Closing the distance (or at least trying to)
KABUL – On June 29, 2011, I woke to an e-mail from Karen Barr, the publisher of Raising Arizona Kids magazine. Her husband Dan Barr is a good friend and terrific attorney. He specializes in media law and keeping his friends out of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s jails.
In 1999 and 2000, I lived in Phoenix and I had been writing about a murder suspect who was in custody in the suburb Chandler. The problem for the Chandler police was that they had three gang-bangers locked up. The police knew all three were involved in a late-night murder and carjacking at a coin-op car wash, but they weren’t certain which of the three shot the father of 3-year-old twin girls and left him to bleed to death. After exchanging letters for months with the leading candidate, a reform school flunky named Roy Salinas, I received a hand-written confession letter from the jail. I confirmed that Salinas actually wrote the letter, then I wrote a column about the confession and the Tribune newspapers printed the letter. The Chandler police seized the letter using a search warrant the day the column ran.
Months later, Salinas’ court-appointed defense attorney tried to get the letter dismissed as evidence in the case, based on the attorney’s imaginative contention that I was working as an agent of the police and that I didn’t advise Salinas of his Miranda rights. The attorney seized on a scrap of information in one of my columns. I wrote that clergy had visited Salinas several times while he was in jail, an interesting detail that someone involved in the matter told me. The source suggested that Salinas might have felt confession was good for his soul.
The defense attorney demanded I reveal the source. I refused. As a result, the defense attorney attempted to have me jailed for contempt of court until I outed the source or until the murder trial ended. That’s where Dan came in. He successfully argued that I was not working as an agent for the police, and that Arizona’s shield law allowed me to protect the identity of my source. As a result, I was never jailed, and the letter was admitted as evidence in court proceedings. The killer was found guilty and sentenced to natural life with no possibility of parole.
Beyond that, Dan and I have eaten a lot of popcorn together and high school football games and Arizona Diamondbacks games. Still, Karen’s e-mail came as a surprise in June. By that time, I had been in Afghanistan for 19 months. She asked me to consider writing an article about coping with the challenges of parenting while being deployed. She liked the idea of running it in November or December, pegged to the holidays. I considered it for some time, then agreed.
It was a tough piece to write. I largely wrote it in four bursts on separate days – the introduction and a section about a study on the topic; a section about Air Force Chief Mater Sgt. Chad Brandau of Tucson and his experiences; a section about my experiences; and the final five paragraphs, which I probably re-wrote 12 or 15 times.
Karen gave it a smooth editing job and published it in the December issue of Raising Arizona Kids. She gave it six pages, including photos. That magazine has some reach. Two people who came across the article in Arizona sent issues to family members in Kabul, who then gave the issues to me. The article was well received at the Qalaa House compound as well. I posted a copy of it on an encased bulletin board outside the dining facility. Military members and civilian employees stood in snow and rain to read it, nodding as they stood.
After Karen published the article and made it available for free on magazine’s Web site, I re-wrote it and submitted a less Arizona-centric version to a couple of Army publications. That version featured two additional non-Arizona residents who discussed their experiences. Here’s the original, tighter version (with one tweak I brought back from the second version):
Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Chad Brandau, as seen in Raising Arizona Kids Magazine.
Parenting from Afghanistan
KABUL – This year will mark the third consecutive Christmas that I’ll spend half a world away from my wife and our sons.
Like thousands of other Arizonans, I’ll spend the holiday season in Afghanistan, where the decade-long war and reconstruction effort continue simultaneously.
I work as civilian employee of the Army, assigned to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is the primary organization rebuilding Afghanistan’s ravaged infrastructure. I’m stationed at the Corps of Engineers’ headquarters for northern Afghanistan, a base called the Qalaa House compound in Kabul, a city of 3.9 million people.
While living and working in a war zone presents an array of challenges every day, one of the most difficult, and perhaps the most important, is finding active and meaningful ways to be involved in my sons’ lives despite the distance. Casey is a sophomore at the University of Arizona in Tucson; Tim is a senior in high school and lives at home with my wife Sandra in north Phoenix.
Staying connected to children back home is a regular topic of discussion among the older set at Qalaa House. I’ve spoken about those challenges at length with several colleagues, including Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Chad Brandau of Tucson, who’s the top enlisted service member for the Corps of Engineers in the region.
Mostly, the parents among us serve as sounding boards for one other, listening to each other describe our children’s tonsillectomies and art show awards, which we only know about second-hand ourselves. We tell each other that we’re not actually the missing-in-action parents that we suspect we truly are.
The effect of deployments on children is a topic that’s received considerable professional study in recent years.
A frequently cited study published by the journal Pediatrics in December 2009 offers a stark assessment of the well being of children with deployed parents.
“Children on the Homefront: The Experience of Children From Military Families” was based on computer-assisted telephone interviews of 1,507 sets of military children between 11 and 17 years old and their non-deployed parents.
Researchers examined how children were doing socially, emotionally and academically. They found that children with deployed parents reported more “stressors” in their lives than children from a general national sample.
They determined that older boys, and girls of all ages, reported significantly more difficulties in school, family and peer-related settings. Specifically, the kids had more trouble dealing with household chores and school responsibilities. Factors contributing to kids’ difficulties included length of the deployed parent’ absences and poor mental health of non-deployed parents.
To compound the matter, other studies have indentified links in the lengths of military deployments to poor mental health in the non-deployed parents.
Not surprisingly, the 2009 study showed that children who had deployed parents, but lived among other children with deployed parents in military housing, did better than children with deployed parents who lived off base.
Separations for long periods of time cause change for everyone involved.
My duties in Afghanistan largely entail flying around the country to report on the reconstruction efforts. For the most part, the Corps of Engineers is building military bases and police stations for the Afghan army and police, so that Afghans can provide security against the Taliban and other insurgents. The Corps of Engineers also is building roads, airstrips and dams, among other developments. The goal is to stabilize the country’s economy to undercut the influence of insurgents and opium barons.
At times, the job gets me to places that are accessible only by helicopter or donkey.
The hours are long and the conditions are sparse. All Corps of Engineers employees work at least 10 hours a day, seven days a week, with exception to Fridays, which are half days. About 400 military and civilian personnel live and work at the Qalaa House compound, which is a complex about the size of a middle school. The compound is surrounded by tall blast walls, coils of razor wire, view-blocking anti-sniper screens and guard towers that are manned 24 hours a day. And those are just some of the obvious layers of security.
Most of the offices are situated in buildings that previously were luxury homes, at least by Afghan standards. Most of the converted houses have impressive marble floors and grand staircases. The namesake Qalaa House building previously was the Iraqi embassy.
