Just last week I was musing on the ramifications of my new quarters and the security measures therein, and I pointed out that Kabul is actually safer than most people think it is. There is always at least a minimum level of risk, but I'm not trudging through the valleys of Paktika or hiking the deserts of Helmand.
Why, oh why do I open my big mouth?
By now, anyone who follows even the headlines of media coverage about Afghanistan will be aware of the events of last Wednesday. (Coverage here if you've missed the nightly news lately.) It was a pretty shocking event, even by A-stan standards. There are occasional rockets or mortars fired into Kabul, most of which fall on the outskirts of the city and cause little damage and limited casualties. Even more rarely, a Taliban gunman will open fire on a police checkpoint and quickly get shot down. Overall, the ANP keeps a pretty tight lid on Kabul, with numerous checkpoints, guard posts and vehicular searches. Inconvenient sure, but necessary and up until Wednesday reasonably effective.
Well, apparently some of the bad guys slipped through the net. For reasons surpassing understanding, the BBC failed to report the most important aspect of Wednesday events, namely that the whole thing happened about 30 meters from my front door. Makes for a pretty exciting morning, I can assure you.
Below are a couple of videos, the first shot during the attack (although for obvious reasons it doesn't show the actual fighting), the second shot later on in the day. I apologize for the quality of the video; I wasn't fully in the right frame of mind for memorializing the event. Guess I wouldn't make much of a combat photojournalist.
Later on, some thoughts on the BBC reporting and the implications of this attack for life in Kabul.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Self-Reliance
One of the benefits of my new lodgings is that I'm off by myself, rather than stuck in a dodgy hotel with the dregs of Kabul's transient population. It's nice and quiet, especially in the evenings when I'm pretty much on my own. There are half a dozen of my guys quartered on the ground floor (I'm on the third), but they're assigned to a static security site down the street and tend to be fast asleep when not on duty.
So, for my own peace of mind, I decided that it's best to rely on only myself for personal protection in the middle of the night. Although Kabul is safer than most people think, criminal kidnap is an ever-present threat. The targets of the kidnap gangs are almost always local businessmen, rather than expats, but it never hurts to be prepared.
Hence, my new toy:
That is an Automat Kalashnikov, Model 19(47), better known as an AK-47, the preferred weapon of guerillas, insurgents, thugs and various assorted bad guys around the world. Oh, and private security contractors in Afghanistan.
Now I have one of my very own. I'm still undecided if that's a good thing, or a bad sign.
So, for my own peace of mind, I decided that it's best to rely on only myself for personal protection in the middle of the night. Although Kabul is safer than most people think, criminal kidnap is an ever-present threat. The targets of the kidnap gangs are almost always local businessmen, rather than expats, but it never hurts to be prepared.
Hence, my new toy:
That is an Automat Kalashnikov, Model 19(47), better known as an AK-47, the preferred weapon of guerillas, insurgents, thugs and various assorted bad guys around the world. Oh, and private security contractors in Afghanistan.
Now I have one of my very own. I'm still undecided if that's a good thing, or a bad sign.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Poor Response
I was sitting in my new office this morning (not much better than the old office, but at least it's private) and I got a call from one of our project managers. As usual when they call me, it's to complain about something. In this instance, the complaint was about some salaries that, due to an accounting screw-up, had gone unpaid.
Not get paid is a serious deterrent to effective performance, so I sympathize with the PM and his guys. However, he was all bent out of shape and ranting (mostly in Urdu, which I do not speak), so I began to get frustrated. Eventually, I had to fall back on my time-honored response to this sort of debate, which is to say, "Hey, it's just business. Nobody dies, right?"
Except that.....ummmm.....yeah, people do actually die in this business.* I have a disturbing tendency to be a little too flippant for a place like Afghanistan.
*Just last week one of our competitors lost an entire team of convoy escorts when they ran out of ammo during an ambush down in Khost. That's just poor planning.
So, I guess I'm going to have to find a new catch-phrase response for when things aren't going right. The long, cold silence on the other end of the phone confirmed that for me.
Not get paid is a serious deterrent to effective performance, so I sympathize with the PM and his guys. However, he was all bent out of shape and ranting (mostly in Urdu, which I do not speak), so I began to get frustrated. Eventually, I had to fall back on my time-honored response to this sort of debate, which is to say, "Hey, it's just business. Nobody dies, right?"
Except that.....ummmm.....yeah, people do actually die in this business.* I have a disturbing tendency to be a little too flippant for a place like Afghanistan.
*Just last week one of our competitors lost an entire team of convoy escorts when they ran out of ammo during an ambush down in Khost. That's just poor planning.
