Strange days in Kabul
Sitting around for hours today waiting for the power to rise above 220v so my bass amp would actually work. In the dimness of flickering lights, I was typing up soundbites from various recent interviews. As the power came on so did the news that a rocket had landed near the Serena hotel and Rabia Balkhi hospital. Yet another attack on the main ex-pat hotel that fell short and damaged only Afghan property and probably Afghans as well.
As I was writing the required text back to my editor assuring her I wasn’t caught up in the fireworks, I heard another tanker had come under attack in Kunduz. By whom wasn’t clear, but rest assured it will be a another media opportunity for both sides and the truth, whatever we understand by that term, won’t be immediately, if ever, apparent.
I listened to US soldiers talk about capacity building the Afghan forces on the one hand and on the other hearing Afghan elders from Ghazni complain that the NDS forces that worked with Americans were breaking into their houses at night and beating their women while the Yanks were in the other room.
And I came to a few conclusions:
- Obama will send more troops.
- It won’t be as many as ISAF wants
- It won’t be a surge or make a difference unless there is a deep mindset shift in tribal leaders or a large Taliban crisis
- Expanding the army to 240,000 will mean less thorough training and will lead to more army-related crimes
- If more Pashtuns are not convinced to join up, the army efforts to get out and engage with people down south will count for nothing.
On a brighter note, the power came back and I jammed with some young, talented Afghan musicians for an hour, whose enthusiasm and hope was so catching I even caught myself smiling.
Sorry for the sombre note. I’ll type up my embed with the Yanks down south next time.
Most evenings on my Canadian embed were spent hanging out with the privates, corporals and master corporals in the small internet shack for the pure amusement value. A classic conversation is detailed below including the defiantly idiosyncratic Private Tuck (above): signals master, Mac devotee and clotheswear guru.
Pt Tuck: ‘Does anyone know a good international clothing site where I can get a Christmas sweater?’
Cpl G: ‘You mean like with Christmas decorations and shit?’
PT: ‘Yeah, I wore mine last year to a bar and girls were coming up to me saying ‘that’s so cute’.
Cpl G: ‘Because you’re so totally non-threatening in a Christmas sweater. Dude, the only thing you’re going to be picking up in a reindeer sweater is a fag-hag.’
PT: ‘I actually had a girlfriend who said I looked gay in a purple V-neck sweater. I said, “I don’t give a fuck, I look good in pastel colours’”
slight pause
PT: ‘Ruldoph’s bullshit, man. He just got famous from all the stories. The other reindeers is where it’s at. Comet’s the power.’
Cpl G: ‘I don’t know what to say. He’s unleashed a campaign of shock and awe on me and I don’t know what to do’.
PT: ‘Argyle sweater vests are cool, but they’re so out’.
This indie kid is Sulyman, lead singer and guitarist of Kabul Dreams, very probably Afghanistan’s only indie-rock band. The three-pieces’ influences include The Subways (of whom they do a great cover of ‘Rock n Roll Queen), Radiohead and Oasis.
My band are sharing a studio with them at the moment. I hope a ‘combat rock’ joint tour is in the offing, perhaps encompassing all the ‘Stans?
MRAP chat
Just found the notes I took on an abortive operation with Americans while in Nurestan Province. Operating out of a small FOB (Forward Operating Base), we were to go to the nearest town, pick up the Afghan National Police and travel to a potentially hostile village to suss out whether they were friendly or shooty.
In the event, the ANP didn’t want to come with us, so the op was called off as it had to be a ‘combined’ operation. In the two hours in the back of an MRAP vehicle (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected), this is what I remember……(names have been changed)
We’re travelling sideways in the back of the commander (a female Lieutenant) of this convoy’s vehicle. Opposite me is a smiling infantry soldier, diagonally opposite in the Afghan interpreter, who sleeps for much of the trip with his feet up on the seat next to me.
In front are the commander and driver and in the middle, the top-gunner’s boots shuffle around and occasionally expose me to his bum in my face supported by a sling.
We’re all hooked into the radio system (apart from the ‘terp, who’s taken his off) and the gunner holds up his ipod to the mic, DJ-ing for the entirety of the trip. He starts off with ‘Surfing In The USA’ by the Beach Boys, which seems to fit the excited nature of the Americans well. They haven’t been on an op for a while and they chatter constantly.
(as the driver hits a bump in the road and we all crack our helmets in the partition)
Andrews (Gunner): ‘Hmm, I think there may have been a little bump there. Thanks, Morgan, you saved me from some bad heartburn right there’
Me (rubbing head): ‘I’ll concur with that’
Morgan (driver): (looking at an Afghan man carrying a large box on his head) Hey that’s the ice cream man. Let’s be nice to him, he always give me an extra scoop’
Andrews: ‘No, he’s not. That’s a pallbearer. He bears Paul. Hey, Ma’am, can I take out the pallbearer?
Lieutenant: ‘Negative, Andrews’.
