Tim’s been bugging me to write a summary post for all you readers wondering what became of us. (Most of us are all the way home now and struggling to catch up on sleep while making an appearance at our “day jobs”.) In short, we accomplished an awful lot and collectively recorded about 250GBs of photos and 30 hours of high def video – which has made it impossible to write a “short summary”. Tim would want me to point out that it hasn’t cost the tax paying citizens of any country a single dime/rand/quid/eyrir.
PART 1: A $400,000,000 $40,000 SURGE
On our last full day we alternated among frantically finishing projects, collecting stuff for the trip home, and seeing more stuff. We’re all a little sad to leave, there’s so much to do, could do. The guesthouse was bursting at the seams, and even though some of the FabFolk were stuffed three to a room, that, in and of itself made it fun. It’s like camp for grown up little geeks.
We’ve chased away the other Taj guests from the dining table by playing with our “Hundred Dollar Laptop”s with built-in Pashto keyboards… while eating dinner. We charge the laptops at the Fablab and loan them out for users to take home or on field trips.
The financial load was pretty hefty for a bunch of unemployed / students. I’m often asked to post our costs but I’ve been resisting for several reasons, the most of which is that I don’t want to seem like we’re complaining about our travel costs. We’d much rather see contributions going directly to FabLab users and infrastructure.
To bring the FabFi and other projects to the state it’s at, we’ve spent a total of about $40,000 where the bulk of that is travel costs across two trips (one in November and one in January).
Materials costs for three links were well under $1000:
$60 plywood
$20 chicken wire / screening
$40 staple gun, staples, gaffers tape, rope, etc.
$350 network routers (aprox $50 each)
$40 12V batteries and chargers
$60 network cables, jacks, crimper tool, etc
$50 phone sim cards and top-up cards
$60 wireless web cam (used for signal source when pointing)
$120 wi-spy (used as spectrum analyzer when pointing)
Average travel costs per person for what has been called the Fab Surge is about $4,000. In an ideal world, these costs would have been reimbursable.
$180 Afghanistan visa
$100 travel medical insurance
$100 travel medicines, vaccines, etc.
$2,000 – $2,500 Flight from USA to Dubai, return
$680 flight from Dubai to Kabul, return
$100 travel from Kabul to Jalalalabad by car
$630 guesthouse lodging fee (a special shared rate by cramming multiple people into rooms)
$20-$50 travel to/from home airport
(There is an additional $150-250 that each person has likely spent on random things to include internet access at Heathrow/Amsterdam/Delhi or postage fees of passports and so on)
In addition, all together we spent about $750 in excess baggage and/or shipping mostly for FabFi and video/photo gear, and we’ve used about $200 in DV tapes.
Additionally, Tim Lynch and Shem Klimiuk from Free Range International haven’t charged us a cent for several weeks worth of armed expat security work as well as rides to and fro. We never would have been able to cover those costs out of our pockets. Fortunately I think we’re a little bit entertaining to Tim and Shem and they kind of like us. But they have to fit us in with their day jobs which hasn’t been the most convenient for either side.
Perhaps the biggest cost that’s difficult to put a value on is the unpaid time. For some of us, our employers or universities did not want the liability of their student/staff in Afghanistan so we all had to quit and go on unpaid leave. For others, they were unemployed but could have been employed in the time they spent preparing for the trip (for example, Keith put in a solid 2 months of 100-hour weeks rather than, you know, working for pay.) That’s impossible to really put a price on.
One of the reasons we were so productive is because we’re individually experienced at what we do. You can’t throw newbies out into the field with no mentoring and expect them to do anything that doesn’t read like Lord of the Flies… and that’s if you’re lucky and they do anything at all. And not to pat myself on the back too much, but just as important is to put together a complementary team focused on a well defined set of goals.
Which is the biggest lesson I desperately hope someones out there learns. Never before in history has there been a significantly large population of educated, skilled, experienced, young talent with a semi-disposable income willing and eager to do professional work for little or no pay and even some that will spend their own funds. You have to provide a minimum infrastructure for them to come, and help offset some of the costs they just couldn’t bear. You have to rally them around an idea, spin a coherent vision and place them and their contributions squarely in focus. They won’t accept a mission that doesn’t make sense or isn’t technically or socially viable – and they’re more than competent to develop rational opinions that will need to be vetted and addressed. They will walk away from half-baked plans so you better be ready with supporting data for your claims; but once they buy into the vision they will autonomously meet mission with focus and intensity. It costs much less in dollars than you think.
Those few of us that have come to Afghanistan over the last few months represent a small part of the larger Fab Folk community. We are from many different nationalities and ancestries. Most of us have technical or professional degrees and advanced degrees. All of us have worked in the real world. We are generally between 25-35 years old, male and female.
Ryan from Hawaii and 6th grade boys from Bagrami. Ryan has a PhD from MIT in Urban Planning and is now working on the Hawaii airport light rail project. Ratafullah, the boy on the left, is the leader among equals of the T-shirt Club.Andreas and Lucy from DC getting the OLPCs ready for a mini-lesson. Lucy has a BS in Biochemistry, MS in Applied Anatomy & Physiology, is former Navy, and is a DOD analyst.Andreas from Iceland (but lives in Argentina) installing the downlink at the Public Hospital. Andreas has BS in Math from University of Iceland, is working on an MS Math at the University of Amsterdam and works as a computer virus disassembler/analyst.Said Jalal from Bagrami and Steve from Seattle atop the water tower near the long haul link from the Fab Lab. Said Jalal is a high school student. Steve recently worked in the Dean’s office in the MIT Sloan School and is now in Seattle goofing off — restoring and flying WW2 era aircraft.Smari from Iceland concentrating hard while peaking an antenna in Jalalabad City. Smari studied Mathematics at the University of Iceland and is currently working as an IT projects manager.Carl from South Africa and Naqueeb from Jalalabad/Peshawara configuring and peaking a router. Carl is currently a Physics / Math PhD student at Cambridge University in the UK. Dr. Naqueeb just passed his exams in the Medical School in Jalalabad.Keith from Boston tethering down an antenna on the water tower for the downlink to the hospital. Keith has a BS in Biomedical Engineering Sciences from Harvard and most recently helped found a medical devices startup.That’s me, Amy, with what seems to be a perpetual cadre of inquisitive kids excited to learn by day and (sometimes) friendly ANA soldiers by night . I’m an American and I live in Boston. I have a dual BSes in Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering from Purdue, an MS from MIT, am working on a PhD from MIT, and have more than 10 years experience as a defense engineer… and have been on the Fab Lab ride since 2002.
The FabLabs all over the globe are magnets for us, offering technological infrastructure nearly as good as (and often better than) what we have available at home. We’re big-brained bugs flitting about bright pinpricks of light we don’t need lush hotels, gourmet cooks, or shiny cars. Most of us don’t even have TVs at home. More and more of us are coming of age every day, seeking and searching for light.
Smari, Lucy, Carl, Andreas, Steve, Keith, Amy… enjoying a proper spot of tea.
The Fab Folk continue to work like demons to maximize their time on the ground. Yesterday they had successful test shots with their fabricated internet antennas to a local NGO and the Nangarhar Public Hospital. They work every evening setting up the XO laptops they have sent in, and early each morning, they meet for a couple of hours to learn Pashto. Their teacher comes from the local school and is a lifelong resident of the local village. He tells me that poverty is driving people to desperate measures despite the very mild winter we have had to date. Frequently, voices call out to him from the shadows at night, “We are Taliban, give us your wallet, watch, and cell phone.” They are not Taliban but men he has known for years. I asked why this was happening because our understanding of Pashtun culture would prohibit such gross criminality inside one’s community. “Yes, this is true, but we are now so poor that the elders do not ask young men where they got this or where they got that; they praise them instead for bringing anything of value, which will ease their poverty.” This is just a hint at the tension under the surface of a population in one of the more affluent portions of Afghanistan.
We have been running the road to Kabul a lot lately, taking people to and from the Airport in Kabul. A couple of days ago, we took Dr. Dave and Dr. Art Mendoza back to Kabul for their flight home and saw the aftermath of a big fight the night before. We were warned before leaving by another security firm (we share all intel at all times in the field) that there had been much fighting outside Gamberi and sure enough when we got to the point in the road where the Afghan National Army (ANA) and Afghan National Police (ANP) had set up on the shoulders we saw this:
Looking east from the ANP position
A group of Armed Opposition Group (AOG) fighters sneaked up the draw between the ANA and ANP positions and shot up the truck above with small arms and RPGs. They then fired at the ANP positions to their west and the ANA positions to their east before withdrawing across the Kabul River. The ANA and ANP spent the next hour or so firing at each other. By the time we rolled past the ANA had taken their casualties and withdrawn leaving the poor police to sit in their shallow little holes to suck up all the rain we have been getting of late.
We are convinced that somebody in Laghaman Province is running an RPG gunners school because we see reports of RPG-only attacks on police posts along this portion of the road every 4 to 5 weeks. Normally, they volley 10 rounds rapidly and withdraw, causing little to no damage. But we know at least one RPG mechanic (most likely in Laghman) who can put some English on his rockets and consistently make challenging shots. I bet he has a group of students he is working with, and what better way to train them than to take on the softest of soft targets, like the silly deployment of ANA and ANP forces five feet off the main road? You could tell just by looking at them that they had no fire plans, fire control measures, and probably no plan. They need no more PowerPoint lectures from DynCorp contractors; they need mentors in the field, and there are not enough here.