So, I guess I'm going to have to find a new catch-phrase response for when things aren't going right. The long, cold silence on the other end of the phone confirmed that for me.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Welcome Home
Well, I've been traveling a lot lately, taking a much-needed mental health break. Details on that to follow in subsequent posts (including some thoughts on the relative merits of strip clubs in Arlington vs. Washington D.C.).
Now I'm back in Kabul, and it's nice to see things haven't changed that much. The Taliban welcomed me back by waking me this morning with a large car-bomb about eight blocks from my new quarters. It was somewhere near the Ministry of Interior, to judge by the smoke cloud, and large enough to rattle the windows and knock some books off the shelf here. No reports on casualties yet, but I did appreciate the pre-coffee wake-up call.
Now I'm back in Kabul, and it's nice to see things haven't changed that much. The Taliban welcomed me back by waking me this morning with a large car-bomb about eight blocks from my new quarters. It was somewhere near the Ministry of Interior, to judge by the smoke cloud, and large enough to rattle the windows and knock some books off the shelf here. No reports on casualties yet, but I did appreciate the pre-coffee wake-up call.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Op-Eds
I generally refrain from citing other posts and articles here, since I figure my loyal readers (all three of you) don't actually come here for political commentary and strategic/tactical analysis. However, I do read a lot of that stuff, mostly online or downloaded academic papers and articles.
The stuff generated by the various professional COIN-theorists (and their antithesis, the anti-COIN crowd) is often unreadable, but occasionally contains a few nuggets of truth, or at least of useful analysis.* While I disagree with some of what the military types have to say (especially if they have no operational experience here), it's usually worth listening to their perspective.
*Apparently, a career spent in any modern Western military does not endow one with the ability to read or write effectively. Methinks it has something to do with the dominance of PowerPoint as an information-sharing technique.
By contrast, much of what is available out there in the popular press is pretty weak on Afghanistan, demonstrating a total lack of understanding of either local conditions or the peculiar tactical problems of this campaign. There are a few reporters, mostly for the NYTimes, who make an honest effort to get the story right, and often go above and beyond what most reporters would endure. But overall, newspaper reporters simply don't get this place, probably because it's hard to understand the complex problems facing Afghanistan if one spends all their time in the garden bar at The Gandamack Lounge.*
*Not that I dislike the Gandamack. It's a venerable Kabul institution. The food is even halfway decent, although they do water down the whiskey. As if I wouldn't know.
And with apologies to anyone with a fondness for the UK papers, a quick review of the last twelve months will conclusively demonstrate that none of them rise even to the level of the Miami Herald when covering Afghanistan. They're too busy trying to score political points for their respective parties to actually worry about getting the story. Fortunately, the BBC at least partially makes up for their utter failings.
But by far the worst transgressors in the realm of public commentary are the various pundits, talking heads and think-tank types who populate the OpEd pages of the major newspapers.* These largely self-appointed experts feel compelled to spout off about anything that remotely enters into their supposed sphere of knowledge. And given the depth of their hubris, there's not much that falls outside that sphere.
*You thought I was going to say "bloggers" didn't you? Well, some of them do suck, for a variety of reasons. I'll get to them later.
And by far the worst of these are the political science/international relations/international security academics who have spent their entire careers writing voluminously about security and defense issues without ever having gained first-hand experience on the topic. Some of you may know the type. The publish articles, in various prestigous journals, with titles like "Tribalism, Marxism and Feminism: Three Social Movements in Contemporary Insurgencies" and "Comparative Social Dynamics of the Role of Non-State Actors in Civil Strife." I usually can't even decipher the titles, much less the text of the articles.
So, all of that, by way of introduction, brings us to the point of this post, which is to highlight one of the more recent efforts by our distinguished ivory-tower dwellers, specifically this piece published yesterday on the New York Times OpEd page.
The author, one Dr. Kimberly Martin of Columbia University, discusses the nascent plans to fund and equip a "tribal militia" in Afghanistan. The purpose of this militia* is to provide local defense against Taliban reprisals, while at the same time providing some jobs in every community. The hope is that the combinaton of economic development, employment and some limited defensive capabilities will allow remote rural villages to begin to develop economically and socially.
*Militia is not really the right word here, since it generally has connotations of minutemen and brave American revolutionaries. The concept is really more akin to the CIDGs, or Civilian Irregular Defense Groups, that were created in South Vietnam in the late 1960s.
Dr. Martin apparently takes exception to this approach, and there are several reasons to be sceptical of the whole idea. However, either for reasons of space or simply general ignorance, Dr. Martin rolls out all the old tropes rather than discuss the actual pros and cons of the program.