Short pause
Lieutenant: ‘Everyone’s awful quiet today. Who’s turn is it to sing?’
Andrews (singing): ‘Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine’ Want me to continue?
Everyone: ‘NO!’
Andrews (looking out the window): ‘That woman was 1000 years old and she was carrying a shovel!’
Morgan: ‘Isn’t everyone with a shovel a suspect? IEDs are fucking cowardly.’
Andrews: ‘I’d rather have someone shoot at me than get blown up.
Lieutenant (obviously been brooding) I’m not fucking leaving without the ANP. Even if their trucks are all down, I’ll make them fucking walk. I can have one in the back, right? That’s combined, right? To have a united force?
At this point we stop in the town. I have a distant memory of the back door slowly lowering, automatically. As curious youths in the bazaar peered into the vehicle I realised we must look like a bunch of Martians, sitting in our flak jackets, helmets and ballistic goggles. I half wanted to slowly climb down the steps saying ‘we come in peace’.
Then the driver and Lieutenant come back. The ANP have refused to come and we have to turn back.
Lieutenant (after some silence) ‘I need some soothing music’.
Andrews puts on some country music and we ride back to the strains of Toby Keith.
Reading Marc Ellerby via Brokenbottleboy and, as a result, stumbled across his Polar Opposites strip which I think is the funniest/surrealist thing I’ve read for a while.
Portable media machines are a journalist’s godsend when embedding with the military. Well, a video journalist’s godsend, anyhow. Print journalists have plenty of shorthand to decipher, I should think.
Sitting in Kandahar airport from 0800 for a 1000 flight, which finally trundled in at 1500, I relied heavily on my collections of Blackadder and I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue. However, from time to time I would need to shrug off my headphones and listen to those around me.
This is for a couple of reasons. Firstly, nations differ in their airline efficiency. Germans have signs everywhere telling you what to do, Canadians make announcements every ten minutes telling you exactly what the next ten minutes will hold and British like to line everyone up and wave glo-sticks at you.
Americans, however, are very lax about the whole thing. They require you to turn up two hours early, but afterward give you very few instructions, especially if you’re a civilian. Also, as US forces are very good at their jobs, but only THEIR jobs, information can be very hard to come by if you don’t ask exactly the right question. Therefore, you need to generally eavesdrop on people and make conversation to find out where your plane is, where it’s going and where you should be.
They also make verbs out of nouns. For example: ‘please pallatize your bags’. Took me a while to figure out what that meant.
Secondly, I like to eavesdrop. So, as I was staring at the soldier above wondering why he had a fish in his bag, I earwigged on two nearby marines.
Marine 1: “So two MRAPs (Marine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles) were stuck in this sand, left by the convoy. Their walking through this fucking moondust and it’s fucking hot, man. They pass two dudes on a blanket having some sort of fucking picnic, fuck knows man. They don’t talk to them, right? So they don’t find nothing and walk back, take off their flak jackets. Of course, this is what these fucking guys have been waiting for. Suddenly they produce these AKs and start shooting the shit out of them. The Terp’s like ‘oh shit, oh shit’ hiding behind the vehicle. He told me later if the Sergeant had a got shot, he’d a got up his gun and ran towards them firing and screaming’
Marine 2 :’Yeah, that’s a good idea to get yourself killied’
Marine 3: ‘True’
Then, to my delight, they both spit on the ground and go back to silence. Ah marines.
My chinook finally turned up and I was on my way to Spin Boldak, not the Argandab like I’d hoped/feared. Near the Pakistan border, it was that killer combo of dusty, dangerous and dull. More soon.
Finally have a short break from work to blog. I completed my Canadian embed in Kandahar province and was lingering around KAF waiting for a flight or a helicopter to thumb for a lift back to Kabul when I heard my colleague had hurt his back and could no longer embed with the Stryker Brigade in the Argandab, one of the hottest areas in the province in terms of insurgent activity. I didn’t end up going there but somewhere else near the Pakistan border.
Anyhow, that’s another story. First of all I would recommend an embed with the Canadians to any journalist. Not necessarily for the action: the Canadians were ripping in when I turned up and consequently everyone was still finding their feet. Also, Canadians take the ‘softly-softly’ approach and prefer counter-insurgency tactics of talking to locals and carefully planning missions with slow care. |You won’t find the rip-roaring IED/gunfight action you might with the Americans.
I embedded with the Operational Mentoring and Liaison Team in Masum Ghar, Panjway District. The district used to be pretty hardcore with IEDs and gun battles a daily occurrence and hardly any shops in the bazaar. Now there’s a pretty bustling market and children are on the streets – always a good sign.
Masum Ghar forward operation base (FOB) is on a hill, so the helicopter lands facing up a slope and you’re either climbing up or skittering down for as long as you stay there. The FOB is partnered with a neighbouring Kandak (Afghan rifle battalion). Kandak 2 are the most capable in the whole ANA and commanded by the softly-spoken veteran Col Bazir. A fighter all his life, his training under the Russians and then in the US has given him a liberal outlook but no less of a love for his country.
