April 2009      Kabul, Afghanistan

It took awhile to edit this one, written originally while I was riding the edge of insanity, near the end of a one-year stretch in the ‘Stan.  I did not change the tone of it, just filled in a little of the background.  It is not a short story, but it is probably my last on this topic.  I was not free to post it on these pages at the time due to the discomfort it might cause back home.  Here you go:

“Get your Gear on.”

That was an optimistic order  – I have little of what this unrehearsed mission called for:  a reliable rifle, enough body armor, a helmet, pistol, six magazines of ammunition, hand grenades, a radio, a harness to carry it all, and a personal medical kit strapped to the leg – I had none of that.  There were a few other details I found lacking:  our beat-down underpowered thin-skinned microvan acting as an ambulance, no additional shooters on board, no GPS tracker on the vehicle or on me, no dedicated Quick-Reaction Force (QRF) to escort us, no license for our weapons, no night-sights, no twin-.50 cal gun turret swiveling around up top.  So I grabbed what I had: a not-recently-tested AK-47 made in 1963, stuck the one spare magazine in my pants pocket, a single hand grenade in the other pocket, grabbed a headlamp and strapped on the single 30-pound body armor vest we owned, and why not  – my camera, to document the carnage maybe for this page someday.  Good to go.  Send me in, coach!

Earlier that morning, Dan the other medic, and his girlfriend Fiona had helicoptered down east to Jalalabad to work on a new contract.   There were no return flights, so we sent Shafiq the driver down to pick them up and drive them back, leaving Jbad no later than 1500 for the three-hour return trip.  Security had been bad on that route that connects Kabul with Pakistan. An ambush in August left ten French troops dead and twenty-one wounded, at the same site where Clinton and I had responded to a road wreck a month earlier.  After that, ISAF cracked down hard and it was relatively safe again.  But even the Afghans rarely drove that route at night, due to the possibility of Taliban tollbooths.   We expected our crew back no later than 1800, before nightfall.

A note on Dan – he is a hard man, twelve years in the Australian Special Air Service as a combat medic and a dive medic, and he knows risk assessment.  He hates being unarmed, but we generally drove the streets that way (at least during the day,) because as a start-up, we lacked the money for armored cars, body armor, a QRF contract, properly tested weapons and the $100,000 Afghan government shake-down for a company gun license.  This license fee goes straight into some dirty fat bastard’s pocket of course.  A note on Fiona -  in the real world, she could be described as jovial and outgoing, though I might throw in dopey, naïve, simple, lazy and clueless.  In an active war zone, I would classify her as nothing less than dangerously stupid.

She insisted on going to Jalalabad for the sight-seeing and photos, which I understand, but she would not hear the warnings about the risk involved.  If night fell before they returned and the Filthies stopped the car, they might pop Dan and Shafiq, who were out doing their job. But she had no business on that trip and would have a much worse time as a guest of the Talib, up in some cave in the mountains, indefinitely.

This was not my problem or my decision to make.  Off you go then, girl.  They boarded an elderly Russian helicopter and flew out at 0900.

Later that evening, I was at a residential compound across town, having dinner with a big group of South African helicopter pilots and their Russian mechanics.  Afterward, I had a dozen of them scheduled for a basic medical history and assessment, part of the process of getting this new contract started.  While taking notes on the sixth guy, I took a phone call – it was the boss, Marcus: “Need you here now.”  Click.

Oh, alright then.  I did not know what was going on, but it was clearly Go Time.  Mass casualties?  A  residential compound attacked? I dropped the paperwork and split, jumped in the waiting ride and arrived at our steel gate to find Marcus pulling it open, “bombed-up” as they say.  Headlamp on, mesh vest full of field medic gear and a row of 30-round magazines across his chest, AK-47 in hand, a defective old Russian pistol strapped to his thigh, throwing bags of medical gear into both ambulances, and on the phone requesting a Quick Reaction Force immediately.   Our crew was 2 ½ hours overdue, and not answering the phones.  “Get your gear on,” he said.

I did not say a word, just nodded and bolted past the dogs and the housekeeper, up the stairs. The power was out again, all the house lights were off, and ill will was in the air.  While fetching my feeble gear, I had a few moments to think.  We had never rehearsed this, or even run through any verbal rehearsals, though Marcus seemed to have things flowing nicely right now.  All of us were comfortable with weapons and willing to use them.  I came here aware of the risk of death and accepted that as part of the deal.  I do not think I was spiking a high blood pressure at the moment, just wishing primarily that this was a daytime response, which would make it a lot easier for me to kill some of them and maybe make us a more difficult targets than exiting vehicles into the darkness, backlit by our own headlights.  Night vision goggles would have been a nice asset right about now.

In retrospect,  this was a scatterbrained assignment, similar to jumping overboard into icy cold water to save someone who fell in:  good luck with that.   Right now, what was the task at hand?  Re-establishing phone contact and then…Search and rescue?  Hostage recovery?  Finding the bodies?  Changing their flat tire? Assaulting a cave complex?  We were not suited for any of the above, but I was not at all inclined to refuse the mission.