For instance, she opens with the indispensible comparison to British colonial practice in Central Asia:
Bravo Doctor! In only the second paragraph, you've managed to connect the whole scheme not only to a failed program from a previous campaign, but also imply that the whole concept is "colonial" in nature. Hmm, let me guess. Your favorite courses in undergrad poli sci were on Marxist theory?
The problem here is that this is not the 19th century, Afghanistan is not Pakistan, and the U.S. Army is slightly better at this whole counter-insurgency thing than some heavy-handed redcoats 150 years ago. At the very least, we have a lot more money to spread around this time.
But the real problem with the article is that the elements of the plan which she says failed so badly are actually the exact same elements that we need more of in Afghanistan today. She condemns the previous effort in part by writing, "British intelligence officers created charts of which sub-tribes and leaders (or maliks) had the most influence...." Yeah? And? That's a good thing. Detailed, accurate information about who the local power-brokers are is one of the key elements that is most lacking in our current efforts in Afghanistan. Any plan that creates a greater awareness of the intricacies of the tribal structure can only help in the long-run.
Or where she writes, "This system violated the tribal code of equality among all Pashtun men, but the official maliks accepted it with enthusiasm." Well of course they accepted it with enthusiasm. I haven't met an Afghan yet who wouldn't pledge his undying loyalty in exchange for $50 bucks. Even the vaunted fanatics of the Taliban fight and die for $10 a day. Cash is king, especially in A-stan.
And what's the bit about the "tribal code of equality" among Pashtun men? Notice how she limits that statement to the male half of the population. No need to dirty up a nice pretty argument with the ugly reality of female suppression. Besides, despite whatever Western-trained sociologists will tell you, there is no equality in Afghan culture, male or otherwise. This is a traditional (i.e. primitive) tribal structure, with deference to chief or clan-head (or whoever happens to be in charge), enforced by violence and backed up by familial ties. Equality in the Western sense of the word is a foreign concept.
If Dr. Martin's fear is that the tribal militia program will somehow undermine the traditional power structures here, well then I'm all for it. What she fails to understand is that it is exactly those traditional social constructs that are directly responsible for the shit-hole that this country has become. Afghans like to blame everyone for their problems, the Russians, the Pakistanis, the Arabs, the Iranians and the West. Fact is, this place is a mess because the Afghans have made it that way.
As so often happens after reading an article like that, I'm left wondering. Dr. Martin, have you even been to Afghanistan?
The stuff generated by the various professional COIN-theorists (and their antithesis, the anti-COIN crowd) is often unreadable, but occasionally contains a few nuggets of truth, or at least of useful analysis.* While I disagree with some of what the military types have to say (especially if they have no operational experience here), it's usually worth listening to their perspective.
*Apparently, a career spent in any modern Western military does not endow one with the ability to read or write effectively. Methinks it has something to do with the dominance of PowerPoint as an information-sharing technique.
By contrast, much of what is available out there in the popular press is pretty weak on Afghanistan, demonstrating a total lack of understanding of either local conditions or the peculiar tactical problems of this campaign. There are a few reporters, mostly for the NYTimes, who make an honest effort to get the story right, and often go above and beyond what most reporters would endure. But overall, newspaper reporters simply don't get this place, probably because it's hard to understand the complex problems facing Afghanistan if one spends all their time in the garden bar at The Gandamack Lounge.*
*Not that I dislike the Gandamack. It's a venerable Kabul institution. The food is even halfway decent, although they do water down the whiskey. As if I wouldn't know.
And with apologies to anyone with a fondness for the UK papers, a quick review of the last twelve months will conclusively demonstrate that none of them rise even to the level of the Miami Herald when covering Afghanistan. They're too busy trying to score political points for their respective parties to actually worry about getting the story. Fortunately, the BBC at least partially makes up for their utter failings.
But by far the worst transgressors in the realm of public commentary are the various pundits, talking heads and think-tank types who populate the OpEd pages of the major newspapers.* These largely self-appointed experts feel compelled to spout off about anything that remotely enters into their supposed sphere of knowledge. And given the depth of their hubris, there's not much that falls outside that sphere.
*You thought I was going to say "bloggers" didn't you? Well, some of them do suck, for a variety of reasons. I'll get to them later.
And by far the worst of these are the political science/international relations/international security academics who have spent their entire careers writing voluminously about security and defense issues without ever having gained first-hand experience on the topic. Some of you may know the type. The publish articles, in various prestigous journals, with titles like "Tribalism, Marxism and Feminism: Three Social Movements in Contemporary Insurgencies" and "Comparative Social Dynamics of the Role of Non-State Actors in Civil Strife." I usually can't even decipher the titles, much less the text of the articles.