Most of the compound’s living quarters are buildings comprised of individual metal shipping containers like those on semi-trailer trucks. The containers have been outfitted with doors and electricity, and stacked two or three stories high. Most containers are double occupancy.
I’m fortunate. The living conditions at Qalaa House are better than at most U.S. military bases in Afghanistan. Many service members sleep in tents (I was a guest in a 418-man tent at Kandahar Air Field a while ago) and their duty stations often are somewhere among the county’s mine-rigged streets, dunes, washes and poppy fields.
While deployed, military service members and civilian employees alike miss a significant number of milestone events at home – birthdays, anniversaries, high school swim meets, proms, ski trips, the day the kid passes the driver’s license exam, the day the college acceptance letter arrives.
I’ve been 7,765 miles away on each and every one of those days.
As a result it’s usually the conflicts in my mind, rather than the conflict around me in Afghanistan, that keep me awake at night.
Brandau, who has served in active duty for 25 years, has been through it twice. He has two adult sons – Chase, who lives in Minnesota, and Clint, who’s in the Army and stationed at Fort Huachuca in Sierra Vista. He and his wife Patty have another son Chance, who’s 8. They live on base at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson.
Brandau’s current 365-day tour in Kabul is his second in Afghanistan. He previously served a 455-day tour at a small base in the village of Jalalabad near the Pakistan border. Before that, he had eight other deployments around the globe that ranged from 90 days to six months apiece.
In all, he’s has spent about five years of his career stationed away from home. Without question, the time away took a toll.
“For my first two sons, I never got to be the Tooth Fairy. I had two boys and never got to be the Tooth Fairy once. Do you know what I mean? There are just certain things you miss. That’s the hardest part,” he says.
Maturity, hindsight and technology have helped him close the gap with his youngest son.
During his first deployment to Afghanistan a few years ago, Brandau regularly e-mailed photos and short letters about his daily life overseas. He dispatched photos he took of people and scenes around him, and photos that colleagues snapped of him.
“It was just something for him to see a picture,” Brandau says. “Maybe me standing with an Afghan child or giving someone a bottle of water or whatever. Then I would tell him what the picture was about. He really liked them, so I just kept them going.”
Unknown to Brandau at the time, his wife Patty had been printing the e-mails and compiling them in a three-ringed binder. It became Chance’s personal picture book, which he flipped through whenever he chose.
On Brandau’s current tour, he’s kept up the practice, e-mailing photos and letters, though the letters are longer now because his son is old enough to read. His wife and son have been compiling the dispatches into a second book. In addition, they’ve been e-mailing him photos and letters about life back in Arizona.
“That’s the key right there – doing the little things,” Brandau says. “If next May when I roll out of here, if I had a three-ring binder, and took that home and showed him that I was saving all those pictures that he sent, just like he was doing, well, stuff like that goes a long way.”
I certainly hope he’s right. I use a variety of methods to close the miles – email, phone calls and vacations, which in military parlance are called Rest and Recuperation or R&R for short.
I email photos and notes and letters home frequently, usually one a day. Most of my emails are brief, but sometimes they’re longer. If the occasion presents itself, I write short stories about only-in-Afghanistan moments, like a trip to a barber shop with an international staff at Camp Eggers, which is another base in the Green Zone.
As I recounted in an email home, a woman employee waved me to take a seat, then secured a barber’s cape around my neck. I gave her my usual instructions: “No. 4 clippers on the back and sides. Short on the top, but long enough to comb. A little closer at the temples, because my hair grows fast there. Trim up the sideburns a bit. Blend it all in.”
She walked around me and pulled tufts of hair here and there to gage the length. She combed my hair back. She stood behind me, crossed her arms and looked in the mirror. “Cut?” she asked in a heavy accent.
She waited while I realized she had no idea what I just said. “Cut,” I replied.
She gave me a nice military buzz. A friend was there and snapped a photo. Later, I wrote a short dispatch about the venture, attached the photo and hit the send button.
Similar to Brandau’s discovery, on a recent trip home I learned that Sandra has kept every email I’ve sent her since I arrived in Afghanistan in November 2009. By now, she has several hundred. She told me she likes to re-read them every now and again.
And naturally, I receive e-mails from home with the latest news about happenings at UA, swim meets, school grades and lunches with the grandparents.
The Army provides telephone service available from the Qalaa House compound. With a little planning, the 11½ hours time difference between Afghanistan and Arizona is perfectly manageable. We’ve worked out a schedule, so that Sandra, Casey and Tim know when to expect my calls.
“It is comforting to me to have you call,” Sandra tells me. “We don’t have to talk long, but I need to hear your voice and need to know you are OK.”
That sentiment, perhaps oddly, has led to an on-going joke. Even with a phone call, each of us figures the other should only be 95 percent OK. We’d have to be in the same place at the same time to get that final 5 percent.
It’s amazing how much a short phone call can mean. Sandra and the boys went skiing while on a family visit in Colorado last year. Sandra called from a chair lift. I missed the call, but she left a voice message:
“Hi Gib! I’m calling you from the chairlift! We’re on the Bonanza chairlift at Wolf Creek Ski Resort. OK. We’re doing great. We’ll call you tonight. Bye!”
That was from Dec. 28, 2010. I’ve replayed it dozens of times.
On a recent Monday, I received a call at noon Kabul time, which was 12:30 a.m. the same day in Arizona. My son Casey, the sophomore at UA, had just finished writing the first draft of a paper about the link between red meat and Type 2 diabetes. He wanted to know if I would read and critique it.
We talked a while about his paper and his weekend. My younger son Tim had been in Tucson and they went to a laser-light show at the UA planetarium. I told him that I had gone to laser-light shows at the planetarium back when the soundtrack was contemporary Pink Floyd, rather than classic Pink Floyd.
A minute after we said our good-byes, Casey’s paper popped into my email in-box. That evening, I read it, typed a few suggestions and sent a reply email. The next night, Casey emailed again. He said he had reworked a couple sections of his paper and turned it in. He expected a good grade.
Nothing short of rocket attack would have prevented me from doing that for him.
R&Rs are occasions. I get three 21-day R&Rs a year and plan them months in advance. Because of government regulations, Christmas always falls during a black-out period for me. However, I’m able to swing other important times, such as my sons’ spring breaks and summer vacations.
My wife and I have tried to make R&R occasions, a little bigger than life. In the spring, I met Sandra and my sons in Germany, where we rendezvoused with my friends Mike Tuttle and Deb Barresi, whom I met during my first year of deployment.
We toured the opera house in Weisbaden, Germany, the city where Mike and Deb live, and my family hiked the skeleton-lined catacombs under Paris, France, among other highlights during the trip. But we also spent time playing Wii Wakeboarding, impressing each other with our new-found over-the-top electronic wakeboarding skills.