Telling me about his time in America, he told me how girls called him ‘Saddam Hussein’ and ‘Al-Qaeda’ in the bars but still asked him to dance. ‘I am not Al-Qaeda!’ he protested, his eyes widening with mock-shock above his, arguably, very Saddam-moustache. He enjoyed having a girl around and, as such, I was invited to every single meal of goat, bread and rice.
Myself, Col Bazir and the commander of the OMLT, Major Steve MacBeth went out on patrols to nearby observation points manned by the ANA, meeting with the imposing district leader, Hajji Baran Khaksar. Respected, and possibly feared, by all of Panjway, he owned the meeting of numerous Canadian, ANA and ANP officers merely with the upturn of his eyes or tilt of his huge beard. Before he would speak he ordered all weapons out of the room. At one point he rose from the meeting receiving a phonecall telling him his nephew had been shot by ISAF forces. Taking it in his stride he took the call and came back in resolving the issue with a wave of his hand. ‘Let’s find out if he’s dead, then take it from there’.
The evenings at Masum Ghar are quiet and dark. Sitting in the small internet shack, surrounded by gunfights between insurgents and Afghan forces or attacks directed at the nearby US FOB Wilson, the Canadian privates and corporals sat with me and bantered, barely raising an eyebrow at tracers flicking over our heads like fireworks.
At one point, as we argued the toss between Macs and PCs, there was a ‘wheee-bang!’ sounding exactly like a firework. ‘What was that?’, I asked, not believing such a cartoon-like sound could actually exist in modern warfare. ‘Rocket’, someone shrugged. We ventured outside. The rocket had landed not 50m from us. We found out later it had hit an American’s tent and gone right through his fridge. He had broken his ankle running away. (the picture above was reset to zero the next day)
But all this is not why I enjoyed my embed so much. Canadian soldiers are a rare breed of military. Every single one, right down to the ranks, knows why they’re there, what they’re trying to achieve right up to strategic level and can usually swap jobs at the drop of a hat. They are true Renaissance men and women. Every soldier is allowed to talk to the media without consulting his commander (although he’ll usually give the courtesy of doing this) and speaks with deep thought and eloquence, often passionate about counter-insurgency tactics of engaging and befriending locals.
Moreover, the soldiers I met were open-minded, tolerant and proud of their multi-cultural society without being bleeding-heart about it.
Most of all, they let me – a pale, young and skinny girl journo – hang out with them, treating me with equal respect and, of course, merciless teasing. Those of you who have embedded with military before will know that’s a honour.
Long embed means not much blogging time, but this had to be posted. Gawd bless the Canadians.
Living With Puppies
Arrived at a FOB (Forward Operations Base) in Kandahar Province this morning and am living next door to eight puppies and a kitten.
The FOB is partly carved out of an old Afghan compound complete with underground caves (sort of) and is built on the kind of terrain so everything slopes uphill.
We’ve been hearing artillery and gunfire all day, but thankfully it’s the neighbouring FOB doing a spot of practice.
Soldiers are living with Afghan forces all over the surrounding area, building capacity, mentoring and improving relations. In fact, one of the near ANA bases, contains some of the best in the province, able to plan and carry out their own operations with one of the officers even giving motivational talks to local children.
This is in direct response to the Taliban in the region’s recruiting techniques of young men and boys, who discredit the ANA by claiming they’re not Muslims and not true Afghans. It is true that few officers in the ANA are Pashtun, the army being mainly made up of ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks and other tribes.
So the ANA (helped by ISAF) are sending the Pashtun and locally raised soldiers to give presentations at schools.
This is COIN in action. Combined with foot patrols, rather than in armoured cars, rebuilding of schools and roads and constant interaction with locals, it’s hoped that the ANA will be more accepted and young people will tend towards the army as a more durable career path.
Whether it’ll work remains to be seen. Not all ANA are capable, not all are angels and not all will be accepted by tribe-minded locals. But for ISAF troops to take a back seat and retire from the ‘throwing sweets at kids’ scenes is a good thing in my mind.
Kandybar and the Canadians
The Canadians handed over control of the hospital here in Kandahar to the US today having handled over 6000 patients, more than 800 of them trauma cases. The multinational hospital has broken records for saving lives. They say here if you arrive at Kandahar Field Hospital with a heartbeat, they’ll save you.
Speaking to a couple of company commanders, Canadians are proud of what they see as leading the way in counter-insurgency (COIN) tactics through talking to locals and forging relationships. However, looking at the remarks of Brig Gen Jonathan Vance, it looks like the 253 troops lost in Regional Command South are bringing these relationship to a head: “if we keep blowing up on the roads, I’m going to stop doing development,” he recently told village elders in Kandahar province.
But tea and handshakes mean nothing without security. Tomorrow I’m going to see how Canadians mentor the ANA so they can hold areas by themselves.