Then a quote that has stuck with me for ten years resurfaced, part of a Sebastian Junger dispatch from, coincidentally, Afghanistan, printed in 1999 in Vanity Fair magazine I think.  He was traveling with Shah Massoud’s men of the Northern Alliance, outnumbered, outgunned and outfunded by the Taliban, doing battle in the Panshjir Valley.  They did not have much long-term chance, fighting an enemy backed strongly by our great allies, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, but Massoud was a genius and they fought the good fight.  One day, taking cover under a rock ledge while on the receiving end of a 155mm artillery barrage, Junger apparently had serious misgivings about being there and asked a Northern Alliance fighter about getting the hell out. The Afghan looked at him incredulously and asked “What are you doing here, if you are not prepared to die?”  A fair question that was, but I had my reasons, and they made sense at the time.

Right now, my co-worker Dan was out there, which obligated me to try to find him.  This was very different to me than volunteering as a tactical medic for night convoys through the Badlands, though the risk was about the same.  I am not sure if I can explain that, because it puzzled me at the time.  It was simply much more acceptable to become a casualty while carrying out an obligation than to lose a limb while volunteering to carry out some dirty work, especially if volunteering partly out of visceral spite for the enemy.

I faced the moment, test-fired a quick burst from my ancient AK into the front yard, and jumped into one of our ramshackle ambulances, which was ghetto even by Afghan standards.  Two civilian ambulances, two Afghan drivers, and no additional shooters:  far from ideal.   Fortunately the QRF was on the way, doing us a large favor.  This added two more armored SUVS, eight guys bombed-up thoroughly, heavier weapons, night sights, GPS trackers and radio uplinks to the US military for close air support, if it came to that.

It did not.  Munir opened the gate for us and we drove east, over the dark broken roads of the capital.  Then the phone rang:  It was Dan, they had just driven back into cell-phone coverage, out of the deep narrow valley and back into the outskirts of Kabul. There are parts of the road so narrow that cars have to stop to let opposite truck traffic pass, so trucks move west during the day and east during the night.  They had been stuck in a traffic jam for hours on the two-lane road because as always, the police were taking bribes from truckers who paid to go against the flow of traffic, in order to get back to Pakistan before sunup.   And that was that.

Funny enough, our lost patrol actually had a good time while stuck out in that gorge along the Kabul river.  They told us that the Afghan men had turned on some music, locked their women in the vehicles and  man-danced the night away in the middle of the road in the headlights of their parked vehicles.  There is no denying it, Afghanistan is an amazing place.

You may wonder why I did not take the next flight out of there. I wonder that now. The goddamn startup company owed me a lot of back-pay at the time, but I had committed to myself to stay for a year, and fleeing would have cost me my tax-free status and a good deal of self-respect.  Like so many other Westerners out there, I was well on the way to losing my mind, and self-medicating nicely just to get by. Other than that epic northern road trip, I hated every day in Afghanistan, but I do not regret the experience one bit.   I even miss the photography and writing experiences throughout the country.    I counted down the thirty days remaining and went on a bit of a rampage back in the USA upon arrival.

Since leaving, home invasions have occurred throughout Kabul and the rest of the land,  seven of my friends or work associates have died or been killed, and my man Mick is on death row in Kabul, for killing someone who needed killing.  The US is ringing up a $100,000,000,000 tab this year for that war alone, or $1,000,000 per soldier per year.  2,134 ISAF troops killed to date, and possibly a larger number of contractors, but nobody officially tracks that, due to the political cost.

All of that to help shore up a society that publicly values this: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/08/29/INF21F2Q9H.DTL

There must be an easier way to blow up Al-Qaeda training camps anywhere in the world than the way we are doing it now.  None of the 9/11 hijackers were Afghans, and none of them learned how to fly commercial airliners inside that rotten corner of the world.  Nation-building is not our job, and nobody has ever won a war there.  Taliban funding is coming from outside of that primitive sump of a country, not from within (other than the opium trade.)  This war is not worth the ever-increasing effort that we are putting into it, and we all know that it will sink right back to a medieval brawling mess once we pull out, thousands of casualties from now.

August 2009     USA

I no longer look forward to situation reports that occasionally come in from my co-workers in Kabul.   Last week the capital took nine rockets.  This week a truck bomb blew out every window at the guest house that hosted the Halloween party.   In the two months I have been out, five of my friends and work associates have been killed.  Christian Major “died in his sleep” last month and the other four guys  struck a roadside bomb yesterday. I only have one of those names, not sure yet if I knew the other three.  But they are a small security contracting company, and we grilled out and drank beer at their compound every Thursday night, so chances are good that I knew them.  Last week one of their convoys got hit hard, racking up 39 wounded and 11 killed, all Afghans.  I sure hope yesterday’s hit did not include my boy Mick, the Aussie special forces guy from the burned-girl transport job described here back in May.

Facts are hard to chase down, even when there on the ground.  There is not much local media, and the US news hardly even mentions contractor deaths anymore.  Local communications are spotty at best.  How does a former Navy SEAL “die in his sleep?”   As for the other four, they were from the company we contracted with as tactical medics for road convoys.   I would like to learn the names of the other dead and wounded.    They were probably on a standard high-risk night mission, no different than the one also described here in May.  As mentioned before, I volunteered to not work that contract.  Those who know me well, know that I weighed that option for awhile before stepping aside. I will always have some second thoughts over not going out there and personally working out some issues with the savages.  But a large proportion of them step into the fray intending to die, so it would not actually have cost them anything. It might have cost me a bit more, so no regrets.