The trip was intended to provide Casey and Tim a big experience that they can associate with a lot of laughter and perhaps a life lesson or two about friendship and seeking new experiences and adventures. How many of their schoolmates can claim to have hiked under Paris?
On a personal level, my deployment to Afghanistan has hit similar marks. In 2009, I was faced with reconfiguring a 24-year career as a newspaper reporter and editor when I was laid off from the East Valley Tribune. A position in Afghanistan presented a passageway to unknown new opportunities. It also provided a hands-on way for me to continue to serve my community, which I feel I did at the newspapers, though obviously, the Army’s community is larger.
Before shipping off to Afghanistan, I discussed the idea with my wife and sons over several months as the hiring process moved along. They understood my reasoning. They also understood the responsibilities and changes they would endure as a result. They supported the decision to go. And they’ve supported each other during my long absences.
Though we’re thousands of miles apart, we remain a close family; maybe even closer than we were before. Our communication is deeper and more thoughtful. Our time together is more appreciated.
On Christmas Day, I’ll call home and we’ll toast our good fortune with eggnog on different sides of the planet.
And like Brandau and every other deployed military parent, I’ll have a renewed appreciation for my spouse, the parent who’s looking out for the children on the homefront every day, the parent who’s doing the most to keep the kids from becoming a statistic in the next report.
The completely unofficial word
KABUL -- Thanks for stumbling across my blog, The Afghan Connection.
Today seems to be an appropriate day to point out that this blog is parked on my personal Web site, www.paulgiblin.com. Neither the views expressed within this blog nor the blog itself are affiliated with any government agency.
I started this blog simply as a way to remember my experiences here in Afghanistan. Some of the experiences are based on e-mails I wrote to family members and friends months ago. Other entries are new.
Please keep in mind that nothing here is official, as noted in the statement at the bottom of the page. So to summarize: Completely unofficial. Not part of the job.
Two blocks; two cultures
KABUL – Until about six months ago, Camp Eggers was the only location outside of the Qalaa House compound where U.S. Army Corps of Engineers personnel were authorized to walk. Eggers is across a two-lane street from Qalaa House.
More recently, we’ve also been authorized to walk to two other locations, the U.S. embassy and the International Security Assistance Force headquarters, which is a large multi-national base where NATO forces are stationed. The embassy and the ISAF base are across the street from one another, about two blocks from Qalaa House.
Getting to any of the three always is somewhat of an adventure.
Afghan children typically hang out by the back gate to Qalaa House, where U.S. personnel ingress and egress to cross the street to one of Eggers’ gates. The gates on both sides of the two-lane street are manned 24/7 with well-armed guards, in addition to other security measures.
The children try to sell things to passers-by: home-made bracelets, scarves, sometimes well-worn Dari/English dictionaries or crayon drawings on paper. Most have a pretty good handle on English. Often though, they simply beg for money, food or drinks. And they spend all day at the gates, waiting for passers-by, who cross back and forth from one camp to the other.
Once, two women passed from the Qalaa House gate to the Eggers gate. Two boys approached them asked them to buy them things at the PX, which is an inaccurate acronym for “post exchange,” which is military lingo for “store.” Only credentialed personnel are permitted on the bases, so the children have no access to the store. One boy asked for “Coca,” meaning Coca-Cola, and the other asked for mustard. The women agreed to buy the items.
Later, when the women were headed back the other direction, the boys stopped them again. The first woman pulled a can of Coke from her bag and handed it to the boy who had asked for it. The second woman likewise produced a bottle of mustard from her bag and gave it to the other boy.
“What is this?” the boy asked. “It’s mustard, just like you asked,” she replied. “This is not mustard,” he said. “Yes it is,” she responded. “This is not mustard! Mustard! Mustard! Mustard!” he said.
Alas, the kid didn’t want mustard after all. He wanted Monster, a brand of energy drinks sold at the post exchange. He stomped off, upset that the Good Samaritan slighted him by offering him a free bottle of mustard.
Pogs are as good as money, as long as you have access to the Post Exchange.
Another time, I went to Eggers with my friends Mike Tuttle from Boston, and Mike Fosson from Ashville, Ky., on a cold, rainy day. Old Mike, who’s the one from Boston, got ahead of us and faced the surge first. A group of boys surrounded him and asked for money.
“Do you take pogs?” he asked one boy. “Yes, yes, I take pogs!” the boy replied.
Old Mike reached into his pocket, pulled out a few pogs and gave them to the kid. Pogs are cardboard discs that the clerks at the post exchange give in change instead of coins. Pogs can be used just like quarters or dimes or nickels at the store or the Green Bean Coffee shop – provided that the person intending to spend them can get on the base in the first place.
At the time, Old Mike had recently arrived in Afghanistan and didn’t realize pogs were worthless to the kid. After giving the cardboard discs to boy, Old Mike simply went on his way. Young Mike and I saw what happened next.
The boy stared at the unexpected pogs, burst into tears, threw them into a puddle at his feet and stormed off saying harsh words in Dari, presumably directed toward Old Mike.
Previously, we could get to the embassy or ISAF, but only by first walking to Eggers, then boarding an armored van, which drove a couple blocks to the other compounds. The vans were always crowded and rarely stuck to any schedule. So, access became much easier about six months ago when Corps of Engineers personnel were authorized to walk the two blocks from our compound to the others.
The approval came with a few restrictions, including the requirement for civilians, who are unarmed, to be accompanied by military personnel, who carry firearms. All of the compounds are in the Green Zone, which is a high-security area with multiple checkpoints at each gate and even more checkpoints at strategic locations within the zone, but walking with armed personnel is a sound practice, anyway.
Dozens of children and several adults regularly station themselves along a short stretch of Great Massoud Road, which is a heavily militarized street between the embassy and the ISAF base. Like most roads in Afghanistan, the road is lined with open sewer trenches. Concrete slabs and wood planks bridge the trench every so often. There’s also the usual blast walls, razor wire, barricades, check points and heavily secured gates at each compound along the way.
The road is particularly crowded with pedestrians on Fridays, which are off days for most Afghans.
There is a beggar who appears to be blind and is accompanied by a young teenage boy. The man holds the shoulder of the boy with his right hand, which is his only hand. His left arm ends at the wrist, though there is a gap between the bones in his forearm, and somehow he holds a white cane in the gap. The boy leads him to groups of American and coalition personnel who walk between the compounds. He extends his hand and says, “I am blind. I am blind. Please help.”
There’s also a woman who typically stations herself near the ISAF camp gate. I’ve never seen her face. She wears a head to foot burka with a full face veil. The garment is blue and dirty. She always holds a small boy, who’s probably 2, who similarly is dressed in dirty clothes. She holds out her free hand and says, “My baby is sick. My baby is sick.” Week after week.