Yesterday I was returning from dropping off James the Marine, and because I had no choice, I had to make the return drive alone. As I rounded the Mahipar Pass, I saw a wall of trucks pulled off to the side, indicating some tunnel blockage. I moved far enough to get a look before turning around and saw a U.S. Army convoy stopped right in the middle of the pass. Once the traffic stops flowing in Afghanistan, it is very difficult to start again because all the east-bound traffic will move into every nook and cranny available to their front and block the road. Getting them out of your way takes an hour before the convoy can move again. But I was ready checking my wallet to find 100 Euros there I turned around and headed back to the German PX at the ISAF camp outside Kabul to score some premium German beer (at only 12 euro a case) figuring if I had to drive back in the dark I might as well do so with a truck load of beer.
The American convoy is stopped, and the vehicles are stacking up behind it. The same is true to their fron, so when they start moving, they will have to thread their way through the local traffic, which sort of defeats the whole purpose of keeping the traffic away from them at all times. It also makes it easier for the bad guys to target them.
Sure enough, when I returned to the Mahipar Pass, it was clear, and I was driving smoothly for the next 45 minutes until I got outside Surobi. Rounding a corner, I saw all the trucks parked in the right lane, and taking the left lane, I moved far enough down to see the same convoy parked in the middle of the road. They sat there for 30 minutes and then took another 30 minutes to get moving before stopping again, maybe five miles down the road. I had worked my way up to the front of the line by then, and 45 minutes into this stop I approached the convoy tail gunner to ask if they would let me through. He got on the radio and in a few minutes said, “No, because the road to the front is blocked (by the west-bound traffic) and I couldn’t make it through anyway.” I asked him what the problem was and he replied “don’t know” which is precisely the correct answer because he has no business telling me a damn thing.
But the longer we sat, the more upset the locals behind me became. Soon, the sound of a thousand car horns filled the air. Over a hundred men stood around my vehicle, trying to get the ANA troops to let them pass. As is usually the case, several fluent English speakers amongst them came over to chat me up about what was happening. I was as pissed as they were and being a poltroon by nature freely admitted this. Then out of the crowd came a man with a very sick-looking child, and I was pressed into service to intervene on his behalf. I walked over to the tail gunner and asked if a vehicle with a medical emergency could get through. He asked how many more vehicles contain people with medical emergencies, and I glanced back, saw about a thousand cars stacked up behind me, and said “probably about a thousand,” which made the kid laugh. Again, a correct response from the tail gunner, who seems like a great trooper, because if you let one vehicle through, the rest will follow. TIA, this is Afghanistan. To make a long story short, it took me five hours to return to the Taj. Several more times, the American convoy stopped, and each time, the fluent English speaker from Leeds, England, came up to stand near my car. That is a very Pashtun thing to do. He was watching out for me to ensure none of the drivers behind took out their frustrations on the lone American in their midst. Not that I thought this would occur, but it was a nice gesture.
The struggle of the average Afghan to find enough to eat, the continued lack of performance by the Afghan security forces, and the inability of the ISAF military to operate amongst the Afghans without treating every civilian they come in contact with as a crazed jihadist killer are linked. The United States and its allies have spent billions in Afghanistan and have very little to show for it. Afghanistan is currently in a death spiral, not because of a lack of aid funds, but rather how those funds have been spent and allocated. Every indication we see on the ground is that more money will be thrown into the same failed programs currently being implemented; another demonstration that we have not learned any meaningful lessons.
These programs won’t work because they are off-the-shelf solutions designed to make the lives of bureaucrats and contracting officers easy, rather than bringing assistance to the Afghans. The Department of State has spent 2.5 BILLION bringing in police trainers, jail guard trainers, and lawyers to train the judges. Now, what the hell does anyone at DynCorp or PAE know about Afghan police or Afghan jurisprudence? Nothing, of course, but that is not why they win these large, lucrative contracts; it is because they already have large, lucrative contracts and therefore know how to work with DS contracting officers to make their lives easier. What is the return on our investment? After the large-scale jail break in Kandahar last summer, investigators discovered over 100 illegal cell phones in the hands of inmates. When we capture important Taliban leaders and send them to the central Afghan jail at Pul-i-Charki, they are often back home before the soldiers who delivered them. The Afghan police are unreliable and prone to preying on the population. The current Afghan government is more of a problem than a solution. It is being out-governed by the Taliban in the many districts under Taliban control. Who “built capacity” with these Taliban? How many billions of dollars were spent teaching the Taliban to administer justice and civil control so effectively?
The State Department used off-the-shelf solutions, which had nothing to do with the situation in Afghanistan and everything to do with what was easy for the Department of State. After all, when you spend all your time in Afghanistan locked inside a gigantic posh embassy compound, how in the world would you know what the Afghans need? You are forced to work through the Afghan government. Have you ever read a news story about the Afghan government that was not about the appalling corruption found at every level in every ministry? I would say you have not, but as an insider, I will tell you there is one ministry, the aviation ministry, that is as honest and effective as its international counterparts.
The State Department is and has been the lead agency in Afghanistan, and its performance here is a fiasco, as it is in Iraq. Remember that Paul Brenner was President Bush’s compromise between Foggy Bottom and the Pentagon. He gave the boys at State a year to get Iraq back on its feet, but Brenner used his 12 months to destroy the country and hamstring our military. He unilaterally made decisions for which we paid in American blood. The price tag for his incompetence paid by the Iraqis is probably beyond measure. Colin Powell, who foisted Brenner upon Iraq, had more to do with the fiasco portion of that war than Rumsfeld. Still, you’d have to do some serious archival research to know it because the nitwits in the MSM would not in a million years burden the people of America with good, honest reporting that strayed from their preferred narrative.
That is not to say that the US Military has demonstrated the capacity, tactical flexibility, or ability to assess the situation on the ground, learn from past mistakes, and formulate a strategic framework under which all operations in Afghanistan can be conducted. They have not, and we are risking another Vietnam, and I am not talking about getting beaten by the ragtag assortment of Taliban and neo Taliban on the field of battle. I am talking about having the American peoples will to fight crippled by a media who can reveal that the Generals are spinning tales that are as stupid and uninformed as the old “five O’ Clock follies” in Saigon were back in Vietnam. Let me clarify: I am not critical of the American (or any other ISAF) soldier here doing his duty. All of them volunteered to join the military during wartime, and their grit, determination to do what is right, and courage are commendable.
I am critical of the generals who seem unable to implement the very doctrine they tout as the answer to the counterinsurgency battle. I am not the only one who sees things this way. Please take the time to read this excellent piece by a retired Army Colonel who is a much better writer than I am. He calls for a massive forced retirement amongst American General Officers, which would be a smart move given their lackluster performance and one with serious historical precedent.
The only reason we are not at the point where the American people start to treat their military in the manner it was treated in the early seventies is that our media is even more incompetent than the Department of State or the Pentagon. If we had the same type of reporters as the ones who worked in Vietnam year in and year out, they would be able to throw the BS flag at every single briefing they are given, because the things I hear the big Army saying about the situation here are flat-out nonsense. This situation will not last much longer. As I saw when talking with Martha Raddatz, the Senior Foreign Affairs Correspondent from ABC News, the drive-by media is starting to get a clue. The only thing stopping her from getting a comprehensive first-hand view of how silly the DS and military approach is to this conflict is her own silly corporate “force protection” rules. But she got an earful from me and spent a few hours roaming the countryside like the thousands of other internationals living and working here. Not that you can do that in every district or province in Afghanistan, there are many where it would now be suicidal for a westerner to walk around, knowing where you are safe and where you are not is the most basic function of military intelligence. Why we cannot figure that out and act accordingly is beyond me.
Here is the connection to my rambling observations. If our billions of dollars went to implement the infrastructure improvements that the Afghans at the district level have been pleading for during the last six to seven years, you could instantly start employing massive amounts of idle, unemployed men. But you cannot do this with the Department of State contracting vehicles or through large, bloated, international companies like Louis Berger, DynCorp, PAE, KBR, or any other current “implementers” receiving most of the reconstruction monies. You need a company like Louis Berger to build big things like hydroelectric dams, posh embassy compounds, or international airports. You do not need Louis Berger to build roads and schools. The Afghans can do that themselves. You also don’t need the nitwits of Foggy Bottom deciding how to implement a reconstruction plan because what you get is what the average Afghan sees now. Lots of police posts, government office buildings, and training bases are being built for the very people and organizations who abuse them, steal from them, and fail to protect them from other (nonuniformed) criminals or the Taliban. The only way forward is for civil-military teams to stay in the community and green-light and supervise Afghan-designed and built irrigation, road, and micro-hydro projects. An excellent prototype of this kind of team worked in Afghanistan in the early days before the Big Army came and put all the SF teams back inside the large FOBs. It will be the topic of my next post.