So, all of that, by way of introduction, brings us to the point of this post, which is to highlight one of the more recent efforts by our distinguished ivory-tower dwellers, specifically this piece published yesterday on the New York Times OpEd page.
The author, one Dr. Kimberly Martin of Columbia University, discusses the nascent plans to fund and equip a "tribal militia" in Afghanistan. The purpose of this militia* is to provide local defense against Taliban reprisals, while at the same time providing some jobs in every community. The hope is that the combinaton of economic development, employment and some limited defensive capabilities will allow remote rural villages to begin to develop economically and socially.
*Militia is not really the right word here, since it generally has connotations of minutemen and brave American revolutionaries. The concept is really more akin to the CIDGs, or Civilian Irregular Defense Groups, that were created in South Vietnam in the late 1960s.
Dr. Martin apparently takes exception to this approach, and there are several reasons to be sceptical of the whole idea. However, either for reasons of space or simply general ignorance, Dr. Martin rolls out all the old tropes rather than discuss the actual pros and cons of the program.
For instance, she opens with the indispensible comparison to British colonial practice in Central Asia:
Almost point for point, this plan repeats the terrible mistake that the British colonial army made in the Pashtun tribal areas in what would become Pakistan, in the late 19th century.
Bravo Doctor! In only the second paragraph, you've managed to connect the whole scheme not only to a failed program from a previous campaign, but also imply that the whole concept is "colonial" in nature. Hmm, let me guess. Your favorite courses in undergrad poli sci were on Marxist theory?
The problem here is that this is not the 19th century, Afghanistan is not Pakistan, and the U.S. Army is slightly better at this whole counter-insurgency thing than some heavy-handed redcoats 150 years ago. At the very least, we have a lot more money to spread around this time.
But the real problem with the article is that the elements of the plan which she says failed so badly are actually the exact same elements that we need more of in Afghanistan today. She condemns the previous effort in part by writing, "British intelligence officers created charts of which sub-tribes and leaders (or maliks) had the most influence...." Yeah? And? That's a good thing. Detailed, accurate information about who the local power-brokers are is one of the key elements that is most lacking in our current efforts in Afghanistan. Any plan that creates a greater awareness of the intricacies of the tribal structure can only help in the long-run.
Or where she writes, "This system violated the tribal code of equality among all Pashtun men, but the official maliks accepted it with enthusiasm." Well of course they accepted it with enthusiasm. I haven't met an Afghan yet who wouldn't pledge his undying loyalty in exchange for $50 bucks. Even the vaunted fanatics of the Taliban fight and die for $10 a day. Cash is king, especially in A-stan.
And what's the bit about the "tribal code of equality" among Pashtun men? Notice how she limits that statement to the male half of the population. No need to dirty up a nice pretty argument with the ugly reality of female suppression. Besides, despite whatever Western-trained sociologists will tell you, there is no equality in Afghan culture, male or otherwise. This is a traditional (i.e. primitive) tribal structure, with deference to chief or clan-head (or whoever happens to be in charge), enforced by violence and backed up by familial ties. Equality in the Western sense of the word is a foreign concept.
If Dr. Martin's fear is that the tribal militia program will somehow undermine the traditional power structures here, well then I'm all for it. What she fails to understand is that it is exactly those traditional social constructs that are directly responsible for the shit-hole that this country has become. Afghans like to blame everyone for their problems, the Russians, the Pakistanis, the Arabs, the Iranians and the West. Fact is, this place is a mess because the Afghans have made it that way.
As so often happens after reading an article like that, I'm left wondering. Dr. Martin, have you even been to Afghanistan?
Friday, August 28, 2009
Time Off
Ten days. I know it's been ten days since I posted anything here. I can only say in my own defense that occasionally real life intrudes on one's leisure (or semi-leisure) activities. This seems to be especially true in A-stan.
For instance, last night I sat down to watch a tape-delay baseball game, a rare treat here where most of the televised sports are either football (soccer), rugby or Afghan marital arts.*
*Wierd, I know. I was surprised when I discovered the Afghan passion for full-contact martial arts. That is, until I realized that it makes perfect sense. I mean, if there's a sport which Afghans are genetically predisposed to be good at, it would of course be martial arts, right? As one of my Afghan co-workers said to me, "We may suck at football, but we excell at kicking the crap out of each other."