As for the two names I have, both were big, smart, rough men, educated hard-working overachievers.  They knew the risks and  were there for their own reasons.  They would have contributed a lot more to this world and the security of the Afghan people, but maybe you can only roll the dice a certain number of times before it is time to pay up.

Late last night I was having a good time at a rocking birthday party at a friend’s house.  Then I got the word about the four KIA via email on my phone.  It was like the needle scratched right off the record, but of course it did not– everything flowed on around me.  What to do? Go home and stare at the ceiling?  Start talking about it to friends I just saw again after a year away?  Or turn off the phone, find a bottle of Jameson’s and take up smoking?  I chose door number three.  I have been out for awhile now, but sometimes I feel like I am still there.

Much of the spike in violence was widely predicted as the August 20th election approaches, and that is why I timed my exit as I did.  The work these guys accomplished there maybe made a difference in the war  (Christian “adopted” four Afghan kids and sponsored their schooling out of his own pocket,) but their deaths will not bring any progress.  Kind of a waste, and not worth it to me personally.

Go ahead and starve or rape your wife  – it is legal now in Islamistan.  Our man President Karzai signed that law this week, in an effort to win votes.  I think some US undergrads, educators and even policy makers really do believe that all cultures are equal and respectable.  Take your heads out of the books and go travel a bit, discover broken ideologies, and consider the cost to all of us.

Wake up and smell the barbarians:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8204207.stm

Great tribute to Christian here, though maybe interesting only if you knew him.

Another writeup about Christian, from my man Tim in Jalalabad, AFG.  He writes the best-informed blog in the country:  http://blog.freerangeinternational.com/?p=1756

May 2009     Qalat, Afghanistan

Last week we sized up a new contract with a security company by accompanying them for a little night work. The mission involved a convoy of 40 tractor-trailers, carrying shipping containers, new armored vehicles, and loaded fuel tankers on an overnight run to Kandahar and back. Convoys on this route get hit every night with rockets, roadside bombs and machine guns, sometimes in well-organized ambushes. Few of their vehicles are armored, and most have a few holes in them. The military is still stretched too thin to offer air or medical support, so the security companies are on their own to fight through and deliver these high-value targets every time. It is a hugely lucrative contact, but it comes at a steady cost.

I went over to their compound for a BBQ where Mick, one of the shooters, told me that an Afghan team leader had jumped out of a vehicle to return fire the previous night and was hit in the chest with a rocket-propelled grenade.  This made my decision a little easier when they asked us to provide tactical medic support for this large high-profile delivery. I volunteered to not go for several reasons, only one of which is obvious. Both of my co-workers geared up with weapons, armor, helmets and medic bags and headed out.

Unfortunately, mechanical issues disabled two of the trucks, and roadside repairs cost valuable night hours. Light and shadows crept across the fields as they entered an area with no cell phone coverage, and that is where the first roadside bomb detonated. Most of the 40 trucks were stopped, and the 20 thin-skinned security vehicles along with them. Briefly described, a few dozen security guys jumped out and counter-attacked, rather than sit and take machine-gun fire from 200 yards away. Actually, the Afghans mostly off-loaded and took cover in a ditch (a common story), while the westerners maneuvered on foot across a field and up a creek bed towards the mud village where the enemy were positioned.

This action went on for maybe 45 minutes, and it became clear that the enemy was well-organized and positioned; likely they were foreign Al Qaeda jihadis, not just local Taliban. Once it became clear that the security guys were getting no support or covering fire from their own Afghan buddies, the Arab and Chechen (?) fighters launched their own counter-attack, driving the security company back to their vehicles. During their advance, Mick watched two of them maneuvering up an irrigation ditch towards a few of his men 100 yards away. He shot one in the face, then the other as he panicked and turned to run, twice in the neck. During their retreat back to the trucks, low on ammo now, Drew saw a few jihadis following them up the creek bed. Twist, pull pin: two grenades put an end to that pursuit. The final score was reported as one Afghan driver shot in the arm, and five or six Al Qaeda killed. Hopefully that is an accurate report.

The next night, they were not running a convoy, but sneaked back to the area to hunt down their attackers, who would not expect that sort of action. They got it, but on their own terms: they ambushed the contractors from both sides at once. Once again, sit and die in place, or dismount and fight. Two windshields quickly splintered from gunfire, then a back window to an RPG. “Doc”, a former Ranger medic, jumped out and reached back inside to grab grenades. In doing so, he moved his shooting hand from his AK, which then took a direct hit. An enemy bullet sheared off his pistol-grip, and might have taken his hand. No matter, return fire, attack, and hope the fairly useless Afghan co-workers provide covering fire. This time they somehow managed to get close air support, a rarity for non-military convoys. Apache helicopter gunships smoked eight more Al Qaeda, added to the two or maybe three that the ground guys erased. Hundreds of rounds fired, but no wounded contractors – especially lucky considering that Mick chooses not to wear any body armor.  He is an interesting case, that one.

It is a good thing that even these trained and well-positioned Chechens or Arabs are notoriously bad shots: impulsive, undisciplined, unevenly trained. Not much sense in training guys committed to to die here, and they no longer have the freedom to run training bases. That was the whole idea of this war, at least at the beginning.