On Friday, Jan. 13, a cold day, I walked with a group of others to the ISAF camp, where we intended to have lunch and provide a tour to a newly arrived officer, Maj. Pedro Borges, who’s from Miami. The woman approached us, extending her hand. Lt. Col. Terri Wise stopped, reached into a pocket and gave the woman a wad of Afghan currency. We waited. Terri caught up. “The kid was eating his own snot. I couldn’t take it anymore,” she said. We walked on.
There is a young girl, maybe 7 or 8, who always approaches the biggest, burliest, most well-armed man in each group of coalition personnel walking along the road. The girl grabs the biggest guy’s hand and says, “I am your body guard. I will protect you.” Then she walks with the soldier, no matter which way he is going, never letting go of his hand until he gets to the gate of whatever compound he was headed to in the first place. The soldier nearly always gives the girl a few bucks for providing the protective detail.
There’s another kid, who’s about 14, whom I see every week. On the way back from the ISAF compound on Jan. 13, I asked him if he lived nearby. No, he said, he lived near the airport. The airport is about 4½ miles away, along one of the most overcrowded and dusty roads in Kabul. I asked how he got to the Green Zone every week. He said he takes a taxi.
There is another man, who appears to have extremely short legs, or no legs at all. He pushes himself along in a very low, three-wheeled flat metal wagon. He uses one hand to operate a steering wheel at the front of the wagon. He wears a pink Croc sandal on his other hand, which he uses for pushing along the ground. He is extremely adept and quick at maneuvering himself through the rutted and uneven street and sidewalks and over the concrete slabs that bridge the sewer trenches.
His approach to begging from motorists and pedestrians is the same. He zips in front of the coalition forces, jutting his wagon sideways in their path. It’s remarkable that he hasn’t been run over yet. Coalition forces drive heavily armored sports utility vehicles or military rigs. They don’t stop quickly. Recently, the driver of an armored SUV saw the man in his wagon along the left edge of Great Massoud Road. The driver muttered, “Don’t go in front,” while veering to the right.
The man spotted the vehicle, sped into the street and stopped directly in the path of the on-coming SUV. The driver jerked the vehicle to a stop a couple of feet before hitting him. Even if the passengers had wanted to give the man money, they couldn’t, because it’s against regulations to break the seal of any vehicle while in transit.
Another time, a group of Qalaa House personnel were walking along the road to the ISAF camp. A swarm of seven or eight young boys surrounded them as they walked and kept pace with them. A boy who was trailing the group stuck a hand between the legs of a female officer, ran it up her thigh and copped a feel at her crotch. Startled, she spun around as the butt of the M-5 assault rifle that was slung over her shoulder cracked the kid on the side of his head.
The boy splayed out in the dirt and burst into tears in obvious pain. She took a step toward the kid to have words with him, but a male officer took her by the arm and led her away.
On Sept. 18, the first Friday after a civilian named Mark Rankin arrived at camp, a group of us led him to the ISAF base for lunch at its European-style dining facility. A group of boys horded around us along the road. They recognized Mark as a new guy. “You Obama! You Obama!” one of the boys told him. President Obama and Mark are both black, but that’s where the similarities end. Most notably, Obama has a full head of hair; Mark has a shaved head. There’s also the detail that Obama probably was in the White House on the other side of the planet at that moment.
“You know that I’m not Obama, right?” Mark said to the kid. “You Obama brudder! You Obama brudder!” the kid said. “Oh, so I’m Obama’s brother now?” Mark said. “You Obama brudder!” the kid confirmed.
Hours later, as we walked back from the ISAF camp to Qalaa House, the same kid approached Mark again. “Buy my bracelet Obama brudder. Buy my bracelet,” he said. “No thanks. I don’t need a bracelet,” Mark said. “Buy my bracelet Obama brudder,” the kid said more forcefully. “I told you, I don’t need a bracelet. No thanks,” Mark said. The kid gave Mark an icy glare. “Fuck you funny fuck!” the kid said. He followed us, shouting the phrase over and over, until we passed a checkpoint he couldn’t pass.
Neither rain nor snow nor boom from an unexpected curb
KABUL – Lt. Col. Terri Wise asked me on Monday to drive her to the post office at Camp Eggers, which is another U.S. base about a block away here in the Green Zone. She was preparing to return to Maryland at the end of her tour a few days later and she had two foot lockers and a carpet to send home.
Usually, a guy named Jack Stzuk handles those sorts of mail runs in one of two Kawasaki utility carts, but Jack had other obligations that day. I hadn’t driven anything since my last R&R in September, so I accepted the job.
Since Terri, like all uniformed military personnel, carries a weapon, she automatically took the role of the force protection agent, which meant she had to ride in the passenger seat in order to keep her hands free in the event she needed to ventilate someone.
The Kawasaki utility cart is still operable, despite my turn behind the wheel.
Jack gave me a quick lesson in how to operate the utility cart – parking break, first gear, second gear, reverse, the snow shovel on the front. It had snowed for three days straight, so the plow had been getting plenty of use.
We loaded the boxes in the back of the cart and headed for the front gate of Qalaa House compound. I tried to squeeze around an armored vehicle that had just driven into camp – and almost made it. But the snow shovel clipped a curb with a “Whang!” A couple of the commando guys who were getting out of the armored vehicles shook their heads. Terri tried to hide her face.
I backed up, lifted the plow, whipped around the corner and took off through the gate. Snow floated down and we drove along the street that’s lined on both sides with tall concrete blast walls topped with coils of razor wire.
A block later, we went in the Eggers gate. Eggers is a crowded camp with narrow roads swarming with pedestrians day and night. Every vehicle, even utility carts, must be escorted by a pedestrian who walks ahead. Terri hopped out and I followed as she walked to the post office. Truthfully, I don’t think the cart could have gone any faster anyway. We got to the post office and she spoke a guy who opened a back gate, which led to a driveway and a loading dock.
Then she walked back to the cart and said, “That guy asked if you’d plow the driveway, since you have the plow here anyway. I told him you would.” The driveway was covered in about two or three inches of ice, with piled snow along the edges. I barreled the cart over the ice, then helped Terri carry her boxes to the front door of the post office, where she had to wait in a long line for the usual inspections, repackaging and weighing.
As I returned to the cart, the guy stepped out from the back door of the post office and said, “I slipped on this ice earlier. It’s really slick. I really appreciate the help.” I said, “No problem.” I drove the cart back and forth, scraping the ice and snow for the next 30 minutes or so. It was a tricky job. The driveway doglegged to the right and the edges were cluttered with boxes, hand carts, and an elevated metal conveyer belt contraption to move large boxes.