Anyway, didn't even get through the first inning before there's a distant rumbling and the lights flicker. Then the cable goes out. Outstanding. Somebody blew something up. So up on the roof I go with some night-vision gear to see if I can figure out what's going on. No sign of fires or secondary explosions, so I'm not sure what got hit or how badly. Turns out (I discovered this morning) that the Talibs fired three 122mm rockets into Kabul last night. Perhaps indicative of the level of violence required to spark interest in this town, the event didn't even make the morning news, so I have no idea if there were any casualties.
To get around to the point of this post, after six months here with no real break, I've finally arranged to take some time off. Back to civilization in a week or so, after a quick overnight stop in Dubai. Specifically, London first and then the States, and if I'm lucky a short side-trip to Europe somewhere. Not sure how much time I'll have, but there's no point in leaving here for less than a couple of weeks. I have to be gone long enough to begin to forget what it's like or else I won't be willing to come back.
For instance, last night I sat down to watch a tape-delay baseball game, a rare treat here where most of the televised sports are either football (soccer), rugby or Afghan marital arts.*
*Wierd, I know. I was surprised when I discovered the Afghan passion for full-contact martial arts. That is, until I realized that it makes perfect sense. I mean, if there's a sport which Afghans are genetically predisposed to be good at, it would of course be martial arts, right? As one of my Afghan co-workers said to me, "We may suck at football, but we excell at kicking the crap out of each other."
Anyway, didn't even get through the first inning before there's a distant rumbling and the lights flicker. Then the cable goes out. Outstanding. Somebody blew something up. So up on the roof I go with some night-vision gear to see if I can figure out what's going on. No sign of fires or secondary explosions, so I'm not sure what got hit or how badly. Turns out (I discovered this morning) that the Talibs fired three 122mm rockets into Kabul last night. Perhaps indicative of the level of violence required to spark interest in this town, the event didn't even make the morning news, so I have no idea if there were any casualties.
To get around to the point of this post, after six months here with no real break, I've finally arranged to take some time off. Back to civilization in a week or so, after a quick overnight stop in Dubai. Specifically, London first and then the States, and if I'm lucky a short side-trip to Europe somewhere. Not sure how much time I'll have, but there's no point in leaving here for less than a couple of weeks. I have to be gone long enough to begin to forget what it's like or else I won't be willing to come back.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Range Day, Again
We took another batch of our new guys to the range the other day for familiarization training with the AK-47. As I've mentioned before, contrary to popular opinion most Afghans can't shoot at all. Even the Taliban tend to be, for all their experience, very poor shots. Unfortunately for the company, my guys aren't much better.
It doesn't help that for most of them the only training they receive is a couple of days instruction on how to operate a Kalashnikov and then a day at the range where they get to fire a total of ten rounds. If they hit the target at all, they're judged a success. If they score 50%, they're considered an expert. Far cry from US Army standards.
This time, we went to the range with about twenty ANP recruits. The Lion (a former ANP commando) had agreed to train them, and in exchange the ANP gave us enough ammunition to run our guys through. I was simultaneously pleased and disheartened to discover that the ANP can't shoot either. Doesn't say much for the security forces in this town, but hey, at least we're not the only ones.
We finished the day by holding a little competition between all the senior staff on the range. The operations manager, two of our supervisors and myself all loaded up ten rounds and tried to knock down some empty water bottles at fifty meters. As I hoped, the rest of the trainees were sitting in the shade and observing while I schooled our senior staff on how to shoot. Knocked down all five with only eight rounds (with an unzeroed weapon too), while the Ops Manager could only get two. My stock with the rank-and-file went up considerably.
Not that there's any tangible reward for good shooting. All I got was a sunburn.
It doesn't help that for most of them the only training they receive is a couple of days instruction on how to operate a Kalashnikov and then a day at the range where they get to fire a total of ten rounds. If they hit the target at all, they're judged a success. If they score 50%, they're considered an expert. Far cry from US Army standards.
This time, we went to the range with about twenty ANP recruits. The Lion (a former ANP commando) had agreed to train them, and in exchange the ANP gave us enough ammunition to run our guys through. I was simultaneously pleased and disheartened to discover that the ANP can't shoot either. Doesn't say much for the security forces in this town, but hey, at least we're not the only ones.
We finished the day by holding a little competition between all the senior staff on the range. The operations manager, two of our supervisors and myself all loaded up ten rounds and tried to knock down some empty water bottles at fifty meters. As I hoped, the rest of the trainees were sitting in the shade and observing while I schooled our senior staff on how to shoot. Knocked down all five with only eight rounds (with an unzeroed weapon too), while the Ops Manager could only get two. My stock with the rank-and-file went up considerably.
Not that there's any tangible reward for good shooting. All I got was a sunburn.
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