This time, there was an added bonus to having air support.  After clearing the area of any injured stragglers and following a couple of blood trails, the boys got down to stripping the dead of documents, weapons, IDs, and some nice US military gear. This is becoming more common as shipping containers in transit are hijacked, blown up or sold off  by Afghan drivers.  Sometimes it seems to come from inside, too, as US medical gear, armor and night vision goggles are available at the bazaars near the bases.

From one of the dead guys, a cell phone rang out.   Ha!  A contractor handed it to an Afghan, who answered it, and tried to get a location of the caller.  No luck.  The conversation quickly turned to insults and taunting, especially when the caller hung up and tried again, ringing a different dead jihadi.  I’m sorry, but the caller you are trying to reach is indisposed at the moment.  Why don’t you come and get him?

Another convoy rolls tonight, down the same roads.  Happy hunting, guys!

(No new photos this time.)

May 2009     Afghanistan

The path to the truth is not a straight line in Afghanistan, whether asking directions,  learning tribal customs, or just trying to gather patient history.  Today I asked one question, got five different answers, and came to an ugly conclusion.  (Names changed, as usual.)

I returned from a transport to Hong Kong last night and went straight out early this morning to pick up a previous patient and return her to her village.  This one was unusual:  a three-year-old Afghan girl recovering from severe burns, referred  by the US embassy last month.  I was up north at that time, and my boss had flown down to a US Army Forward Operating Base (FOB) to pick her up for the specialty treatment she needed.   That was all I knew about her case, so I wanted to read the medical reports and see how she was able to get this treatment.

I met the Afghan burns doctor at the hospital, and he led me inside to meet a small brown girl with wild hair and big eyes.  Her father stood quietly off to the side.  The doctor peeled back the blanket and sheets, apologizing for not having any patient history available for us to take along, but that he would email it later.  Ruby had a massive bright pink splotch spread across her lower back, butt, upper thighs and all points between, and on her right foot, or what was left of it. The outer half was gone, just a skinny foot with two toes and a most of an ankle. On her left side, rectangular bright pink patches, where the skin had been harvested for grafting.  Maybe 30% of her body, apparently third and fourth degree burns, which go right down into the bone.

There was a routine US State Department helicopter flight at the airport, and we were going to be late.  As we loaded her into the ambulance, the Doctor quickly answered in very limited English, “Taliban, in the village.  Night.  The family they run out to the field, but this one, she fell into the bread cooking oven in the ground.”   A simple story, unfortunate but believable at first.  Fourth degree?  She must have been stuck in there.  How did she not burn her hands?

Funny that the State Department uses old Soviet aircraft, but they are cheap, reliable and more importantly, do not attract much attention.  On this corner of the airfield, there were a lot of conspicuously unmarked men and aircraft, and no shortage of weapons.  They had held the flight for us and had a photographer waiting – I got the sense that all of these people were relieved to see and do some tangible, positive relief work.  Ruby represented actual hope in this land, as long as people chose not to think too closely about her circumstances, or ask questions that might bring unsettling answers.

We strapped the gurney inside the Mi-8 cargo helicopter, spun up and headed south, towards the badlands.  At the first FOB, we dropped off some guys and gear, and picked up others.  Lots of interesting equipment and preparations going on, big white guys with huge beards, contractors and troops, initials and acronyms, Nepalese security, no locals.  One of the pilots asked about the girl;  he remembered bringing her to Kabul last month.   I asked him what had caused her injuries. “A cooking accident,” he answered.  A flight security guy cocked an eyebrow and said, “Oh, that again? Right.  No, that’s what they do to the girls here.” He went on, “Yeah, take note:  it is always a little girl, never a boy, and always the back, butt and legs burned.”  I asked “So this is local discipline?  For what? Wait, that’s her dad.  He did this?”

The dad had been right next to me on board.  He was about 25 going on 40, dressed like a conservative Muslim from down south, and yeah, maybe Taliban. Definitely he smelled so bad that one of the guys opened a window in the helicopter, preferring the shrieking turbine engines and jet fuel to the goatherder’s overwhelming rancidity.  But he pushed this girl into the fire?  I said “Why don’t we throw him out the fucking door once we get up there?”  A contractor shrugged and said “Mate, we don’t know for sure if he is that one that did it.  That’s just…it’s how things are done around here.  It prevents them from getting married.”

Up again and now headed to our destination, a small field hospital in a FOB near the Pakistan border, where this patient first appeared.  There is a huge gray area when it comes to treating non-military patients, a conflict of resources and priorities vs. medical duty to treat.  Circumstances determine who gets what, and this is an eight-bed facility in a very hot area, so locals and even Western civilian contractors are usually sent elsewhere.  The base is setting up a clinic for locals, subject to staff availability; the first priority is keeping their scarce resources available for combat casualties.  Still, when family members walked right up to an American unit out patrolling in March, they made some radio calls and got her medevac’d to try to get proper treatment and maybe save her infected foot.