The Fab Lab team has arrived and is now hard at work. They are blogging daily and you can monitor their progress here. They’re doing cool stuff like fabricating antenna’s to share our fatpipe internet with the local schools and NGO’s. They’re raising money to buy XO Laptops for every 6th grader in the local (Bagrami) school. They’re setting the local kids up with a tee shirt business to fund the Jalalabad FabLab operations and the local kids are beside themselves with opportunity that just landed on their doorstep.
Amy and her roommate Kieth from MIT – the Fab Lab advance party
We have had to run up to Kabul and back several times to get all the Fab Folk to Jalalabad. The Jalalabad to Kabul road is a vitally important supply route to both the military and the government of Afghanistan. There were several attacks on the road this past summer and there continues to be problems on it now despite the winter weather. We saw several interesting things along the route and the first was the number of French Army troops transiting from Kabul to Surobi.
French troops on the road outside of Kabul
Surobi is a large hamlet half way between Kabul and Jalalabad, last August the French suffered a humiliating defeat in the Uzbin valley which is just to the north of Surobi. The town has long been considered to be sympathetic if not supportive of Gulbiddin Hekmatyar and his party Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin (HiG.) We see sunburned adult males with high-water trousers, tennis shoes, and black turbans every time we pass through Surobi. They could be Sheppard’s or gold miners but it’s a safe bet their Taliban fighters hitting Surobi in for in-country R&R (rest and recreation).
The French have been serious about establishing a presence in Surobi since their first unfortunate encounter with the Taliban. They are keeping units in the field 24/7; have launched several operations which have netted some prominent local commanders (according to UN incident reporting). It’s good to see our ISAF allies taking the initiative, going on the offensive and clearing out such an important area.
But after you clear an area you have to hold it and it will be interesting to see how (or if) they do that. The operations in Surobi are not impacting the repeated attacks on the Kabul/Jalalabad road – with one exception. We’ve heard from reliable sources they tracked down and killed The Mechanic. It appears to be true too because it’s been months since we’ve seen his signature long range pin point RPG shots nailing tankers. The tankers are still getting nailed but only other portions of the road that allow ambush from rifle and machinegun range.
As noted in previous posts these occur in the Tangi valley area east of Surobi and in portions of Laghman Province below the Tangi. Both the ANP and ANA have posted small units along the road to augment the numerous permanent police posts. As you can see from the pictures below the positions they have set up are weak at best and their patrol routine, which appears to be sitting by the side of the road, is not proving very effective.
Typical ANP deployment on the Jbad – Kabul roadANP machinegun crew – they are not dug in and they don’t move so they are not accomplishing much
Here is an intel report from one of the PSC’s (the private security companies in Afghanistan do a lot of intel sharing with each other.)
Laghman Province, Qarghayi District, Route 1-area of Tangy
AOG Vehicle Checkpoint 05 January 2009, between 1630-1700 hrs
A doctor who works for a NGO was returning to Jalalabad from Kabul alone in his private car, when his vehicle was forced to stop by a group of armed men. The doctor was then questioned about his work and personal behaviour. He was finally allowed to proceed unharmed when, on seeing the cassette player in the vehicle, the armed men instructed the doctor to play a cassette found in the vehicle. The cassette played was a religious tape and satisfied the requirements of those who had stopped the car. Despite reported increased security force deployments, this is the third reported instance of AOG activity on Route 1 in the Tangy area since 31 Dec 08. All three incidents have occurred in daylight hours and two have been attacks on military vehicles. These incidents should demonstrate to all the risk of travel along Route 1 between Kabul-Jalalabad at any time of day. Any international staff using Route 1 should expect further instances such as that outlined in this report and seek alternative means of travel between Jalalabad-Kabul.
Along with the above report, we have made several trips the past few days along the route. A few ANA vehicles have been pulled off the side of the road about half way back to Kabul, and the soldiers were in a defensive posture behind their vehicles, weapons pointed at the high ground. Most likely some pot shots taken at the ANA as they passed thru.
The Kabul to Jalalabad route is one of the most important in Afghanistan. The effort being expended to secure this route is currently being wasted because the troops are being deployed in poorly sited positions and being tasked to do nothing other than sit there. There is an easy fix and that would be to embed and infantry squad into the Qarghayi District ANP headquarters with a mission style order. It should sound something like this; “Sergeant you’ve got six months to work with these guys and stop any and all attempts to attack this vital route, go down there scout it out, come up with a plan and I’ll see you in five days so you can brief me on your plan. ”
Winning the IED battle requires that you kill the IED makers and you can only do that if they are unmasked by the people. To reach the people with the consistency required to gain that level of cooperation requires that you leave the big armored vehicles and spend time (lots of it) among the people. I am pretty sure that if you consult the Pentagon’s counterinsurgency manual you’ll find that it says more less exactly the same thing.
It is always a good sign to see American soldiers getting a handle on the recent attacks
There is hope for those of us who use the Kabul Jbad road frequently and that is the appearance of a small American patrol right in the heart of the Tangy valley visiting the local ANA checkpoint. Inshallah they will be spending some time and effort trying to help the various small unit commanders develop a more aggressive plan to secure the route. We did not encounter any problems on our numerous trips to Kabul and back. What follows is some photo blogging about the Fab Folk we are hosting and some of the things they are up to.
Kieth, Steve and Carl from the Fab Folk team. Carl is from South Africa, Kieth and Steve are Americans. The Taj manager Mehrab is pulling interpreter duty – he is between Steve and CarlSmari and Andres – Fab Folk from IcelandMiss Lucy, a former US Navy officer, getting ready to cross the Kabul river from Little BarabadSteve and Keith getting ready to cross the river to Little BarabadThe Fab Folk took a box of stuffed animals with them to Little Barabad. Here is a great shot of the girls watching them cross the riverWe hosted ABC News reporter Martha Raddatz at the Taj yesterday.
Here’s a link to Martha’s first news story from her visit to Jalalabad.
An interesting article in the news about Afghanistan today illustrated (to me) the dire straits we now face. A senior USAID officer gave a mildly negative critique of the USAID reconstruction efforts. The story represents a total lack of situational awareness as 2008 draws close.
When you have lived in a poorly understood, distant country like Afghanistan, as long as I have lived here, it is easy to find mistakes in the international press. I am not nitpicking mainstream news reports because they report as fact things I know to be completely untrue. You get that a lot from the media these days.
Feeling the love in Paktia province
The article was written by Mark Ward, a senior Foreign Service Officer with US AID, who had just completed an impressively long tour in Afghanistan. Here is the opening paragraph:
“Nearly every observer of Afghanistan, from the most senior U.S. military officers to Washington think tank analysts and everyone in between, agrees that stability in that country demands a multipronged approach involving the military, diplomatic efforts and economic assistance. Having spent nearly the past five years as the senior career officer responsible for U.S. economic assistance to Afghanistan, I agree with those in the military who have said that 80 percent of the struggle for Afghanistan is about reconstruction and sustainable economic development and only 20 percent about military operations. In the face of a heightened Taliban insurgency, the U.S. military has changed its tactics. But if civilian U.S. agencies do not change the ways they deliver economic assistance, they jeopardize their chances for success and risk alienating the Afghan people.”
He is spot on with this assessment. I would judge that he is around six years late, but better late than never. He then goes on to discuss the ramifications to the morale of the American people if, given relaxed security standards, Foreign Service Officers get killed in the line of duty. What??? The American public doesn’t even know what a Foreign Service Officer is, and they couldn’t give a hoot if a few buy the farm in Afghanistan. You have already lost men in Iraq, and that caused no detectable disturbance in the body politic. My friend, FSO Steve Sullivan, was killed by a VBIED in Mosul along with three Blackwater contractors. State Department and contractor casualties are not the same as military casualties because the mainstream media doesn’t treat them the same. You won’t see our names in memorials on Sunday talk shows or PBS, or our numbers included in the national dialogue.
A new administration is also taking office, which will change the tone and tenor of media coverage 180 degrees for reasons that are too obvious to mention. I do not believe for a second that the concern about FSO casualties will in any way affect (or even register with) the will of the American people to continue our efforts in Afghanistan.
This is an excellent picture from an old NYT article by Moises Saman
Mr. Ward concludes his article with this paragraph:
“The new team at the State Department and USAID should engage a team of outside experts to conduct an objective assessment of the security rules and their impact on our economic assistance program in Afghanistan. The review should give due weight to the importance of interacting with the Afghan people to hear their ideas, get to know them and gain their trust. It should rigorously test the theories about what would happen if an increasing number of Foreign Service officers were killed and injured as a result. And it should look at other donor countries’ approach to security in Afghanistan. Some have the balance between security and access about right, particularly in parts of the country where security is more permissive.”
We do not need expensive DC-based contractors to conduct a review of security procedures or conduct an assessment of the consequences of increased Foreign Service officer casualties. There is a seven-year track record in Afghanistan from governmental and nongovernmental organizations operating precisely as Mr. Ward advocates. The government of Japan has over 100 “Foreign Service officers” (the Japanese do not use that term) spread out from Mazar-e-Sharif to Jalalabad, working every day in Afghan ministries and offices, mentoring their Afghan colleagues. They do this on a security budget that is less than the cost of providing bottled water to the US Embassy compound in Kabul. The Japan International Cooperation Agency uses the same security guidelines as every other international organization in Afghanistan (except for the US AID contractors who use DS guidelines), and that is the UN minimum occupational safety standards (UN MOSS.)