First, I scraped the right side of the driveway, then I cleared the left side and the loading dock area. I stacked all the ice and snow in piles at the far end of the driveway, where they wouldn’t be a problem for delivery truck drivers. OK, I whanged the conveyer belt once, too. In fact, I sideswiped it and dragged it down the driveway a little. But I unsnagged it from the cart, pushed it aside and continued my appointed rounds.
When I was about finished, the postal guy reappeared and said, “Hey, you’re pretty good at this. Do you do this back home?” I asked, “Do what at home?” He said, “Operate a snow plow.”
Obviously, he hadn’t seen – or even more remarkably, hadn't heard – me hit the conveyer belt.
I said, “Oh yeah, I shovel all the snow in my whole neighborhood. There’s never any snow when I’m on the job.” Clearly he was impressed. He said, “I hear you can make a lot of money doing that.” I said, “Not as much as you’d think in my neighborhood.”
I live in Phoenix, of course, but he didn’t ask.
No peace; no laundry
KABUL — Personal hygiene at Qalaa House tanked shortly after the assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani, the former Afghan president and the sitting chairman of the Afghan High Peace Council.
Rabbani set up a meeting on Sept. 20, 2011, with a man he believed to be Taliban peace emissary. At the time, the meeting represented a major breakthrough in the slow-moving peace negotiation with the terrorist organization. Rabbani invited the emissary to his home in an upscale neighborhood in Kabul, just outside of the Green Zone. However, the Taliban representative didn’t have peace talks on his mind; he had explosives on his head.
The man got through numerous checkpoints and past the former president’s security guards with a bomb concealed in his turban. When Rabbani gave undercover suicide bomber welcoming hug, the bomb detonated, blowing them both to bits. Several bodyguards who were standing nearby also were killed.
Naturally, the assignation put a damper on the peace process. Britain’s ambassador to Afghanistan, William Patey, characterized the post-Rabbani outlook for meaningful peace talks as “pretty bleak.”
An unintended consequence was the rank among the ranks at Qalaa House.
The day after the assassination, hundreds of Afghans poured into Kabul’s streets, waving posters, banners, flags and weapons to protest the murder, which snuffed hopes for a quick political end to the war. The protests lasted for days, clogging Kabul’s already overcrowded streets and halting the normal flow of traffic that features Toyota sedans, donkey carts, delivery trucks, coalition military rigs and importantly, septic trucks.
There is no sewer system in Kabul, so fleets of sucker trucks are needed to siphon the septic tanks and haul away sewage from toilets, showers and washing machines. At Qalaa House, it’s four tanker trucks worth of waste water a day. However, the demonstrations prevented the fleet of stinking sucker trucks from reaching the compound.
Brandon Tobias, proprietor of the Qalaa House Laundry & Bath.
After a few days, Col. Christopher Martin, the commander of the Corps of Engineers in northern Afghanistan, banned everyone on the compound from showering or doing laundry in an effort to keep the septic tanks from filling. The idea was to leave enough room in the septic tanks so that the toilets could still be flushed. And with 400 people on the compound, there’s a lot of flushing. I got along by washing with Clorox Disinfecting Wipes, which I usually use to clean my shipping container. I have two types of wet wipes – fresh scent and lemon scent. I used the fresh-scented variety to wash myself, leaving the lemon-scented ones for the furniture.
The gym instantly became a ghost town, or nearly so, as people made every effort to avoid perspiring. After a few days, meetings were conducted with open windows. Some desperate souls washed their hair with bottled drinking water, which was fine as long as they washed outdoors, rather than in the showers, which drain into the septic tanks. A few people cheated.
On Sept. 25, five days after Rabbani’s assignation, Martin called out the cheaters during an all-staff meeting. “Yesterday, we almost had a crisis because people were sneaking in there at 3, 4 or 5 in the morning saying, ‘Oh, I want to take a shower. Nobody will notice,’ and washing their clothes and stuff,” he said.
“We were within about six inches of one of the tanks spilling out. So when we tell you, ‘Don’t take showers; don’t use the laundry facilities,’ don’t do it. You know, I told you from Day 1 that there are things called Army values. This violates about four or five of those values – loyalty, responsibility, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity. It violates at least all of those.”
The longer he spoke, the more riled up he got.
“We’re in a combat zone. It’s OK to stink! We had the BUB the other day,” he said using an acronym to refer to crowded staff meeting called a battlefield update brief. “That was the second day without showers. We were just fine. Nobody passed out. We had to tell Major Lyons to put his arms down, of course, but that was it. It’s OK to stink in Afghanistan! You’ll fit in.”
Later that night, several people heard automatic weapons fire and several explosions outside the blast walls that surround the Qalaa House compound. I was on the second floor of the dining facility and didn’t hear the commotion. The Big Voice told everyone on the compound to go indoors if they weren’t already there, and to stay away from windows and doors. That, of course, was solid advice. Bullets and shrapnel penetrate widows easier than walls. Ten minutes after the Big Voice announcement, a soldier wearing full battle gear and carrying an M-5 appeared and said, “All military personnel outside. Now!” Four or five military members hustled out.
About 10 p.m., more than an hour after the first announcement, the Big Voice spoke again, calmly noting that the threat had been “neutralized,” and that everyone was required to report to their respective work stations for a headcount. Managers counted their staff members, some of whom were wearing pajamas.
After a couple of days, the demonstrations ended and the road became passable again. There was a scramble by Qalaa House and every other coalition base to get sucker trucks in. Not surprisingly, the trucks first went to the camps with the highest-ranking generals; those camps also tend to be the larger camps. A few trucks headed to Qalaa House were redirected en route. A few others made it to the compound, siphoning off just enough sewage every day or two to keep toilets flushing.
Then intelligence officers received a tip that insurgents planned an attack at Camp Eggers, the large multi-national base across the street from Qalaa House. The tip had a ring of credibility.
A couple of weeks earlier on Sept. 13, Taliban fighters simultaneous attacked the U.S. embassy, a shopping area and other targets around Kabul. Insurgents shot a few rockets at the well fortified embassy compound from a half-built high-rise about a quarter mile away. They also blew up an unoccupied school bus in the city. Gun battles between Afghan security forces and the insurgents raged for hours. Eventually, Afghan soldiers firing heavy guns from a helicopter killed the insurgents in the high-rise. Elsewhere, machine-gun fire lasted into the evening as Afghan forces pursued the attackers on foot.
The assaults marked the first time Taliban fighters had organized simultaneous attacks across the city, which demonstrated a new level of coordination. An Afghan police official later said four policemen and three Afghan civilians were killed, and 17 people were wounded. Corps of Engineers personnel at Qalaa House, which is less than a half mile from the embassy complex, hunkered down in bomb shelters for more than five hours during the assault and counter attack.