While moving her from the landing pad to the hospital, one of the nurses came out, smiled at Ruby and said “Oh, yeah, here she is  – I remember her.”  I asked what had happened to her.  The nurse said “Well, who knows.  But that is the thirteenth little girl I’ve treated for burns, always to the same area.”  I pressed her on it,  though she dodged and avoided making a judgement call, as if expressing a rational opinion was the root of the problem here.  She said “They don’t always seem to want the girls.  They always say it was a cooking accident, hot water maybe. Sometimes we end up with them.”  I pointed out that cooking accidents burn the front of kids, not the back.  She said “Yeah, this one was probably ‘dipped.’” She shrugged, because really, what to do about this?

I recognized the burn patterns because child abuse is universal, but the difference is that in this culture I am not even sure if it is legal offense.  It is culturally accepted, to some extent. There are no child protective services or even police in her province, and most issues are judged and enforced by a council of old fundamentalist men.  Assuming Ruby survives, she will now have a reduced market value, and maybe stick around to take care of her aging parents, if they have no sons to capture a daughter-in-law for this task. So we were sending her right back to where she came from:  back to her short, brutal life.

Next I met with the senior medical officer.  I cut to the chase and asked her directly.  She explained “Yeah, this is too much damage for a water burn.  Maybe cooking oil or fire, but hard to say because we did not see her until infection had set in.”   I said “What would you do about this in the first world?”  Finally I got an answer:  “I would have to call it in as child abuse, either neglect or trauma.”   With that, we signed her over and they prepared to discharge her and her charming dad, who thanked nobody. That’s when it got complicated.  It turned out that they lived southwest of Kandahar, nine hours by rough road, not a good choice for her condition.  Now what?  Mick and James, the ex-special forces guys running my security for this delivery, are used to nasty places and lots of “activity.”  Like everyone else, they were donating their services free of charge on this one.

Mick stepped out to make a few calls, seeing about borrowing a helicopter or an armored vehicle convoy.  He came back, shaking his head.  “No way.  It is really hot down there. The military will not even go on the roads, and they won’t fly to the FOB there without Apache gunships and Predators.  Forget it.  We have to get them a public taxi.”  James protested this, insisting that he would drive them there himself tomorrow.  He operates on the low-profile idea,  blend in rather than armor up and stand out, and he could pass for a local with his dark skin and beard.  Hiding in plain sight is what he does when out on activities, often completely solo.  I grilled him about this a couple of minutes later, suggesting that he does not need to take that level of risk – this was not friendly fire, he did not throw her into the bread oven,  and “You do not owe them anything.  We already saved her life, step away now.”   James said “Yeah, I know, but I would like to do something positive here now and then, contribute something more than all this killing.”  I said “I don’t love this place or these people enough to drive that road and neither do you. We are done here.” He went on,  “I don’t want to send her anywhere with that guy.  He is Pashtun. They are fucking animals.  Did you see him comfort her even once?  He does not give a shit.  The fucking door-gunner kept her calm.”

Mick came back and finalized it. He said “We’re fucked either way with this one.  We can’t fly it, and we can’t drive it.  They can’t even drive it.  When the Talib stop the taxi and get one look at the obvious western medical treatment and bandages, these people are finished.”

When I left, there were more Afghan Army casualties coming in on two Black Hawks, from a roadside bomb nearby. They would need the few available beds. The medical staff planned to pass the hat to pay the nine-hour cab fare for Ruby and her dad.

35 photos, none graphic: http://www1.snapfish.com/share/p=674111263265801607/l=4391335017/g=6193089/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

Tagged: Afghanistan, Islamic fundamentalism, military, paramedic work, Taliban ]]> http://housefly.us/2009/05/02/multiple-choice/feed/ 2 . img_36411 http://housefly.us/2009/04/10/badakhshan/ http://housefly.us/2009/04/10/badakhshan/#comments Fri, 10 Apr 2009 08:49:29 +0000 . http://housefly.us/?p=436 ]]>

April 2009    Northern Afghanistan

Spring Break college-style is somewhere in the blurry past, but I am pretty sure it did not include abstinence from alcohol and other pursuits, or 8 days and 800 miles in an unmarked microvan with two bearded Muslim men.  But parts of this country are amazing once out of the bigger cities, and what an epic trip it has been.   I even logged some miles hitch-hiking the country roads.

Shafiq the driver, Dr G and I headed north to secure a new contract in a series of towns bordering Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, China and Pakistan.    Most of Northern Afghanistan is a safe zone, occupied by less-fundamentalist ethnic groups who wore down the Soviets, regularly smashed the Taliban, and took no prisoners.   Broken military equipment litters the ground like cigarette butts.  Our journey got rougher, wilder and more remote,  the final day spent bouncing through what looked like a National Geographic layout for 6 hours, or about 120 miles.   Most of the time I stood up through the sunroof, taking in the sights.  The people are much more friendly and welcoming up here. I missed the camel-fights, but actually got onto the field to see Buzkashi, a brutal version of polo, using a headless goat instead of a ball. It is the national sport, of course.

The road dead-ends into the eastern mountain town of Feyzabad, a remote outpost of a few thousand locals and migrant workers, about 50 foreign-aid workers, and a very small German Army base, sporting a corrugated steel runway bolted down by the Soviets.  That is the only link to the outside world for six months of the year; avalanches block other routes. The 1,000,000 people scattered through the rest of this sprawling frontier, Badakhshan Province, are linked only by donkey paths, radiating outward from Feyzabad.  There is one hospital here serving them all, though a village may be several donkey-days away.

