A Quick Thank You

The other day I went to get the mail for the office and had to lug a couple of massive boxes back that were addressed to LCDR Vale. Fortunately just before I gave him any grief he opened them. Inside were dozens of boxes of Girl Scout cookies:



So I'd like to give a heartfelt thanks to the young ladies of Girl Scout Troop #1947 and Brownies Troop #3724. It turns out that these girls paid for these cookies with proceeds from their sales this year. Now we'll be in cookies for weeks.

Awesome!

Kapisa, Parwan, Bagram, etc.

When last I posted, I'd just left Bamian Province with a couple of helicopters loaded with VIP's enroute for points west.

Our first stop actually ended up being Kabul, where we dropped off the first of three flag officers and his straphangers. Then we lifted off and flew north to Bagram Air Base in Parwan Province where everyone was shown to their accomodations.

The next day we got a tour of all things Reconstruction and Development located at Bagram Air Base. Most of our time was consumed by Powerpoint presentations for the Admiral. We got a 2-hour brief/discussion at the Regional Headquarters, a 2-hour brief at the Provincial Reconstruction Team, and a 1-hour brief at the headquarters of each of the local task forces. This is specifically why I'd prefer to make my visits to the PRTs with as few people as possible (and ideally, as low-ranking as possible). Instead of getting a chance to walk around with the PRT personnel out on the ground and get a first-hand impression of their operations, all I managed was to sit in the back of the room and read along as they showed us their VIP show.

So I spent my first day there getting bussed around with the Admiral and generally not learning anything. I also found out that there were no plans for the PRT folks to head out and do anything outside the compound while I was there. Bummer.

The one thing I saw that I hadn't seen before was the expansive distribution yard they have for Humainitarian Aid materials. This is a massive stockyard full of shipping containers loaded with everything from basic food staples to girls' cold-weather clothing. All of these items are loaded up on an as-needed basis to be delivered wherever it's needed within Afghanistan.

Our policy is to try every other option to help people before providing directly donated aid items, but when the need comes around we've got plenty to spare. It's hard to get a good photo of the scale of the space, but here's the best I could manage:


Even though the plan is to only provide "in extremis" huminitarian aid distribution, the yard is always a busy place. Given all of the problems across the country, there's always someone somewhere that's desperate for help. When it's too far or too dangerous for some other donor to provide help, that's when these guys load up some trucks with flour and sugar and gloves and hats and plastic tarps and so on and head out to distribute it to the locals.

Nice.

Once the Admiral's tour had ended, it was time to move along on my own. I bundled up all of my gear in the VIP accomodations and got myself a cot over in the transient tents. This was one of over 150 cots in this nearly full tent, so there was no shortage of other servicemen around to keep me company.

At this point it was already dark and raining, so I had little to do but wander over to the MWR (Morale, Welfare, and Recreation) building and watch a few movies. Sometime around dinnertime I got a call from one of the guys back in the office telling me that I should keep an eye out for a Marine lieutenant colonel who was supposed to be coming through Bagram on his way to being assigned to our office.

There are several thousand people working at Bagram Air Base. Meals can be had for free at any one of several dining facilities as well as bought at a number of restaurants on base. The base itself is easily comparable to a medium-sized town. I have no idea how they expected me to find one US Marine in all of this space and among all of these people.

Sure enough, less than an hour later I ran into him.

We ended up grabbing a cup of coffee and chatting a bit about what the office does and what he can expect from his tour in Afghanistan. He'll be in theater for a year, so he's got a lot to look forward to.

The next morning I was aiming to find a way to get out to one of the other PRTs in my region. Sadly the weather was still crap, so when I went over to the rotary wing passenger and cargo terminal to hitch a ride on a helicopter there were none available. According to the Army sergeant at the desk, with the backlog of people and material trying to get out I could've waited there a week before going anywhere.

Since there were no flights coming or going and no planned trips outside for the PRT, I once again had nothing to do but sit in the MWR building and watch movies. The good news was that LCDR Vale was coming up from Kabul to run around Bagram and then head out with me. The bad news was that I had to find him first.

Just after dinnertime, I found him.

We spent the next morning going around and talking with a handful of our contacts at the air base and then managed to catch a fixed-wing flight back to Kabul airport. After one week of living out of my rucksack, I was glad to be back in my little box and done with travel for a bit.

Stay tuned...

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

Vic left on one plane just about an hour before a whole bunch of bigshots arrived via helicopter. Between all of the general officers there were five stars that landed all at once and it was time for the PRT folks to show off all of their efforts for the VIPs. Mixed in with the crowd was the Dutch admiral that runs my branch of the headquarters staff. I'm not sure why, but he decided that I needed to stay with him and his entourage while he toured the area. So I ended up getting an extra day in Bamian. Not that I'm complaining.