So with that embassy attack as a backdrop, the commander at Eggers ordered all Eggers personnel to wear helmets and flak jackets while outdoors in response to the tip concerning a potential attack at Eggers. Furthermore, security, which already was high, was heightened further.
Qalaa House followed suit. Sucker trucks were banned, because they posed a security risk. The threat was that they could ferry explosive devices in or near U.S. compounds, with or without the knowledge of their drivers. Theoretically, insurgents could stick a bomb with a cell phone triggering device on the underside of sucker truck, wait for it to get in or near the base, then dial up an explosive wave of death, terror and crap at once.
Showers and laundry were banned again. Some people still hadn’t washed their clothes after the first ban. Andy Jordan, a project manager from Boston, stuffed all his dirty clothes in a drawer, then took off for a three-week R&R, leaving his roommate to deal with the tang that developed in their shipping container while he was gone. Clean underwear and socks ran short.
Perspiration led to inspiration for Brandon Tobias, an architect from Kansas City, Kan., who served as president of the Qalaa Boosters Club. He set up two inflatable blue kiddie pools outside the headquarters building to serve as a combined laundry and bath. He told me he intended to set up the pools for Memorial Day, but never got around to it. On Nov. 16, he filled both pools with water with a handmade sign that read “Qalaa House Laundry & Bath.” He splashed one pool with Tide laundry detergent; the wash bin. The other pool has just water; the rise bin.
By that time, most people were well beyond the point of being embarrassed by washing their underwear in public. A few utility-minded people stepped into the pools, washing their clothes and themselves simultaneously.
Security remained tight. All military personnel were required to carry their automatic rifles 24-hours a day, which was the first time that happened since I arrived in Afghanistan. They’re armed 24-hours a day anyway, but some, particularly officers, typically carry pistols rather than machine guns. After that, selected military personnel were ordered to check passers-by to ensure they were wearing their dog tags, which notes the wearer’s name, religion and blood type. Security was heightened in other less-obvious ways as well.
Full septic tank service returned slowly. After about a week, Qalaa House residents were allowed to take a single three-minute shower during either a two-hour period in late evenings or during a two-hour period in early mornings. People went back to the gym. Meetings became tolerable. Finally, the sucker truck operators caught up and drained the human sludge to normal levels. The colonial authorized showers and clothes washing any time of day.
Tobias packed up the kiddie pools. The laundry machines ran constantly for two straight days. The peace negotiations remained scuttled.
Rabbbani set up – King, Laura, Los Angeles Times, “Former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani assassinated,”
Britain’s ambassador – Petty, Martin, Reuters, “Analysis: Afghan peace talk hopes show modest signs of revival,” http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/26/us-afghanistan-talks-idUSTRE79P2IG20111026, posted Oct. 29, 2011, accessed Oct. 29, 2011.
The day after – indiainteracts, “Afghans protest assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani,” http://indiainteracts.in/videos/69633/Afghans-protest-assassination-of-Burhanuddin-Rabbani.html, accessed Oct. 29, 2011.
The insurgent fired – Harooni, Mirwais and Hamid Shalizi, “Taliban attack across Kabul, target U.S. Embassy,” Reuters, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/14/us-afghanistan-blast-idUSTRE78B61S20110914, posted Sept. 14, 2011, accessed Nov. 16, 2011
A new project at an old site
PUSHTAYSARK, Afghanistan — By the time the group arrived at Pushtaysark on Monday, Feb. 7, 2011, the skies had cleared, though the mountain air was cold. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is building a $19.4 million installation for the Afghan army strategically located at the foot of the Hindu Kush mountain range in Parwan Province, north of Kabul.
The installation, which is called Infantry Kandak Pushtaysark, is near the southern entrances to Salang Pass and the infamous Salang tunnel, the heavily traveled routes that bisect the Hindu Kush. The pass and the tunnel represent the major north-south link between Kabul and all points north of the mountain range, which is one of the highest mountain ranges in the world.
The 12,000-foot-high pass has been used by invading forces for centuries. The nearly two-mile tunnel was built by the Soviets in the 1960s.
“It’s really a key piece of terrain for Afghanistan, not just this province. It’s a gateway from Kabul going north,” U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Richard Sanders told me. Sanders is the officer in charge of the Corps of Engineers’ area office in Bagram.
Parwan Gov. Abdul Basir Salangi, who attended the formal ground-breaking, noted the strategic advantages of the mountainside site. Afghanistan’s national hero, Ahmed Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance that fought the Soviets and the Taliban, envisioned an Afghan camp at the location, the general told me.
Massoud died before he saw his vision realized. A suicide bomber posing as a TV reporter killed him on Sept. 9, 2001, two days before the terrorist attacks in the United States.
“This is going to be one of the most important bases for the army in respect to the defense of Afghanistan,” Salangi said through an interpreter. “Although this area is kind of a secure area, we can use this base as a training base for army soldiers. Also, since it is close to the capitol, in case there are any emergency needs for the soldiers from this battalion, we can call on them.”
The installation similarly is well situated for troops to mobilize to anywhere in the northern portion of the country, the governor said. Plans call for 800 Afghan soldiers to be permanently housed at the site upon completion.
The base is being built on the site of an abandoned Soviet military compound that lies in ruins. Crumbling buildings, blasted bunkers and dozens of rusting hulks of tanks and personnel vehicles litter the site, which is also known as Red Hill. Coalition forces don’t have a full understanding how the Soviets used the facility.
“At some point they used it as a metal scrap yard or it was a staging area that got hit or something,” U.S. Army Maj. Christopher Meeker told me. “We found buried-up armored personnel carriers. We found buried tanks. We had demoed ammunition bunkers, all of which had ammo in them — and some had ammunition underneath them.”
The Soviets also planted landmines around their camps as security measures. Furthermore, insurgents have booby-trapped numerous abandoned military vehicles around the country in hopes of killing anyone who tries to scavenge them. Some ground at Red Hill already has been cleared of unexploded ordnance and construction has begun. Most of the land still needs to be cleared.
Plans for the compound include barracks, command buildings, classrooms, a medical clinic, a dining facility, latrine and laundry facilities, warehouses, an ammunition storage bunker, a vehicle maintenance facility, a fitness center, sports fields, security walls and guard towers, a sewer system, roads and related developments.
A U.S. contractor will develop the site, but most of the 900 projected workers will be Afghans, largely from Parwan. The scheduled competition date is September 2011, provided there are no weather delays, which seems unlikely.
On the road to Pushtaysark
PUSHTAYSARK, Afghanistan — I was scheduled to fly with a group of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officials from Kabul to Pushtaysark, a village to the north at the foot of the Hundu Kush mountain range, on Monday, which happened to be Super Bowl Monday.