I had some paperwork and meetings scheduled, but it is such a walkable town that I sent my workers back to Kabul.  I would rather catch a flight out of here than face a 20-hour drive with snow forecast up in the mountain passes.   I walked out to the German base to secure a seat on the next bi-weekly flight out, weather permitting.  All the flags were at half-staff in recognition of an incident two days earlier and further west of here, where an Afghan soldier working inside a  US base gunned down four American troops, killing two of them.  I happened to be at that German field hospital right after the wounded Americans were flown in for treatment, but what I heard did not make the news: the Afghan pulled the trigger on this group because  they  were male and females together, jogging in shorts and t-shirts.  Though they were inside a secure American base and far from the eyes of any Afghan locals, this offended him greatly.  Killed were Navy Lt. Francis Toner, USMMA 2006, and Navy Lt. Florence Choe, a nurse who signed up days after September 11th 2001.  The barbarian then shot himself.

I walked out into the drizzle to make my way back into town, taking an indirect route along the muddy river, to check out some ruins along the way.   There was an overturned armored troop carrier down on the riverbank below, so I scrambled down to check it out.  Somebody knew the story of how it ended up here 20 years ago, but I never would.  All I could see were human bones all around it, inside, and piled up on a rock nearby.  Here were the remains of maybe a dozen of the 15,000 Russians killed in the ten-year war, left to the animals and the elements.

Onward.  I flagged down a ride with some Afghans headed into town, intending to offload at the guest house shared with some western non-profit workers.   The car was a sight – a battered old Toyota, tinted windows and bad music, and one flat spare tire, on a tiny beaten-to-hell spare-tire rim.   There was also an elaborate tissue box on the back dashboard, just like every NYC taxi.  Who knows how many miles he had driven this rocky, unpaved road with three good wheels.  No matter – he continued to drive like it was stolen, redlining the now-smoking motor, bashing and off-roading through the riverbed for a stretch where the road was blocked for new bridge construction.  We got stuck in the mud once or twice, aggressively roared past healthier vehicles through a muddy pasture, and finally stopped at a roadside shack to change the wheel.  The tire had slipped off the rim and was headed toward the axle.  Do they have a meth problem here?  Did I expect to get bored hitch-hiking Afghanistan?  We had no common language other than laughter, but he hailed another random driver to keep moving me along.

Back at the house an unusual message waited:  an Australian security contractor I recently met in Kabul called to request treatment and evacuation of a 6-year-old Afghan girl with serious burns.  The report was vague and I do not know how he had her information or why the US embassy was involved, but I called my boss in Kabul and that evac is going on right now.  There are only two of us in the company at this time, so it is inconvenient to be socked in waiting for a flight.  The road is closed again due to flooding and streams running across it;  flights are grounded due to low clouds and the airport is not equipped for instrument landings yet.

I finally corralled some internet access, but it is now day five, waiting for the weather to break.  Maybe tomorrow.

So much for short photo sets.   The sights here are pretty amazing, and the kids mob at the sight of a camera, much unlike the ones back in Kabul.

Big Northern Road Trip, 81 photos:  http://www1.snapfish.com/share/p=889111263265748594/l=4391334017/g=6193089/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

Feyzabad, 57 photos:  http://www1.snapfish.com/share/p=145111263265826385/l=4391336017/g=6193089/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

I switched to a better photo site which allows for captions and full-screen display.  Also, if you forward this, it may be better to just send the link www.housefly.us , because the email subscription option sometimes makes a mess of things. I am tech-challenged.  Thanks!

March 2009     Kabul, Afghanistan

Most times a backyard BBQ does not include skull fractures, amputations and calling the boss a “fucking wombat,” but this is Kabul.

Friday is the one-day weekend, and I scored an invite to an afternoon grill-out in a walled garden with a houseful of South Africans and others. The local food is oily and bland, so I jumped at a meaty feast on our first warm Spring day. I hailed Shafiq to pick up some warm beers from the black-market corner store and drop me off at their house. This day marked the end of a long winter, punctuated by frozen mud streets and burst pipes in our house, a weak electrical supply from Kyrgyzstan, feeble heaters and dim lights.

The location was downtown; walled, razor-wired and guarded in the usual manner, and I picked up my Italian friend Simona along the way. She has lived in this country for four years in a comfortable house with her French boyfriend, usually intending to leave for an NGO job in a less broken place, but always falling into a better newer gig at the end of her rotations, so the common story here goes. She tells upbeat stories about living in the remote Northern countryside early on, and foreboding tales of watching a country clawing its way back up towards the light, then sliding backwards into the rot and violence again.

I had met one of the house residents before, Peiter, he was manning the grill and the stove today, serving up an array of imported goods (sausage and wine!) requisitioned from the exorbitantly priced international market.  He is also the ER doctor at the international charity hospital across the street from the house, and I vaguely assumed that several of the other dozen people present worked there, too. The hospital staff do not just live here – they are locked in, on duty 6 days of the week, and on-call Friday. They serve only poor Afghans, as I learned to my frustration much later that day. To everyone’s misfortune, much of their “mass-casualty” work comes early on Fridays, the  Muslim Holy Day, which the fundamentalists honor by blowing themselves up in crowds of Afghans gathered on their day off.  They usually do this early in the day in the hope of being buried before sunset, in accordance with custom.