The UN MOSS standards are not applicable in contested provinces (Helmand, Zabul, Kandahar, etc). In those provinces, the best solution would be to turn over all reconstruction monies to our military, which has repeatedly demonstrated that they are better at delivering reconstruction aid anyway. For the rest of the country, the US could start sending its FSOs out into the provinces immediately and be reasonably sure that any casualties they take would come from motor vehicle accidents, one of the bigger threats faced by internationals living outside the wire. There have been IGO and NGO casualties in Afghanistan, but they are rare and disproportionately suffered by those who choose not to use armed security. By that I mean those organizations that place stickers on their vehicles of an AK 47 with a red circle and a line drawn through it. Nothing says “I am important and unarmed” like a new SUV with “no weapons on board” stickers. This is not a country where it is wise to advertise that you are both essential and unarmed. It is a dangerous place, but the risks are manageable and reasonable, which has been proven by JICA and the hundreds of other organizations currently operating outside the wire in Afghanistan.
The last time I was at the Kabul International Airport I saw a group of embassy workers being escorted from the VIP parking lot adjacent to the terminal to the front door by four Blackwater contractors with weapons and complete kit. I would submit that having armed men escort your diplomats the entire 100 yards from the parking lots to the front door is not only unnecessary but insulting to the host nation. The men Blackwater places on the embassy contract are highly trained operatives who must maintain rigorous weapons proficiency standards and top-secret security clearances. They would be of much greater use out in the provinces and undoubtedly be much happier roaming around the countryside where their skill set is used. Parading around the Kabul airport with rifles at the ready is silly.
I applaud Mr. Ward for highlighting this issue in Washington, D.C.. Still, I must stress that we must adopt a sense of urgency regarding the rapidly deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. We do not have the time or money to study what to do; it is time to do. The way forward had been marked by the thousands of internationals operating inside Afghanistan daily, using the UN MOSS security guidelines. The American Embassy and US AID already have dozens of highly trained security contractors in Kabul. It is time to put them to better use.
Editors Note: This post is written by Amy Sun the MIT team leader for the Jalalabad FabLab.
A lot is going on in the Taj Fab Lab and it’s pretty exciting. The lab was deployed quite recently – equipment and I hit the ground in June 2008 – so expectations from all of our supporters and critics alike were quite low. Nonetheless the lab has already seen tremendous activity and growth in meaningful ways, even during the long slow ramp-up. We’re having some angst over long term support and funding but for the moment at least activity in the lab is exceeding expectations.
Each day approximately 45 users come to the lab and patiently deal with power and network and other issues and have been cranking out simple projects in staggering quantities. They have self-organized a system where some of the more advanced students hold classes and workshops for newer or less advanced users. There is a mix of genders, ages, background, ethnicities, and economic status.
In January I and 5 other internationals will be in Jbad to kick off two self sustainability projects. The simpler of the two is for the fablab to organize a club where members make and sell customized things like t-shirts, trinkets (ie, challenge coins), vinyl stickers, signs, etc. all of which are run in way to pay users to learn to use machines very well and carefully. Additionally they will learn about simple accounting and business concepts. The club has something like a forced graduation when the user becomes very good at a particular skill, but first the person serves as a mentor for another incoming novice apprentice in any given skill. Generally speaking the users have been cranking out astonishing quantity but the quality is poor and there are few users who see the point to going back and making everything perfect since it’s all just play anyway. So I hope that needing to meet quality specs in order to get paid will make them sufficiently motivated. Some users are very talented but have no reward path for their talents.
The second project, much more ambitious and complex, is to stand up something like an IT services company out of the fablab specifically to do with point-to-point long range connections with equipment fabbed in the lab (and later meshed networking also fabbed in the lab) as well as intranet support. Here we’re (informally) working with Cisco and the members of this club could become Cisco network certified and instantly highly employable in the Jbad area. We aim to provide local Afghans the knowledge, skills, and access to the machines to make equipment to push the edges of the network as well as have actual real-world systems to learn and apply their just in time learning. Just as importantly, they’ll be paid as they learn and not paid if they don’t perform. It’s this project that we’ll mostly be focused on in our January trip. We’ll be making, installing, and configuring several point to point connections with at least a 1 to 1 Afghan to international ratio where our goal is for the Afghans to be doing all the work by the last pair and for them to continue on as owner-employees of this company after we leave. Follow along at the temporary site: http://fabfiwireless.blogspot.com/ (this URL will change within the next two days as we bring our server and services online so don’t bookmark it).
The FabFi Long Range Wireless Antenn
Some of the earnings from both the above will come back to the fablab to help offset operation costs such as management, cleaning supplies, and to maintain teachers for open lab time. While I’m not expecting a deluge of cash, the mindset should bear fruit over time. In particular this lab may manage to stand up as Afghan owned without a heavily involved international owner. This is consistent with the other fab labs in the world but somewhat unusual for technical organizations in Nangarhar.
Because of extraordinary circumstances (eg, conflict zone), the Jbad lab will not be able to fund some extraordinary operations expenses. For example, the internet connection is super expensive because we’ve had to use a satcon because there isn’t an alternative (there’s no Verizon/AT&T/T-Mobile/Comcast for data). As Afghanistan as a whole makes forward progress these will ease. International support is necessary to equalize the playing field a little until then. Other than those things, our aim is for the lab to fund its own operations and projects, in the process busting the technical skills / technical jobs logjam in the eastern province. That’s why the two projects we kick off in January are so important.
As to interim funding for the lab, many of my cohorts are helping to pull together a web and online community funding drive to seed the lab startup. We’ve even accidentally made $90 before going live with the site! (See http://www.fablab.af/). I plan to visit again with the local PRT, GO, and NGO organizations to find out about their funding and procurements processes – I envision funding not to pay the expenses outright but as customers of projects. Surely the PRT would like some wooden signs that say Chow Hall – 500 m straight ahead for like $500, right? I can think of a number of things that I would like to have the users make for a customer and maybe the PRT can think of some that they would really like to have too.
I’m told that pretty much all internationals that visit Nangarhar are taken to the fablab when their schedules and transpo permit. Construction, security, doctors/subject matter experts, business people, journalists, and other grad students alike. They always report that they are surprised to find that no matter what day they arrive unannounced there are indeed swarms of users wholly engaged in learning something and doing something that they don’t expect those people to be working with. I’ve been having a lot of difficulty with the particular brand of multipoint videoconference system at Jbad (something to do with the MCU and/or the network connection) so we haven’t been able to get maximal people to see into the lab. You can peek in at any time of the day on the other labs (username “guest”, no password, if asked). As they become more net-savy and are connected to the world, what’s particularly neat is that we’re starting to see and hear real voices from real, regular Afghans. (One of the ways you can help is engaging these early users in conversation – leave comments on their posts and uploads!)
That’s probably the area that needs the most help as with everywhere in country, comms and power are at the top of my worries. The comms connection is great when it’s up, but it’s not always up especially as the experimental balloon continues to degrade. Our Mindtel collaborator work their butts off every several months to keep the support of the comms sponsor for just a little while longer. We have a great generator for power but can’t run it 24/7. We’re out of capital money to get either a battery system or second generator, and we can’t really afford the diesel anyway. It feels like I am asked for money for a new fuel filter every week. Most of all, the wiring to and within the fablab is a nightmare and I’ve already lost (expensive) equipment due to dirty power. Each day in the lab requires several hours of troubleshooting which generally turns out to be a problem with under/over powering or similar. It would cost on the order of $6k to rewire the lab, money we don’t have, so for the moment we make do.
Just over a week’s worth of diesel.
Secondary things that would be nice to get some help on are the practical matters of food, water, transpo, for the younger users that come to our lab. Some don’t get clean water or real meals anywhere. I would like to get to a point where we can provide something like fortified biscuits and the like for the sessions with younger children. They are usually the population that are very very quick to learn things and it’s the best time for them to be learning more stuff. But perpetual and crippling hunger, malnutrition, and dehydration work against paying attention to anything much less brain development. I can see big problems with hand-eye coordination and muscle control with the village kids. I’m a technical person and definitely not in a position to know anything about this kind of help so help from organizations that would be willing to collaborate would be quite ideal. Additionally, the local public schools aren’t teaching English, computers, etc. The fablab could be a place to facilitate and foster this but I and my cohorts are basically limited to technical topics. Both of these vectors are quite long term and in the vein of long term idealistic vision.
I realize it’s a little strange to be giving an update on something that some of the readers have heard nothing about. You can find a short history of the Jalalabad Fab Lab, more on Fab Labs in general, and lots and lots more about what’s going on at a few of the labs from my fab blog and others’ blogs linked from that site. We don’t think that fab labs alone are the solution to all of Afghanistan’s problems but I’m aiming to show that after the Marines clean out an area and make it reasonably sane for people to come out of their houses, part of the future requires local Afghan nationals (regular people) to have access to the tools to help themselves (rather than waiting for internationals or Afghan government to provide them with everything). So far, I have one shiny example of this in the township of Soshanguve, South Africa where a group of unemployed youth have transformed where they live from a dead end to a nearly self-contained thriving place where people can have a future without leaving. The Christian Science Monitor went to see for themselves in 2006 when the lab was still somewhat new – it’s really more and more amazing now three years later. But that’s another story.