The U.S. government announced plans to build $19.4 million base for the Afghanistan National Army atop of the ruins of a Soviet army base at the site. U.S. and Afghan officials had planned a press event to mark the occasion, mostly for the benefit of the Afghan media.
Plenty of my colleagues at the Qalaa House compound had gotten up early that morning to watch the Super Bowl live on Armed Forces Television. Kickoff was at 4 a.m. Kabul time. A heavy, wet snow was falling that morning, and as I expected, the helicopter flight to Pushtaysark was canceled because of the weather.
The commander of the Corps of Engineers in northern Afghanistan at the time, Col. Thomas Magness, instead ordered a road convoy, so arrangements were quickly made for several armored vehicles to drive first to Bagram Airfield, then onto Pushtaysark. We left before the Packers finished off the Steelers.
I rode in a vehicle with three others – two U.S. Amy soldiers and an Afghan security guard, all heavily armed. The U.S. soldiers carried M-4 assault rifles and the Afghan guard packed an AK-47 assault rifle. All three also carried pistols and other assorted weapons and plenty of ammunition. We wore fire-retardant clothing and gloves, flak jackets, helmets, ballistic glasses and combat boots, which is required attire for any trip beyond the compound gates.
Afghan road trips are unlike road trips in the United States. Few roads in Afghanistan are paved, and even those that are paved usually are just two lanes, one in each direction. Furthermore, most roads lack curbs and sidewalks. They’re usually lined with open trenches that serve as sewers. Boards and scrap metal are laid across the trenches to provide access to shops and homes.
There are pot holes of epic proportions and speed bumps in the most unusual places. The roads are crowded with pedestrians, pull carts, donkey carts and people traveling by bicycle, motorcycle, overcrowded compact cars, busses, large brightly painted flat-bed delivery trucks called jingle trucks, and every sort of military vehicle made. Women, often with a young child or two with them, sit in the center of busy roads begging for food and money.
And there are no speed limits in Afghanistan. Everyone travels as fast as he or she possibly can, operating under the assumption that fast-moving targets are more difficult to hit than slow-moving targets. It’s hard to argue with that logic.
The result is that road trips are jack-saw rides with sharp vertical movements caused by grave-deep pot holes and towering speed bumps, and horizontal jolts caused by drivers zigging and zagging around and between plodding donkey carts and rocketing Toyotas.
Along the way, I got to talking with the Afghan guard, who has worked for British and U.S. forces for a combined four years and has a strong command of English. Most of his friends and even some of his close family members have no idea he has been working for coalition forces since 2007. They believe he works in his family business, a shop of some sort in Kabul.
The guard, whom I’ll call “Mohammad” here, explained to me that either he or his family would in danger it was widely known that he worked for the U.S. government. “I love my head,” he told me. The prospect of being beheaded is a legitimate concern in Afghanistan. Just days earlier, a Taliban suicide bomber killed several members of an Afghan family who happened to be in a market that stocked peanut butter, energy bars and other products purchased by Westerners.
Mohammad said he knows of a man who used to work as a translator for coalition forces. Taliban agents discovered his secret and kidnapped him. Before they released him, they cut off one of his ears, half of his nose, two fingers, and gauged out one of his eyes. “That’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” Mohammad told me. The man begged Mohammad to kill him. He refused.
I’ve known the security guard for more than a year. He knows my name and often asks about my family. I know his real name and some details about his family. He’s unfailingly polite. He’s served as a body guard on numerous trips I’ve made to sites in and around Kabul. I believe his accounts.
He usually sits in the front seat when we travel together, but on the trip to Pushtasark, we were both in the back seat and had a chance to talk at length as we bounced and swerved through the snow and mud for 2½ hours. He told me that he recently had been speaking to a relative who was educated in Pakistan. The point was understood that most people in Afghanistan do not have formal educations, so Mohammad’s relative was better off than most.
He said they spoke about suicide bombing and the relative told Mohammad that he felt the practice was acceptable, because bombers are rewarded with instant trips to paradise for their efforts, as are any innocents accidently killed by bombers’ blasts. The relative, Mohammad said, based his feelings in his religious instructions.
Mohammad said he told his relatives that he was mistaken, that their god opposes people killing and injuring themselves. As proof, he grabbed his relative’s hand and bent back a finger until the man cried out in pain and tore his hand away. Mohammad then instructed his relative to bend back his own finger until he caused himself equal pain. The man couldn’t do it, which Mohammad said proved his point that their god opposes self-mutilation, and by extension, suicide bombing.
Still, Mohammad said, the relative remained unconvinced. Mohammad said he offered, even demanded, that they jump together from the roof of a three-story building to kill themselves. Mohammad said he argued that if their god truly rewarded people who killed themselves, then they should jump off the building as quickly as possible to enjoy their reward. The relative balked, Mohammad said, which proved his point a second time.
I asked Mohammad if he believed he had changed his relative’s mind about suicide bombing. He said he wasn’t sure, and in any case, he would never tell his relative that he worked for the U.S. government. He was concerned about his relative’s associates and religious instructors in Pakistan.
Insurgents, he said, are trained to first shoot Afghan body guards when they attack U.S. vehicles. The strategy is based on the idea that Afghan body guards know the roads better than their American counterparts, so if insurgents kill Afghans first, Americans will be lost and won’t be able to escape as easily.
“Our lives are really dangerous than yours, brother,” Mohammad said in broken English. “Trust me.”
I believe him.
Simple phrases and a complex idea
KABUL – Most days, a 20-year-old Afghan man named Ahmad comes into the four-man office where I work to empty the trash cans and to vacuum. In fact, he cleans the entire two-story building. He’s one of several Afghan men and women who work as janitors around the Qalaa House compound.
He’s friendly enough and speaks English fairly well, though he prefers to speak his native language, Dari. He’s taken upon himself to teach me Dari as well. Every day, he opens the door, pauses, puts his right hand on his chest and says, "Salam," which is the local greeting. Since my desk is closest to the door, I respond the same way.
Then he steps in, cleans and speaks Dari.
Ahmad has taught me a few introductory phrases. Something that sounds like, “Sa hottie shama cha tour as?” means “How is your health?” The response sounds like, “Tashakor. Sa hatta ma hovez,” which translates to, “Thank you. I am healthy.”
“Cha tour esteen?” is similar. It means “How are you?” The response is, “Tashakor. Huba stan,” which means, “Thank you. I’m well.”
He’s taught me a few other phrases, such as, “Nomay showma cheese?” which means, “What’s your name?” and the response, “Nomay man Pimon,” which means, “My name is Paul.”
On a good day, I can also answer questions about the weather. “Harwas sardus wa habreeze” means “The weather is cold and cloudy.” “Hog-allute ast” means “It is dusty.” “Awah torry ast” means “It is black,” which apparently is the Dari phrase meaning the pollution’s bad.