As usual I was the only American around, and we were having a good time cracking on each other in a corrupt shared language, when a radio crackled loudly from under Pieter’s apron. “Control to Nighthawk One. Nighthawk One, stand by….mass casualties…airstrike in Paktia…ETA 20 minutes…unknown number.” I looked on with some amazement as the music cut off, everyone put down their wine and produced white hospital coats and started muttering about things that did not need translation. It was like a scene from M*A*S*H, including a lovely blonde Finnish nurse.

Simona and I stood there about as useful as a pair of left shoes, until it occurred to me that they might be short-handed, so maybe I could help out. Just as much, I wanted to see what a misguided US airstrike looked like in person, having read about such events for years. Civilian casualties are very much a part of why this war is increasingly unpopular with the Afghans, despite great and costly efforts to minimize that outcome. Rarely does any media cover when and how airstrikes and ground missions are called off because of the risk to civilians, and how many Taliban survive to fight another day because of these restrictions.

We hustled off through the gate, on what struck me as a rare occasion, walking in public here. Simona stressed about forgetting to wear a head-scarf while the local men stared at her and traffic honked and sped by. We prepped the empty ER for a few minutes until the ambulances and pickup trucks arrived with the wounded: an older man with a closed head injury, no blood, but a massively distorted forehead and deeply unconscious. A young guy on an old broken stretcher, with entry and exit wounds to the abdomen. Two men shot through the legs, bandaged but still bleeding onto unclean sheets from a clinic in Paktia, a small town two hours southeast by road. Were these men Taliban? I sure hoped so. While viewing the CT scan of the head injury (maybe a dozen fractures,) and the x-rays of the shattered lower legs, it occurred to me: these are obviously not bomb injuries. No burns, collapsed lungs or missing limbs, and these are not bullet wounds from an attack jet – people vaporize when hit with that size cannon.

The real story emerged, or part of a story anyway: there had been a US raid the night before to capture a Taliban leader, and public protests about it later. This turned violent when the Afghan National Police showed up to disperse the crowds who threatened to overrun a government building. The first patient had been hit with what must have been a big rock; the other three were hit when the Afghan police machine-gunned the crowd. There may have been more patients en route, or else they stopped for treatment at roadside clinics along the way. We wheeled two of the patients into the OR, knowing that the older man would soon die in place due to lack of necessary equipment and facilities. Despite the efforts of the staff and consideration for surgery, he did just that within 30 minutes, and might have died almost as quickly in a first-rate hospital. He was too far gone by the time he arrived.

As for the other leg injury, a piece of bone must have been out on the street, because there was a three-inch gap in his lower skeleton, and Pieter planned to amputate. First he had to argue with the family member who refused to sign the consent form and did not want a foreign doctor to operate on his cousin. Pieter has worked here for years, and has dealt with this before. He got squarely in the man’s face and shouted in English, with an interpreter beside them, “What is wrong with you? I am not the enemy! I am not here to kill this man! You want an Afghan doctor? Go find one! I am not here to argue over this man like a carpet in the bazaar!” He turned and walked out in what seemed like a well-played script, as the man sheepishly signed on the line which was dotted.

Pieter is surely aware that if this man (or any patient) later goes home and dies of infection or the family believes he is at fault for taking this man’s leg, they could turn on the doctor and target him in the name of the family honor. That is unlikely because even unclean Christian doctors are respected, but revenge equals justice in this culture. Years ago a lunatic Afghan climbed into the lion’s pen at the Kabul zoo to fight him. The lion ate him. The next day, the dead man’s brother successfully avenged  his death by tossing a hand grenade into the cage, blinding the lion in one eye.

There was no shortage of staff, no more patients arrived, and the mass-casualty tents remained sealed, so I went home.  Around midnight we got a call for a drunk Australian a few streets away who fell and hit his head. It seems he was exceptionally thirsty after his rugby team lost a big match. We arrived to find him face-up in tighty-whiteys on a floor swamped with blood, fighting the four men tasked with restraining his arms and legs. He was hurling choice words at each of them, including his boss:  “Piss off, ya clackers!  Ya fooking coonts!…Wombat!” They held him down for the half-hour it took us to clean the six-inch long spurting gash trenched across his forehead, and re-unite his scalp with 34 staples. Zipperhead.

He calmed down enough for us to get him into the ambulance for a CT scan at a nearby private hospital, but it was still Friday the Holy Day and the CT tech was off duty. I called two other hospitals and got the same story. I didn’t mind – it actually amazes me that there are any of the $1,000,000 machines on this side of Pakistan. I did mind when I called the charity hospital from earlier that day and the European medical worker informed me that they only treat Afghans.

I lost my cool and shouted for awhile into the phone about them refusing to treat an insured white guy with money to pay for the service which would clear him to get back to work building a powerplant to provide electricity to this f-ed up country and the hospital in which you work. He would not budge on the rules.  Idealism turned on its ear.  He was a zipperhead too.

Today I found a news item about the US raid and the police shootout. It understates the injured:   http://www.afghanistannewscenter.com/news/2009/march/mar152009.html#6

Winter in Kabul, 20 photos:http://www1.snapfish.com/share/p=390101263162430056/l=4372557017/g=6193089/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

Yes the glorious painting above is another masterpiece from America’s national treasure, “The Painter of Light,” Thomas Kinkaide.