We’re about a month away now from getting on the ground and kicking off the two big projects described above. I welcome any and all comments, thoughts, and help.
The Pentagon recently released a directive on Irregular Warfare that has generated speculation among the various players in Afghanistan. When you see documents that say “The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff shall” it is a powerful piece of paper from on high. There are a finite number of people in the world who can task four star generals or deputy secretaries of defense and professionals in the business study these directives as if they were the Dead Sea Scrolls. This comment came from a discussion thread in a group I belong to.
“I find it particularly interesting that DoD would come up with a “Directive of the obvious”… For all of its claims the Army as an organization doesn’t learn so quickly. I suppose that it took years of doing the same things expecting different results for the light to shine on reality. Not to be condescending in any way; I am glad to see the directive has been introduced. I hope that it grows roots quickly and flourishes… There is a full-spectrum under which many current peripheral entities can be brought to bear in order to surpass the expectations that DoD may currently have.”
I could not have said it better myself; it will be interesting to see how this directive impacts the template used by the U.S. military as it introduces more maneuver units into the country. Reports in the press indicate that the Army is planning on sending combat units in to Loghar and Wardak Provinces which are just outside of Kabul. The Marine Corps appears to be preparing to deploy in expeditionary force strength into the south. That could mean up to three infantry regiments of Marines with all their supporting arms, aircraft and logistics. That is a lot of gunfighters. The Question is – does it matter?
The Taliban control large swaths of Afghanistan not because they are better fighters but because they are beating the Karzai regime with better governance in the areas they control. The people know that a Taliban tribunal will not award land and water rights based on the largest bribe. They also know that once a case is settled the dispute is over. Fire fights between families involved in land and water disputes are frequent and bloody affairs in areas under government control. In areas under Taliban control the losing party accepts the Taliban ruling or takes 15 rounds in the chest. People tend to cooperate in systems like that.
But they don’t like it too much and would rather see a platoon of Marines or Army soldiers hanging around than a crew of religious zealots. It would be a pleasant surprise to see the Army and Marine units who flow into the country next year deployed down to the district level. I suspect that there will be tentative steps to branch out like that and these steps will involve what the new directive terms “civilian-military teams.”
That will be interesting to see play out and I believe small teams at the district level can, if properly funded and deployed, make a difference in the battle to control the only thing that matters in Afghanistan. The people.
Getting ready for a road mission. The guy on the right is our buddy Brandon who just graduated college and is in Nangarhar teaching orphans English (a story line he is planning to use to pick up women when he returns home; we’re coaching him on the art of seduction but he’s a big Liberal and isn’t catching on too well). The pixalated guys are American SF – Shem and I are in the middle.
We were able to conduct a “civilian-military team” field trial a few days ago during a road mission to Kabul (to re-stock the bar). This was a demonstration to our SF buddies of why we prefer unarmored local vehicles and they caught on fast. One of the Captains remarked that he never really got to see too much of the country because his visibility in an armored hummer was so restricted. They also marveled at how we attracted no attention (except in the busy main street of Surobi; a HIG R&R village). We also rolled up on a French convoy which gave the boys an excellent opportunity to experience the joy of low visibility ops when the Frenchman manning the trail .50 cal swung the barrel towards us.
Using local transport is not always a good deal
The military travels in convoys that do not allow the local vehicles to get near them. They do this to avoid being hit by “suicide vehicle borne improvised explosive devices” (VBIED’s). In the south Canadian and British forces force all traffic off the roads they are driving down to prevent VBIED’s. In the east sometimes all the traffic will pull off the road when they see an American convoy approaching and sometimes it won’t.
One of the Army officers had “good glass” on his camera and took this photo which I think looks pretty damn cool – if I say so myself
Using unarmored local vehicles with light body armor and fighting kit is another option. This appears to be taking unwarranted risks but I’ll let the quote below from Vietnam legend Col David Hackworth address the issue. “In Vietnam, today’s most successful infantry tactics and techniques were yesterday’s heresy and madness. When these ‘overly reckless’ ideas were first introduced by farseeing innovators in 1965 and 1966, few commanders took them seriously. Most, because of parochial conventional orientation, looked upon these new concepts with contempt not unlike many reactionary English lords’ attitude toward the longbow before Crecy. But today in Vietnam, these once ‘wild schemes’ have become standard drill. These bold techniques have changed the thrust of the war from uneconomical multi brigade operations to fights that are fought almost exclusively by the squad and platoon.”
That was true in Vietnam and it’s true today; we need to win the people and that means being in the with them 24/7. We can do it and do it for pennies on the dollar we currently spend. But only if we reach back to our past and remember how to conduct independent small unit operations on a very large scale. Let them live and move around like we do and you’re talking change you can really believe in.
Another cool photo shot with the good glass – this is the Mahipar Pass outside Kabul
It is time for some “outside the box” thinking and last week’s demonstration may lead to more discussions between the big base behind the wire military and all the other internationals in Afghanistan who feel safer at night on the streets of Kabul or Jalalabad than we do in Washington DC or Chicago.
This was first posted sixteen years ago but has stood the test of time so well it’s worth moving to the front of the blog for readers interested in a different perspective of our failed Afghan adventure. I didn’t predict the ending exactly right but was close.
For the past five years our senior leadership has claimed the reconstruction of Afghanistan is their highest priority. Yet our efforts at reconstruction have proved so inadequate they should be a national scandal. A major source of our inability to correctly implement major projects are the force protection polices that restrict State Department and USAID personnel to the US Embassy complex. It is hard to get a sense of what is going on outside the embassy walls if you never leave the embassy walls. And the only people who leave the embassy walls are the contractor guard force from Global Risks who are inexplicably billeted in hastily built barracks off Jalalabad Road.
The embassy guard force barracks are on the right and a public truck parking lot on the left. Every day dozens of trucks backed up against our wall and the drivers took off until they were allowed into Kabul after dark. It took months of bitching to the RSO before this obvious danger was mitigated. Can you imagine State Department security officials being so caviler with the lives of 350 Marines? Of course not, so why was it ok to put contractors so far out in harms way?
The security situation is dramatically different from district to district within the 34 Provinces of Afghanistan but you would not know that unless you had some contact with the Afghans living in those provinces. That is difficult to do when every trip outside a “secure compound” is a combat patrol, every Afghan met out in the wild considered a potential threat, and every vehicle that gets near you in traffic a potential car bomb. Thus there is a need for more (not less) outside the wire contractors who can live and work with Afghans supervising reconstruction projects while simultaneously building capacity by training contractors to deliver quality work.
There was a program in eastern Afghanistan that did exactly that for the local contractors who had won projects funded by the American Army Corps of Engineers (CoE). I discovered this when the eastern regional supervisor came to stay at the Taj with us in 2008. Dan the reconstruction man was paid by the CoE to work with a consortium of local construction companies to ensure their bids were written and priced correctly, the work is done to standard, and bribes and theft kept to an absolute minimum.
Dan packed up and ready to go with our new guard dog in training Scout
His life support costs are a fraction of the costs of State Department or Corps of Engineers (CoE) personnel stationed in Afghanistan but unlike them he is out interacting everyday with the locals. Dan has seven years of Afghan experience, speaks some Dari, wears a shalwar kameez when working in the rural districts and like us, he’s perfectly comfortable being the only international around for miles while working projects in the bush.
Dan was getting ready to head home for a well earned 30 day break when his flight from Jbad to Kabul was canceled. Yesterday evening, instead of being on his way home he was sharing the finer points of holographic weapons sights with another outside the wire crew when he got a snarky email from the CoE headquarters in Kabul about his main project in Jalalabad. The CoE was accusing him of not doing the proper quality control on his concrete mix, not having his QA guy on site as required, and not having the required personal protective equipment (PPE) for his stone masons. They sent pictures of these infractions demanding an immediate response.
Dan chatting up old friends from Kabul at the winterized Tiki Bar
Dan started to laugh out loud, he wasn’t remotely close to pouring concrete at the job site in question and he employs no stone masons but it was obvious what had happened. His Afghan government counterpart thought he was on his way to Canada so he was making his move. Dan checked his vehicle log to see if his QA guy had been dispatched, he checked his phone logs to see if his QA guy had called in from the work site, he then asked the me to take him to the job site where he found everything in order.
It turned out that the Afghan Quality Assurance engineer (appointed by the Karzi administration)) wanted his “sweets” (shirini) from the subcontractors but had been unable to get a penny from them. Shirini is a dreaded word in Afghanistan, it’s code for a bribe which Afghans have to contend deal every time they interact with any government official. The engineer in question bolted back to Kabul when he saw Dan driving up the project site.
Dan sent a tempered response which should serve as a wake up call but won’t. He pointed out that they were not pouring concrete yet and that the pictures of his “stone masons” were taken at the Afghan business located next to his site which has nothing to do with the project in question. Guess what happened next? While Dan was home on leave he was fired for creating animosity with the Kabul appointees. It turned out that actually building capacity by living and working with the Afghans daily was not what our diplomatic class had in mind when they talked about building capacity because (according to them) it’s too dangerous to be outside the wire.