Once they were given their initial briefing, the senior officers all went off to have lunch with the governor and discuss what we could do to help her maintain the safest province in the country. I stayed behind and ended up joining a crowd of folks that were driving into town during the dead time.

While we were waiting for the VIPs to tour the area I got to wander around in the local park where they had a bunch of war trophies parked all over the place including this Soviet T-55 tank:


This is also where I found the world's most disgusting public restroom:


The upper row of holes are windows for ventilation (which were sorely needed) and the lower row of holes are there so that the effluent can be shoveled out from underneath. Inside there's a squatting hole in the floor and a little trench to carry away urine. In the picture above and below you can see the darkened areas on the mud walls where the piss-tube passes through and they've been soaked through with urine:

Gross.

In that same field there was a herd of goats grazing, so here's some cute little kids to balance the ick level in this blog post:
Cute, huh? Okay. We're even now.

Once we were back in the truck, we caught up with everyone else's vehicles and I got as close as I was going to get to one of the holes where the giant buddha statues used to be before they were destroyed by the Taliban in March of 2001:


The statue that used to be in the hole was a 180-foot tall standing statue of Buddha. For a rough idea of the scale, the Statue of liberty is a 151-foot tall figure standing atop a 154-foot tall pedestal.

The statue itselfe was carved directly from the sandstone of the cliffs. There were stucco details added as well which had long since been worn away by long exposure to the elements. The vertical rows of holes along the right side of the space were actually where giant wooden poles were mounted to stabilise some of those stucco details.

This statue was built in the middle of the 5th century and it was the largest standing Buddha statue in the world. It stood through 1,500 years, the invasions of Genghis Khan, Mahmud of Ghazni (who conquered all of Afghanistan and much of Iran and Pakistan), and Nader Shah (the Napoleon of Persia), the Dark Ages, the Age of Exploration, the Rennaissance, the Industrial Revolution, and countless regime changes before the Taliban decided that they were an insult to Islam and destroyed them with rockets, artillery, and dynamite.

The other holes in the cliff-face are actually people's homes. At one point, this was the site of one of the world's most important Buddhist monasteries. There were over 2,000 monks who lived in these hermit-holes in the wall. Now it's considered the cheap side of town, Bamian's equivalent of a trailer park.

I tried my best to get more decent photos, but it was tough to do from the backseat of a pickup bouncing along gravel roads:

After bouncing around for the day, it was time to take a helicopter tour of the rest of the province:

Here's the local radio station rebuilt with help from the New Zealand PRT:

Less than 0.5% of Bamian Province is flat, level land, and barely 1.7% is considered semi-flat. So wherever there's a river valley that's anything like flat wedged into the mountain ranges you can find tiny little villages.



The mountains themselves so colorful that they almost seem fake. It's clearly no coincidence that the word "Bamian" comes from the Sanskrit word "varmayana," which means "colored."





But I'm still amazed at how the locals manage to cling to every square inch of useful land:








Somewhere along the way we flew over the coal mines in the northeast end of the province:

Coal is actually one of the three main, potentially profitable mineral deposits in the province. There is also a sizeable iron ore deposit and a less significant copper deposit. While there is a lot of money to be made from these resources, the governor is wise enough to recognize the importance of the local ecological wealth as well. So far they're only mining by hand with picks and shovels, so the impact is minimal. With any luck they'll be able to industrialize the mining operations in a responsible manner so as not to destroy the natural beauty of the region.

Once we'd done a lap of the region we headed back to the airstrip so everyone could say their good-byes and the crews could refuel the birds:


As we set off for our next adventure, a group of local kids came up to the wire at the perimeter to see us take off:


Next stop: Bagram Air Base in Parwan Province...

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)...

Congratulations to Me...

...and a bunch of other guys listed in this naval admin message:


http://www.npc.navy.mil/NR/rdonlyres/A8DE9023-E85F-4384-92AB-01A1AFDB1554/0/NAV09088.txt


It's now official. As of 01APRIL2009, I am Lieutenant Commander Thorsson. How scary is that?


In theory, having my name on that list makes me at least four inches taller, 17% more bulletproof, and 31% more likely to start walking on water.* In practice it means I'll get to enjoy at least a little bit of lieutenant commander's pay while I'm in a tax-free combat zone status. Either way, it's a good thing.

What I really love though, is that until (when and if ever) I get promoted again, my date of rank will stand as April Fool's Day. It's funny because it's not a joke.

*There's also some supposed correlations regarding the reduction of odors when I defecate, but I haven't been paying enough attention to know if they're true.