March 2009     Afghanistan

I have been out on leave for awhile, so no new photos this month.   I don’t have a story yet either, but I have one from a friend who flies C-130s, the same type plane that I snapped awhile ago at a US base, seen above.  It is worth a re-print here.

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All,

I hope this finds everyone well.  I am doing well here.  It has been a busy few weeks.  I wanted to share some of the highs and lows.

Time is a strange, elusive thing here.  We fly around the clock 7 days a week.  There is as much happening here at three in the morning as there is at three in the afternoon.  For that reason, it is often difficult to recall what has happened, or how many days have passed since.  They all run together.

Last Friday (?), we had a beautiful snow.  It was quiet and still at 0200 when I woke.  We live right on the flight-line, andwe become so accustomed to the noise that it is eerie when there is none.  That morning was one of those times.  I stepped outside and we had 6 inches of fresh snow, which gave way to the stillness of a thick ice fog.  The fresh snow, fog and the  absence of activity were serene and peaceful.  Sometimes there is a beauty to this place that you really appreciate in the context of so much bad.

In the days prior we had seen some of the bad.  We fly many different mission profiles.  Earlier in the week, we were tasked with an AE (Aeromedical Evacuation) flight.  We fly our own as well as CF (Coalition Forces) members and LN’s (Local Nationals).  On that flight, we had one LN.  He was 12 years old and we were taking him from our hospital at Bagram back to his home in Kandahar.  Tarnaq Farms was Osama’s compound and is located 2 miles from our airport in Kandahar.  The population there represents one of the Taliban, Al-Qaeda strongholds.  It has been bloody there from the beginning of this war.  This 12 year old was an obvious product of that region.  I looked at this child and he could have been a kid back home playing soccer…or over at my house playing with my boys.  Instead, he was an instrument of death that represents the evil that we oppose here.  He had been trying to place a grenade in the carcass of a dog.  Dead animals are a good place to conceal explosives meant for our forces.  Before he could finish his assignment, the grenade detonated.  He lost both arms above the elbow and one eye.  I was struck (yet again) by the evil that can take that innocence and sacrifice it for their cause.  They are evil.  And, they are determined.

Just days prior we had one of the really good nights, taking some of our nation’s finest home alive.  We flew into a small strip in Jalalabad.  It was nearing midnight and we were uncertain of our load out.  When we arrived we saw pallets and 30 guys at our parking location.  These guys were our very best.  There are many special operators here in Afghanistan.  These were SEALs; they had long, nasty beards and looked native.  The location that we pulled them from is not a quiet neighborhood.  I can only imagine the conditions that they endured over the past several months.  With the load they had, there was really not enough space for them all, but we were not leaving any of them behind.  We piled them into that airplane, on the floor, on pallets and even had some on the flight deck with us.  It is interesting, the very toughest guys are the ones that seem to be the most quiet, peaceful, unassuming people, and these were no exception.   We talked for the hour and a half that we flew.  They shared more with us than I would have expected.  We also talked about the book, “Lone Survivor” – these  guys knew the SEALs in that book.  It was a fascinating glimpse into the dark world that they operate in.  They are very special people, and was a privilege to be in their company.  They were great young Americans serving us all proudly.

That same week, we flew others on the first leg home as well.  Unfortunately, these two died, killed by an IED.  We had a mid-mission change to transport HR’s (Human Remains). It is always impressive to me the effort taken to get our folks home to their families as early as possible. They were transported by helicopter from FOB Salerno to Bagram, then prepared for transport.  We  flew the first leg home, to another airport to catch the first C-17 headed to the States.

Each time we lose guys, we have a Fallen Comrade ceremony.  It does not matter what time of the day it is.  This was 0300.  The road from the Mortuary Affairs building to the flight line was lined with Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines.  Two Humvees slowly drove through the crowd with the flag draped coffins in the back.  It was another of those rare times when it is still and quiet here.  All engines are stopped for the ceremony.  It was still, quiet and cold.  The salutes of our forces rippled as the Humvees slowly drove by.  Bugles played as the vehicles made it onto the flight-line.  The Honor Guard met the coffins and carried them through two columns of service-members to our airplane.

The music continued and the two columns saluted with their rifles as they passed.  It was one of those terribly sad moments that are at the same time so powerful and beautiful.  It is always impressive to me to watch the honor that we tender our bravest.  The gratitude that is displayed for those that bought our liberty and freedom is so evident in the context of war.  At the conclusion of the ceremony, their Commanding General met with us and said, “These two young men woke up this morning to do their job.  They did not expect to die today.  Take care of my soldiers and get them home to their families.”  I went to sign for their bodies.  They were 19 and 22 years old, serving with the 101st Airborne.  Please pray for their families and thank God we have young men like them.

The kinetic activity (direct offensive operations) has been increasing.  The 10th Mountain Division guys are in-country now,  hitting the enemy hard in some of the tougher provinces.  The F-15E’s and A-10′s are flying continuously to support them from above.  With this increase in kinetic action we will certainly see an increase in casualties (already have).  Please pray for those directly in harm’s way.  They operate in brutal terrain and a harsh climate.

I miss you all.  God bless you, your families and God bless America.

(name withheld)