Scout was a good looking dog but not a good guard dog because loud noises terrified him.
I live like a king for pennies compared to the life support costs for our military, State, USAID, or the dozens of other federal agencies operating in Afghanistan. When I need work done on the Taj I hire local contractors and use local products, the military hires KBR and imports every bit of their construction material from America. I would think “capacity building” would involve taking every opportunity to build capacity at the district level. Instead we are allowing the Karzai government to steal reconstruction funds hand over fist while ensuring that contractors like Dan who interfere with their corruption are removed from the field,
I will say this again knowing that I sound like a broken record we are running out of time. We can no longer afford continued failure in the stability operations fight. When the people of Afghanistan decided that we are not serious and not really here to help them they will eject us and we will have no choice but to go. The butcher’s bill for that will be more than Americans will want to consider. Look at what happened back in 1978 when the people of Herat decided they wanted the Soviets and their families to go, they all went, in body bags.
Today started great, I am back in Jalalabad after completing a short job which I cannot freely blog about, and the weather is perfect. I fired up the computer and checked in with Power Line to find this excellent story about a Marine rifle platoon that 250 Taliban ambushed. They routed the Taliban and sent them fleeing from the battlefield in panic, with the designated marksmen putting down dozens of the enemy fighters using their excellent M-14 DMR. The M-14 DMR fires a 175-grain 7.62x51mm match round through a 22-inch stainless steel match grade barrel at 2,837 fps out of the muzzle. Marine marksmen can routinely hit individuals at 850 meters with this rifle, and because of the round, it has real stopping power. You won’t see a Taliban fighter take six hits with this beast and keep running (which happens frequently with the M4). You won’t see a Taliban or any other kind of human take two rounds and keep moving.
M-14 DMR
The Marine story made my day and validated something I have said repeatedly on Covert Radio which is you can move anywhere in this country with a platoon of infantry. The Taliban, rent-a-Taliban, criminals, and warlord-affiliated fighters cannot stand up to the punishment a well-trained platoon can inflict. NATO needs to learn this lesson quickly. The French lost almost a dozen men in an ambush up in the Uzbin valley in August. In that very same valley last month a force of 300 French troopers conducted a “tactical retrograde” leaving behind sophisticated anti tank missiles in the process when they were confronted by a small force of Taliban. When a much larger enemy force hit the Marines, the entire unit immediately got onto the flanks of the ambushers and rolled them up to free the men trapped in the kill zone. Once they accomplished this, they maintained contact until the Taliban broke and ran.
Conversely, the French expended all their resources and energy trying to break contact and recover casualties, a tactic not unheard of among other NATO military units. The point to all this isn’t that the Marines are great and the French army is not, but rather it’s difficult to build and sustain good infantry. NATO countries did not have to worry about producing quality infantry over the past 50 years; instead, they allowed America to shoulder that burden while they developed their economies with the money they would have otherwise needed for national defense. Producing good infantry requires a confident attitude and mindset not typically found in polite society, but when Europeans are faced with adversity, they will develop effective infantry units. You’ll know when they do because you’ll start seeing 30-man platoons from NATO countries running all over the country, hoping against hope that 200 to 300 Taliban are stupid enough to try and take them on.
Fighting in the town of Garmsir last summer – the 24th MEU drove the Taliban out of that district in a 72 hour blitz while taking just one casualty..
I enjoy it when events validate some of the things I say in this blog or on Covert Radio. Still, this excellent story of combat dominance will have absolutely no impact on the situation in Afghanistan at all. You cannot win here by just killing people, nor can you deal the Taliban and their affiliates a decisive blow, because they are not a unified movement, and their leaders are all in Pakistan, outside our reach. The people of Afghanistan are the prize of this contest, and a few of them are down in the Helmand or Farah Provinces. While the Marines dominate their area of operations, the rest of the country is falling outside of central government control. Every district, town, and village in Afghanistan has some ongoing land or water dispute, and land disputes here are often deadly affairs. We routinely see clashes between clans over land disputes in UN security reports, and some of these conflicts result in over a dozen casualties. When the Taliban move into an area they decide these disputes using Sharia law instead of who can pay the biggest bribe. They are considered fair in most of these rulings and will tolerate no armed fighting over disputes once a case has been decided upon. A country doesn’t lose a war against insurgents by being out-fought; they lose by being out-governed, which is exactly what is happening all over this country.
Last night, I was chatting down at the new and improved Tiki Bar with some old friends who have considerable experience in Afghanistan. One of them first came here with an NGO in 1996, and the other in 2002. Our conversation was all about change. When I first arrived in Afghanistan, it took about six hours to drive between Jalalabad, which is now a 90-minute drive. In Kabul, it was rare to see a woman who was not wearing a burka, and today the opposite is the case. In Jalalabad, which is one of the largest cities in the Pashtun belt, not all women here wear the hated burka.
Streets of Kabul 2007
Duranta area of Jalalabad this local woman and her daughter walked in and joined us for lunch without ever saying a word.
However, there is a fundamental change that will never be reversed. The change you can believe in is computers and the Internet.
Middle School girls in Jalalabad, summer 2008
Computers provide access to knowledge for children who are impoverished and eager to learn about the world around them. That genie is now long out of the bottle, and my friends and I believe that the sudden surge towards modernity is spooking many of the elders who play such an important role in tribal life. We noted the backlash in Peshawar where the Pakistani Taliban is trying to reverse the headlong rush towards modernity by forcing the woman back into the burka (and with some short term success at the moment.) Peshawar used to be a very modern place that welcomed internationals and where very few women could be seen in the burka just two years ago. Not true today, and you can’t buy CDs or pirated movies either. There are many forces at play in Central Asia, and the most significant one has its momentum and will continue to generate a range of unintended consequences as it unfolds. Knowledge is power extreme poverty is motivation and the people of Afghanistan, Pakistan and all the other Stans are very motivated to acquire the power of knowledge.
The Jalalabad road in Kabul
We cannot control the effects of the explosive power of the internet and computers on the local people. What we can do is to continue developing the infrastructure while providing a secure environment in which the Afghans can build their economy. Security in the Afghan context requires boots on the ground doing what the Marines did in Shewan. Small units who are constantly outside the wire with the Afghan people and who crush anyone silly enough to fight them, even if they are outnumbered 20 to 1. Combat is a dangerous business, requiring men who can endure incredible hardships and discomfort while maintaining their motivation and, most importantly, a sense of humor.
Good infantry doesn’t need ice cream every day or the cushy barracks found at the Khandahar airfield; they need water, chow, lots of ammunition, and leaders who trust them. The Marine Commander down south is Colonel Duffy White, a close friend, an extraordinarily competent and experienced warrior, and a man who combines pragmatism with a great sense of humor. America has a few more like him, as do our allies. I hope to see them in-country soon, utilizing the decentralized tactics necessary to provide security to people living outside main cities and military bases.
Poor Bloody Infantry – they wouldn’t have it any other way
This morning’s email contained two different security alerts about impending attacks on the vital Jalalabad-Kabul road. We have been here for almost eight years and still have not oriented our forces to provide security for the vast majority of the Afghan population. We are running out of time but it is not too late to get more of our forces oriented on the population and operating like the lone rifle platoon from the 2nd Battalion 7th Marines did in Shewan a few days ago. That requires courage from commanders on high, there are troops on the ground who already have that courage and are ready to fight like lions to give people they do not know a chance to enter the modern world. That is a worthy fight by any standard of measurement.
We had to make a run to Kabul last Friday to take some clients to the airport and to pick up new ones. The Jalalabad to Kabul road is considered very dangerous by the military and US State Department, of medium risk by the UN, and minimal risk by me and the hundreds of internationals who travel the route daily. The Taliban or other Armed Opposition Groups (AOG) have never ambushed internationals on this route with the sole exception of taking some pot shots at a UN convoy last week. The reason this route remains open is that it is too important to all the players in Afghanistan to risk its closure; almost 80% of the Afghan GDP flows along it, so the Taliban would have a real PR problem if they cut it, causing a large-scale humanitarian crisis. The criminal gangs and drug lords who cooperate with the Taliban would also become very agitated if the road were closed and probably turn on any real Taliban groups foolish enough to be within their reach if that happened.
We don’t take this run lightly, but we often choose to make it without body armor or long guns because we fear being ambushed by other villainous members of the Afghan security forces. On Friday, our long string of luck ran out, and we became the latest victim of the Afghan security company game. It cost us two sets of body armor, which we cannot replace because you cannot import body armor into Afghanistan, and we were lucky to get away with the weapons. Although we cannot replace the body armor, we were fortunate to get off lightly; it would be difficult for a small company like ours to raise the funds needed to secure the release of an international prisoner from Pul-e-Charkhi prison.
Many think of private security companies as analogous to mercenary bands with all the associated negative connotations. A few of them are shady companies and deserve all the contempt and bad karma in the world to befall their greedy principals. However, most of the companies operating here are well-run and highly professional. To facilitate the implementation of the rule of law in Afghanistan, they formed an association three years ago to support the effort to regulate the industry. That effort has been stymied at every turn by Afghan government officials who seem less interested in regulation or the rule of law than in establishing rules that benefit them.
