindsight it was a fun call:

ME: Hello.
CALLER: Is this Lieutenant Thorsson?
ME: Yes it is.
CALLER: This is Captain [garbled], the S-3 over here at Phoenix. I just got off the phone with my convoy commander and he said you didn’t have your people ready to move. I want you to tell me just what the hell is the problem over there.
ME: Okay, Captain, let’s slow down a minute. I realize you’re in the Army and when you’re talking to a lieutenant your used to talking down to someone. But I’m in the Navy, so you can stop acting like you outrank me.*
CALLER: Oh, well you…
ME: Now I was told your guys would be here at 1400. I’m not sure where the wires got crossed, but I’ll take the blame for that and I apologize. For right now I’m trying to track down a busload of lieutenant colonels** to solve our problem and the longer I talk to you, the longer it’s going to take. Is there something else you needed?
CALLER: No, that’s all really.
ME: 'Kay, thanks, buh bye.

This would prove to be the first in a series of Army officers who found me convenient for being unpleasant to. The next was a US Army lieutenant colonel who decided it was my fault that every accomodation facility in Kabul is overcrowded, forcing him to spend the conference sleeping in a tent. I suppose in his mind it was my idea to move tens of thousands of additional troops into the country. I don't really see what the big deal was though.

After all, the tents were heated. Or at least they started that way.

By 1900 two of the five heaters had broken down and refused to restart. These were amazing marvels of Rube Goldberg mechanics that ran on both diesel and electricity. By "ran on both" I mean to say that if there was a shortage of either they would shut down. The startup procedure was simple enough, but after half an hour of troubleshooting I was done raging against the machine.

By 2200 I'd given up on seeing any more people showing up and started moving lieutenant colonels and majors out of the tents and into rooms in real buildings that were set aside for colonels. I saved four empty beds for just in case. For no reason I can think of, three Germans and one Norwegian chose to stay in one of the unheated tents. Six US Army guys and one naval officer chose to stay in another unheated tent. Temperatures were predicted to drop well below freezing and there were at least eighteen empty bunks in the heated tents, but I decided not to push the issue after letting them know about it. Military people are wierd.

By 0130 I was in bed.

On my third day there the conference actually began. For me it began peacefully enough over at Camp Souter when I woke up at 0500:

Once I’d made sure all of the folks camped out with me were loaded onto the buses, I loaded me on the last one. Upon arrival at the HQ compound I took up my post at the front desk of the gym with Major Spilios Tsiros of the Greek Army and Major Adam Wloczewski of the Polish Army. We had a pretty good time with it most of the time:


Others from our outfit were not so lucky, such as Major Cheff (Canadian Army):


My duties there were simple. I was to answer questions for all of the guests who were new to the compound.
“Yes, ma’am, the restroom is down that hall to the left.”
“Yes, sir, there will be more coffee laid out soon.”
“No, sir, we can’t add you to the list of speakers at this point. The agenda has been set for over two weeks now."

Meanwhile, everyone else was inside working to shape the future of a nation:

I was pretty happy with my little contribution to the conference and things were going pretty smoothly. Then, in the midst of this brief moment of well-being, a very irate full colonel*** from the US Army managed to stump me with the first difficult question of the day:

“Why is Deputy Minister So-and-so up on the stage with the rest of the panel?”

“I can’t tell you sir,” says I, “I’m just here to help folks find their way around, the panel members were invited by the Admiral**** there.”

Ignoring my confession of uselessness, he went on. He explained that he was assigned as mentor to this particular Afghan official and that as far as he was told, his charge was invited to observe and would not have a speaking part. He was also expecting to have an interpreter assigned to him as he does not speak English. Now there he was, seated on the stage with a number of other government officials, without an interpreter, and staring into the working end of a microphone. As the panel droned on about their various visions for the future of the nation, this colonel continued to rant about how screwed up our entire organization was.

A good twenty minutes into his blustery review of everything wrong with NATO in general and ISAF in particular (which were now apparently the fault on one lowly US Navy lieutenant), one of my co-workers walked up and asked if I knew anything about the extra guy on the panel. It turns out that he sat down in the front row along with the rest of the Afghan government officials attending the conference, and when the Admiral invited the panel to join him on the platform this extra dude just went along with the crowd. Being attentive, the Admiral noticed that there was someone there who he knew nothing about and he sent my officemate Vic to find out whatever he could about him.