Ahmad often asks about my family and has told me about his. He lives with his parents (his father has just one wife), two older brothers, a sister-in-law, and a younger sister and a younger brother. His father manages a metal shop that his grandfather owns. Ahmad said he has worked since he was 9. He’s a junior in high school and plans to study journalism in college. He has been studying English, because it’s the “computer language,” for more than two years.
I asked him if most high school juniors in Afghanistan were 20 years old. Not all, he said, but when the Taliban controlled the country, things were “very bad” and no one attended school. He didn’t attend school for six years, he said.
Ahmad came into the office Thursday with his usual cheerful “Salam” and questions about my health and the weather. Then as he was emptying a trash can, he asked a long question in Dari. I hadn’t heard it before and asked him to translate. “What is your great ambition?” he asked as he looked up from the trash can.
“That’s a good question,” I said. A few possible answers spun through my mind, but before I answered, I returned the question. “What is your great ambition?” I asked.
He stood and spoke in Dari. The only word I recognized was “Afghanistan.”
“OK. What does that mean?” I asked.
“My great ambition is development of Afghanistan,” he said. He was sincere.
It must have been around 3 a.m.
KABUL – On Monday morning an explosion woke me, but it sounded far away.
I expected “The Big Voice” on the public address system to instruct everyone in camp to report to the bomb shelters. And as I waited for the announcement, I thought about what clothes I could throw on quickly to hold off the cold. I thought maybe I should just wrap myself in my blanket. And that I had to put on my body armor before I left my shipping container. And that I should bring my flashlight.
As I thought about it, I fell asleep again.
The Big Voice never spoke.
I awoke again at 5 and prepared for another day in Kabul.
An unexpected guest at the main gate
KABUL – One of the armed Afghan guards who patrol the Qalaa House compound appeared at the door of the Public Affairs office on Saturday morning looking for Joe Marek, a guy from Tennessee who usually works in the four-man office.
The guard, who spoke better English than most of the Afghan guards who work on the compound, said a local journalist was at the main gate, asking for Merak. The guard produced a business card-sized tab of paper the man had given him.
According to the paper, the man was Naweed Yousufi, “Chief & Journalist” of the Voice of Afghanistan Youth Weekly newspaper.
I’m familiar with the newspaper. Last week, someone left three issues of the four-page glossy paper at the front gate to be delivered to be delivered to Marek. The newspaper is printed in Dari and a front-page article carried news about the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ on-going efforts to complete the Ring Road, a strip of blacktop that eventually will circle Afghanistan.
Still, neither I nor anyone else in the office had sought contact with Yousufi, nor anyone else at his publication. And Marek, whom Yousufi had come to see, was in the middle of a three-week vacation back in the United States. Public affairs chief David Salazar and I conferred for a few minutes and decided to meet the unexpected guest.
“Tell him we’ll be there in a few minutes,” I told the guard, “but frisk the hell out of him before we get there.”
“Yes, of course,” the guard said. He smiled and nodded.
During a 25-year career in the newspaper industry, I had never before demanded that a contact be searched before I spoke with him. But before November 2009, I had spent my career in the vastly under-appreciated security of the United States. It’s impossible to overlook the security measures in place here.
The entire compound is surrounded by high blast walls. Atop of those are tall green-screened fences that block the view of anyone who may obtain a high vantage point outside. Lining the screens are coils of razor wire. Armed guards are stationed everywhere 24 hours a day. And those are just the obvious measures.
The flag poles in front of the namesake Qalaa House building also serve as a reminder of the risks associated with living and working in a war zone. The U.S. flag is flown at half staff every day following a U.S. casualty in Afghanistan. By habit, I check the flag every morning during my walk from my living quarters to my office. The flag rarely flies at full staff for two consecutive days.
On Saturday, the flag was at half staff in tribute to a soldier who died in eastern Afghanistan. Officials didn’t initially release the soldier’s name, nor the circumstances and exact location of his or her death. That was just a few days after a suicide bomber killed eight CIA operatives inside a U.S. base in the Khost Province in the eastern part of the country.
The Afghan guards still had not allowed Yousufi through the outer gate of the Qalaa House compound by the time Salazar and I had made our way there. Eventually, they let him in, and he tried to introduce himself as the guards checked his IDs. I kept a fair distance. The man was in his late 20s, and had shorter hair and a shorter beard than most Afghan men. He was dressed in Western-style clothes – dark corduroy pants; a green, white and pink plaid button-down shirt; and a denim jacket with zippered pockets.
The guards inspected and confiscated his cell phone and iPod. Electronics like those often are used to detonate explosive devices in Afghanistan. U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Jennifer Hollister, who was working the gate that day, stood beside me as we watched an Afghan guard pat down Yousufi.
“He didn’t pat down his groin,” I said to Hollister. “I saw that,” she replied.
Perhaps the Afghan guard had intended to conduct a second pat-down, or perhaps he heard us and understood us. In any event, the guard gave Yousufi a second and far more intrusive pat down. Yousufi held out a shoulder bag as he was frisked. “Search the bag,” I told the Afghan guards. Two guards took it from him, dug through the notebooks and papers in the bag, then confiscated it as well.
Next, the guards processed Yousufi to another checkpoint manned by U.S. military service members, who checked his IDs again, ran him through a biometric identification process, registered him in the daily log, and wished him a nice day. Salazar and I introduced ourselves to our guest and escorted him out of the enclosed entrance area and into another enclosed area with tables and chairs.
Yousufi explained that he has spoken to Marek before and came to the gate when Merak didn’t answer his e-mails for several days. He produced another paper tab business card, offered U.S. references, and discussed the mission of Voice of Afghanistan Youth Weekly. The paper is aimed at educated readers between the ages of 18 and 35, and is distributed at college campuses in the capitol city of Kabul and elsewhere.
He said he wanted to report on the rebuilding efforts in Afghanistan and asked if we could provide information and photos about projects as they were completed. We told him we’d be happy to provide plenty of that sort of information.
The United States expects to start new construction projects totaling $3.2 billion in Afghanistan this year. That’s in addition to on-going work. The slate includes more portions of the Ring Road, Afghanistan National Army bases, Afghanistan National Police complexes and water processing plants, among other projects.
Yousufi told us we could omit the costs of the projects, because he had no intention to publish financial figures. He said doing so would only lead insurgents and corrupt Afghan government officials to demand bribes from construction company executives and laborers. No surprise there. Corruption is rampant in Afghanistan.
Eventually, we gave Yousufi our business cards and I escorted him back to the main gate. I logged him out and the guards returned his bag and electronics. He stepped through the outer gate and onto the street and looked back at me.
“Nice meeting you,” I called. The guards slammed the metal gate shut.