Just one of many examples; when the Afghan government wrote the first set of regulations, it stipulated that the payment of all fees and penalties would be made to the Ministry of the Interior (MoI). The Private Security Company Association of Afghanistan (PSCAA) has politely pointed out that the new Afghan constitution explicitly states that all fees and taxes must be paid to the Ministry of Finance. There are sufficient international mentors at the Ministry of Finance (MoF) to ensure that fees paid into the ministry are directed directly to the Government treasury.
NDS Commander and 2IC
It was immediately clear that our assistance in Afghan constitutional law interpretation was not well received and the process has gone downhill ever since. There are still no valid laws regarding PSCs in Afghanistan; however, a series of “temporary” licenses have been issued, which every legitimate company in Afghanistan has acquired. These “temporary” licenses are often overlooked by Afghan security services not under the control of the Ministry of Interior (MoI). Afghan security forces have arrested international workers for licensed PSCs who had individual weapons permits from the MoI and thrown them in jail. Although we cannot replace the body armor stolen from us, we were fortunate to get off lightly; it would be difficult for a small company like ours to raise the funds needed to secure the release of an international prisoner from Pul-e-Charkhi prison.
Here is how it went down. We were through the Mahipar pass and almost to Kabul. We approached the last “S” shaped curve before the Puli Charki checkpoint, and an NDS (National Directorate of Security) checkpoint was set up with belt-fed machine guns off to the side, with a good quarter mile separating the east and west checkpoints.
Unfortunately I did not have the Shem Bot with me so I had Haji jann, my good friend and official driver in the contested areas, come down from Kabul to drive us up. This turned out to be a critical mistake because the NDS will not toy with two armed expats when one is driving. If they see an armed Expat with a local driver, it is an indicator for an ” illegally” armed international, which means big cash if they play their cards right. I flashed my weapons permit and license but the boys noted my two clients, PhD candidates from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) – had body armor. In Afghanistan, body armor (used to protect clients), armored vehicles (also used to protect clients), and two-way radios are considered the tools of war, and those of us working here must obtain licenses for them. However, clients change frequently, so we cannot get individual permits for them. We have also never had a problem with this catch-22 because our language skills and charming personalities normally forestall any potential disagreements.
The reason I take Haji jann on all missions into contested areas is because he is a former Taliban commander of some repute (emphasis on former.) He has also been with me through thick and thin, and I truly appreciate him. We talk for hours, although I understand very little of what he says, but we love to chin wag with each other. I heard him say right after we were stopped something like “the armed white guy is a little crazy and I would not arrest him if I were you.” I gave him the ‘what the fuck’ look, and he didn’t smile, indicating that things were serious.
The National Directorate of Security (NDS) wanted the body armor from my MIT clients because they had no license. They also started searching our baggage, which was problematic. I had another gig starting up in Kabul and had extra rounds, magazines, and a first aid kit, all of which are considered illegal (for internationals) in Afghanistan. The “commander,” who is the pot-bellied, slack-jawed fellow in the black fleece, started pulling all my stuff out for confiscation.
I looked at Haji jann who shook his head slightly giving me the go sign and went off like a firecracker at the “commander” who also instantly lost his cool and started to yell back at me. That is a great sign because it indicates fear on his part, and I knew I was not going to lose my spare ammo (which is expensive) and first aid kit. However, they removed the body armor from my MIT charges, and I could do nothing about it. The “commander” gave me a FU smile when his boys stole the body armor because he knew there was no cell signal in the canyon, so what was I going to do? You can only push so far in a situation like this.
This kind of harassment has been routine for the past 18 months in Kabul. We have been spared because we have the proper licenses and travel in pairs, as a rule. Yesterday, I was copied on an email from the security director of the largest US AID contractor in the country regarding one of their projects in the north. It is slightly redacted:
“This afternoon Gen Khalil, commander of the police in Sherbegan, visited one of our well sites demanding to see the PSC license of (deleted) Security. He informed (deleted) that the license expired and that they have until 16:00 to produce a new one or face arrest. Rather than facing arrest all LN guards were stood down and the Expats and TCNs went to Mazar to stay over for the night. This leaves one of our sites uncovered and can have a serious impact on our operations.Can MOI please as a matter of urgency issue new licenses? Maybe someone in MOI can talk some sense into (deleted) head. His no is xxxxxxx”
Which brings us to the US Embassy and how they react to news like this, which is (to my mind) deplorable. The embassy response was:
“We do not encourage US citizens to come to Afghanistan for any reason and will not help you in your dealings with the Afghan government. If you are arrested, we will endeavor to ensure you have adequate food and a blanket.”
Since working as a contractor for the Department of State, I have grown to hate it. I was the project manager for the American Embassy guard force and knew precisely what was going on inside our embassy. I’ll write a book about it one day; the tentative title is ‘Diplomacy is Hard When You’re Fat, Stupid, and Arrogant. ‘
A significant problem with the stability operations part of our campaign in Afghanistan is that the local people do not perceive us as serious. The people are our mission; everything we do should be focused on bringing security and infrastructure to the district level to benefit them. After seven years on the ground, we have yet to accomplish basic infrastructure programs. The most efficient way to do this is with a small number of armed contractors who can work at the district level for extended periods. A few people are doing that right now; they are armed because they have to be, and they are doing the daily quality control of Afghan contractors.
We need more support in this area regarding mentoring and quality control of projects awarded to Afghan small businesses. That level of oversight and reporting brings in donor dollars because the money can be accounted for. Donor dollars and expat project management would significantly help break the funding logjam, which currently hampers the district-level reconstruction of roads, irrigation systems, and micro-hydro power generation.
At some point, one hopes the powers will realize this and aggressively support the Americans and other internationals operating far outside the comfortable confines of Kabul. For now, we are essentially on our own, which will ultimately lead to tragedy. Nothing good will come from continued confrontations between dodgy police running “surprise” checkpoints and armed Westerners.
One of the most incredible aspects of living in Afghanistan is the sense of history that surrounds you as you trek off the beaten path. In rural districts, the daily routine of the people has remained unchanged for hundreds of years. It is easy to find the sites of historic battles or ancient ruins, which few Westerners have had the opportunity to see. The hospitality of the Afghans is a constant reminder that the capacity for good in people transcends the evil that constantly searches for cold hearts or idle brains where it can embed and grow. An armed society is a polite society, but the Afghans take politeness to an extreme that is at times bewildering.
Yet the Afghans have never been able to govern themselves effectively. Despite their culture of warm hospitality to guests and strangers, their political culture remains polarized, vicious, and deadly. These are tribal lands with a small percentage of the wealthy and a large population of the less fortunate. The “haves” are the leaders with positions determined at birth and not resented by people at the village level because they do not have significantly more than their fellow tribal members. The “have-nots” do not engage in political agitation because they spend most of their lives trying to find their next meal. They are not like the American poor afflicted with health issues from morbid obesity. Poor people here die of starvation, poor children die of exposure during the harsh winters even on the streets of Kabul.
This is what absolute poverty looks like. Remember these kids who stand little chance of reaching adulthood, the next time you hear NPR or CBS or the racial grievance mongers carrying on about the poor in America.
And speaking of politics, what was the first topic discussed when I joined the elders of Sherzad district for a lunch meeting last Thursday? Barack Obama and I’m not making that up. Talk about weird, but let me set the trip up before I get to that.
Traveling into contested tribal lands is a bit tricky. I did not doubt that the Gandamak area Maliks would provide for my safety once I arrived, but I was concerned about the trip in or out. The time-tested decision-making matrix is to examine what the State Department is doing and do the exact opposite. The State Department insists on brand-new armored SUVs with heavily armed contractor escorts in front and behind. I went with an old, beat-up Toyota pickup, without a security escort, and wore local clothing. The Taj manager, Mehrab, served as both driver and interpreter.
The first of three downed bridges between Gandamak and Jalalabad
The road into Gandamack required us to ford three separate stream beds. The Soviets destroyed the bridges that once spanned these obstacles around 25 years ago. We have been fighting the Stability Operations battle here for seven years, but the bridges are still down, the power plants have not been fixed, and most roads are little better than they were when Alexander the Great came through the Khyber Pass in 327 BC. It took the Soviets around seven years to build the bridges, pave the roads in the southern triangle, and then blow up the bridges and destroy the streets they just built. How did the Soviets completely outclass us in the Stability Operations arena? That’s a question that will never be answered because it will never be asked.
Also, this was destroyed 25 years ago. How do we expect farmers to get their produce and livestock to market over this? What the hell have we been doing for the past seven years? I watched the tallest building in the world rise in Dubai, alongside about 300 other super skyscrapers, over the past four years. However, we can’t even repair a few stone bridges in seven years; check that, make it 14 years.
It took over an hour to reach Gandamack, a prosperous hamlet tucked into a small valley. The color of prosperity in Afghanistan is green, as green vegetation signifies water. Villages with access to abundant, clean water are consistently better off than those without. You can see the difference in the children’s health, livestock, and crops.