So when Vic asked me if I could find any bio information on the extra minister, I pointed him toward the very heated Army Colonel standing inches away from me and let him get yelled at for a few minutes. After ten minutes of noise about how embarrassing it will be for this poor guy if he's called on to speak and forced to flounder in front of his peers, I decided to interrupt:

"Sir," says I, "If you could hold off being angry about this potential problem for just a moment, Lieutenant Commander Vale here is looking for some information to pass to the Admiral so we can prevent the problem you're worried about. All we need is a few notes on who he is and we'll make sure he gets the word not to ask him to speak."

"Oh," says he, "Well, uh, his name is [Such-and-such], he's the Deputy Minister of [whatever]. Um, he's [XX] years old. He's Pashtun. What else do you need? I don't know."

Vic scribbled all of this down and wrote in bold letters across the top "DO NOT ASK THIS MAN TO SPEAK!" I stood there looking attentive as the Colonel continued to berate me for causing this whole problem. While I waited, looking duly apologetic and saying "yessir" a lot, I watched Vic hand the note to the Admiral and point out the line at the top. Once the Admiral nodded, I excused myself to the Colonel and made myself look busy with some other tidbit of minutia until he went away.

Ten minutes later he found me again.

"So," he spouts, "guess who's at the fucking podium right now!"

I'm still not sure what else I could've done for him. Here in this headquarters we've got a few dozen Generals and Admirals, a few hundred Colonels, Captains, Lieutenant Colonels, and Commanders. If he was really looking to find someone to make a change to the way things are run here, he probably should've looked for someone other than the Navy Lieutenant who was designated to show the guests where the bathrooms were.

I later learned that it was one of the other Afghan ministers who invited this guy up onto the platform and it was this deputy minister himself who ask for an opportunity to speak. So much for his US Army Colonel mentor being on top of things.

After that little bit of angry, the rest of the conference passed without any major headaches. I continued to sort out a handfull of concierge-related things and helped out with making sure that nothing got lost. I'm sure there was a great deal of valuable information traded in the course of the event, but I missed it.

The one portion of one panel that I did sit in on was, in my mind, a microcosm of everything wrong with policy-making in this country. There was an Army Colonel leading a panel discussion on prison reform within Afghanistan. They'd gone over a few things at the outset before opening the discussion to questions from the floor. The first one was precious:

"Colonel," asked the asker, "Are there any plans for the prisons to begin collecting biometric data such as digital fingerprints or retina scans to keep track of the prisoners."

This is precisely the sort of thinking that causes problems with reconstruction efforts here. Biometric data collection in the rest of the world is a great idea. Building scan-able, share-able databases so that law enforcement entities can better identify known criminals is a worthwhile endeavor. But, as the Colonel leading the discussion pointed out, they have more pressing priorities first. For example, many of the prisons in this country don't have electricity. Or sewage systems. Or running water. Or roofs. In fact, I've read reports that a few of them are just big, open pits dug into the ground.

It's pretty hard to manage a biometric database when you don't even have electricity and over half of your staff is illiterate. Needless to say, the Afghan prison system has a ways to go before it catches up with the rest of the world. But I digress.

All in all, it was nice to actually be busy for a few days, but I'm really glad to have this ordeal behind me. Just to celebrate, when it was all over I had myself a tiny little tower of soft-serve ice cream:


Fortunately, the next one of these things won't happen until well after I'm scheduled to depart. The quarterly PRT conference was a success, but it was also such a pain in the ass that the Admiral has decided to make it a semi-annual event from now on.

Awesome.

*An Army captain is the same paygrade as a Navy Lieutenant, so at best this guy was the same rank as me. More likely, I have greater seniority.
**An Army lieutenant colonel outranks a Navy lieutenant (or an Army Captain) by two paygrades. A busload of them who are all interrupted halfway through lunch and told to hurry into their armor and helmets and grab their rifles because someone made a typo are likely to be a bit difficult to keep calm.
***A full Colonel in the Army is equivalent in rank to a Navy Captain or an Air Force Deputy Super-Senior Vice Birdman Commandant. I am not allowed to ignore their problems.
****My boss is a US Navy Commander. His Boss is a Spanish Army one-star General. His boss is a Dutch Navy two-star Admiral. A two-star Admiral can pretty much ignore the hell out of the problems of an Army Colonel. The Air Force calls their flag-level officers "General" as well, but they make them wear hats with lightning bolts on them***** so it's still pretty goofy.
*****I'm totally not kidding about the lightning bolts:

But I should stop making fun of the Air Force. They get enough of that already, those poor goofy-looking bastards...