My host for the day was one of my driver’s older brothers. When I first met Sharif, he told me, “I speak English fluently,” in perfect English. I immediately hired him and issued a quick string of coordinating instructions about what we were doing in the morning, then bid him good day. He failed to show up on time, and when I called him to ask why, it became apparent that the only English words Sharif knew were “I speak English fluently.” You get that from Afghans. But Sharif is learning his letters and has proven an able driver, plus a first-rate scrounger, which is vital for the health and comfort of his ichi ban employer.
The Maliks (tribal leaders) from Gandamak and the surrounding villages arrived shortly after we did. They walked into the meeting room armed; I had left my rifle in the vehicle, which, as the invited foreign guest, I felt obligated to do. Gandamak is in Indian country, and everybody is armed to the teeth. The day started with a shura about what they needed from international NGO’s, followed by a tour of the Gandamak battlefield, and then lunch. I could not do much about what they needed, but I could listen politely, which is all they asked of me. I’ve enjoyed visiting battlefields since I was a kid, and when my Dad and I visited the Gettysburg, Antietam, The Wilderness, and Fredericksburg battlefields. I especially enjoy visiting obscure battlefields in remote areas. To my knowledge, I am the only Westerner who has visited the Gandamak battlefield in the last 60 or so years.
Back Cover of the Osprey War Series book The First Afghan War 1839-1842, written by Richard Macrory in 2016. He told me I was the only Westerner who visited the Gandamak Battlefield during the 20-year Afghan-American War
As the Maliks arrived, they started talking among themselves in hushed tones, and I kept hearing the name “Barack Obama.” I was apprehensive; I’m surrounded by Obama fanatics every Thursday night at the Taj bar. Talking with them is unpleasant because they know nothing about the man other than he is not Bush and looks cool. They are convinced he is ready to be president because NPR said so. I had no interest in pointing out to the Makiks that Obama has zero experience in executive leadership and will make a terrible president. They have the time and will insist on hashing things out until they understand clearly. I have a wristwatch and a short attention span; this was not a good start.
Sharif’s great-great-grandfather and son waiting on the Brits to make it down from Kabul.
As I had feared, the morning discussion began with the question, “Tell us about Barack Obama?” What was I to say? His resume is razor thin, but he has demonstrated traits Pashtun Maliks could appreciate, so I described how he came to power in Chicago. Once they understood that lawyers in America are like warlords in Afghanistan and can rub out their competition ahead of an election using the law and judges instead of guns and explosives, they got the picture. A man cold enough to win every office by eliminating his competition before the vote is a man the Pashtuns can understand. I told them that Obama will probably win and that I have no idea how that will impact our effort in Afghanistan.
They asked if Obama was African, and I resisted the obvious answer: Who knows? Instead, I said his father was a Black African and his mother a white American, so he identifies himself as a Black American. They asked if he was joining his mother’s tribe, why wouldn’t he be considered white like her? I didn’t want to explain the racial spoils system in America, so I lied and said the father’s race determined racial classification.
What followed was (I think) a long discussion about Africans; were they or were they not good Muslims? I assume this stems from the Africans they may have seen during the Al Qaeda days. I think the conclusion was that the Africans were like the Arabs and therefore considered the local equivalent of scumbags. They talked among themselves for several more minutes, and I heard John McCain’s name several times, but they no longer asked about the pending election, praise be to God. They assured me that they like all Americans regardless of hue, and it would be better to see more of them, especially if they took off the helmets and body armor, because that scares the kids and woman folk. And their big MRAPs scare the cows, who already don’t have enough water and feed, so scaring them causes even less milk to be produced, and on and on. These guys knew how to beat a point to death.
Maliks of Sherzad district
We talked for around 35 more minutes about the anemic American reconstruction effort, their needs, and the rise in armed militancy. The American military visits about once a month and remains popular with the local people. They have built some micro-hydro power projects upstream from Gandamak, which the people, even those who do not benefit from the project, greatly appreciate. The US AID contractor, DAI, has several projects in the district, which the elders believe could be executed more effectively if they were given the funds to manage them themselves. However, DAI is welcomed despite this, and its efforts are greatly appreciated. When I asked who had kidnapped the DAI engineer (a local national) last month and how we could secure his release (which was another reason for my visit), they shrugged and one of them said, “Who knows”? That was to be expected, but I felt compelled to ask anyway.
The elders explained, without me asking, that they are serious about giving up poppy cultivation but have yet to see the promised financial aid. They need a road over which to transport their goods to market. They need their bridges repaired, and their irrigation systems need to be restored to their condition in the 1970s. They said that these improvements would bring security and increased commerce. One of them commented most interestingly: “The way the roads are now, the only thing we can economically transport over them is the poppy.”
After the talking part of the meeting, the senior Maliks and I piled into my SUV and headed to the Gandamak battlefield.
The Last Stand of the 44th Foot
The final stand at Gandamak took place on January 13, 1842. Twenty officers and forty-five British soldiers, most from the 44th Foot, pulled off the road onto a hillock when they found the pass to Jalalabad blocked by Afghan fighters. They must have pulled up on the high ground to take away the mobility advantage of the horse-mounted Afghan fighters. The Afghans closed in and tried to talk the men into surrendering their arms. A sergeant was famously said to reply, “Not bloody likely,” and the fight was on. Six officers cut their way through the attackers and tried to make it to British lines in Jalalabad. Only one, Dr Brydon, made it to safety.
The Gandamack Hill today
Our first stop was at what the Maliks described as “The British Prison,” which was on the side of a pass about a mile from the battlefield. We climbed up the steep slope at a vigorous pace set by the senior Malik. About halfway up, we came to what looked to be an old foundation and an entrance to a small cave. They said this was a British prison. I can’t imagine how that could be – there were no British forces here when the 44th Foot was cut down, but they could have established a garrison years later, I suppose. Why the Brits would shove their prisoners down inside a cave located so high up on the side of a mountain is a mystery, and I doubted this story behind what looked to be a mine entrance. It was a nice brisk walk up the very steep hill, and I kept up with the senior Malik, which was probably the point of this detour.
Entrance to the “Brit Jail
Heading up the slope to the Brit jail – not an easy walk
After checking that out, we headed to the battlefield proper. We stopped at the end of a finger, which looked exactly like any other finger jutting down from the mountain range above us. It contained building foundations that had been excavated a few years back. Some villagers started digging through the site looking for anything they could sell in Peshawar shortly after the Taliban fell. The same thing happened at the Minaret of Jam until the central government deployed troops to protect the site. The elders claimed to have unearthed a Buddha statue there, which they figured the British must have pilfered in Kabul. I estimate there are 378,431 “ancient, one-of-a-kind Buddha statues” for sale in Afghanistan to Westerners willing to buy one. The penalties for stealing ancient artifacts are severe; tampering with that kind of material is not something reasonable people do in unstable third-world countries.
I do not know where these foundations came from. In 1842, the closest British troops were 35 miles away in Jalalabad, and there are no reports of the 44th Foot pulling into an existing structure. We were in the right area – just off the ancient back road to Kabul via the Latabad Pass. My guides were specific that this finger was where the battle occurred, and as their direct ancestors participated in it, I assumed we were on the correct piece of dirt. I would bet that the foundations are from a small British outpost built here, possibly to host the Treaty of Gandamak signing in 1879 or to recover the remains of their dead for proper internment.
Site of the final battle
Foundation of an unknown building on Gandamak Hill
The visit concluded with a large lunch, and after we had finished and the food was cleared away, our meeting was officially concluded with a short prayer. I’m not sure what the prayer said, but it was short. I’m an infidel; short is good.
I love Kabuli Pilau – and eating with my hands. Mehrab Siraj, a close friend and the Manager of the Taj guesthouse, is sitting to my right.
Post Script
The Maliks of Sherzad district never received the attention they wanted from the US Government or the Afghan authorities. Instead, the Taliban came to fill the void and started muscling their way into the district back in 2011. By early 2012, things were bad enough that my old driver, Shariff, called me to see if there was anything I could do about getting the Americans to help them fight off the encroaching Taliban fighters. I was in the Helmand Province by then, dealing with my own Taliban problems, and could offer him nothing. That bothered me then, and it bothers me now, but that’s life.
In August 2012, my old friend Mehrab was gunned down by the Taliban outside his home. By then, several of the men I had shared a pleasant lunch with back in 2008 had also perished fighting the Taliban. Gandamak is now Taliban territory, and the poppy is now the primary source of income. It will be a long time before a Westerner can revisit the old battlefield.
The second project, much more ambitious and complex, is to stand up something like an IT services company out of the fablab specifically to do with point-to-point long range connections with equipment fabbed in the lab (and later meshed networking also fabbed in the lab) as well as intranet support. Here we’re (informally) working with Cisco and the members of this club could become Cisco network certified and instantly highly employable in the Jbad area. We aim to provide local Afghans the knowledge, skills, and access to the machines to make equipment to push the edges of the network as well as have actual real-world systems to learn and apply their just in time learning. Just as importantly, they’ll be paid as they learn and not paid if they don’t perform. It’s this project that we’ll mostly be focused on in our January trip. We’ll be making, installing, and configuring several point to point connections with at least a 1 to 1 Afghan to international ratio where our goal is for the Afghans to be doing all the work by the last pair and for them to continue on as owner-employees of this company after we leave. Follow along at the temporary site:
