Pie in the Sky

The weather in Farah since my arrival has been blue skies and hot wind, with the relative clarity of the day depending on how much dust the wind kicks up. Everyone has commented on how cool it's been relative to before my arrival, with temperatures in the 100s but never topping 110 and only one day that was so truly brutally scorching that it felt like the earth had moved closer to the sun.

We've been hit by a series of sandstorms over the past few days, with wind whipping through the valley and driving fine sand into your eyes, the dust blotting out the mountains in the background. It's still hot, but the sun feels dimmer in the mornings. Flights have been grounded, and you can't help but feel constantly unclean from the layer of grit that accumulates in your hair over the course of the day.

It's been about a month since I've seen clouds. There are, on very rare mornings, a few wisps of cirrus off in the distance above the mountains, but for the most part the sky is an empty blue. There's just not enough moisture.

This morning the sky was completely clouded over with ominous grey storm clouds, the first I've seen in a month. It actually made me a little panicky, and I thought about going back to the barracks and waiting it out -- like clouds were enough that work would be cancelled due to inclement weather. "It looks like it's going to rain," I said to my coworkers. "It won't," they replied. "It already rained this year, and you missed it."

Here today, Guam tomorrow.

The Med Unit held a Combat Life Support -- CLS -- refresher for the SecFor guys a few days ago, and they let me tag along to try to pick up some pointers. I had gotten a two-day intro to CLS before I came to Afghanistan and loved it, and I was grateful that they let me sit in for the refresher even though I was never officially certified. It also shows a certain willingness to pitch in during emergencies rather than just being cargo; "good that you're trying to be more than just self-loading baggage," the XO said.

The SecFor guys can't shake their happy-go-lucky nature, so CLS class was a quick classroom refresher followed by an hour of cavorting in the sun for the practical exercise. The classroom time really just sought to reinforce the need to tourniquet early and often, although I did learn a few new and exciting medical nuggets. For example:

-- If bullets are still flying, everyone -- including the medics -- should be shooting back. "The single best medicine on any given battlefield is FIRE SUPERIORITY," we were told.

-- All CLS certified personnel can put in IVs. Generally speaking, CLS-certified personnel shouldn't bother putting in IVs, since too often people get distractedly obsessed with doing so and the patient bleeds to death while they're looking for the vein. (I never learned to put in IVs; doc promised to teach me if I swing by the Med Unit).

-- Don't get shot in the chest. That's really the big take home message of combat medicine. If you get shot in the chest, you'll probably end up with a sucking chest wound, and then air will build up in the chest cavity, and then the medics will have to stab you in the chest, through the ribs, with a gigantic, 14-gauge hollow needle to relieve the pressure so your lung doesn't collapse. "You'll thank them," the instructor told us. I'm not sure I believe that.

After classroom time, we walked down to the running trail. It was a perfect day for hanging out in the dust practicing medicine -- sunny and clear, hot with just a little bit of breeze. We split into groups of five, and I invited myself along with four of the Guam guys rather than sticking with the one other civilian who'd been in the training. The Guamanians bring a laid-back, fun-loving island attitude to everything they do, and it made it hard to recreate the actual stress of real-world combat medicine. "Trust me," the instructor said. "Doing this during actual combat SUCKS."

We started at the tourniquet station, but it was a little chaotic as people were still dividing into groups and figuring out where they should go, and we weren't sure if we should start or not. "Do you have any questions about tourniquets?" the instructor at the station asked. No one did. Before anyone could practice putting one on, the medic leading the training shouted "ROTATE! GO! GO! GO! Combat HUSTLE!"

My group took "Combat HUSTLE!" to mean "sprint between stations," and we did -- the Guam guys shouting GO! GO! GO! GO! GO! the entire way.

We arrived en mass at the stretcher station. "That sergeant over there is down and needs a stretcher!" the instructor said, waving towards a guy reclining in the dust. "Go get him!" The stretchers are stored folded into a small square, and getting them extended out to a usable format is apparently difficult; you have to unfold it, pull on it, and then twist the handles simultaneously to get a flat platform on which the patient can rest. The Guam guys wrestled with it for about 20 seconds when another group (slower than ours -- they apparently didn't get the "combat hustle" memo) showed up. "Looks like we're double booked," the instructor said. "You guys can go ahead and rotate."

As soon as she said the word rotate, the Guam guys started shouting "GO! GO! GO!" again, and we were off, sprinting like idiots. The instructor for the next station was standing next to mound of dirt, not unlike a snow-fort you might make if were living in place that had snow instead of several inches of hot dust on the ground. "All right!" said the instructor. "One of you has been shot in the chest!" I clutched my chest and threw myself theatrically into the dirt, hyperventilating. "I've been shot in the chest!" I shouted. "DAKOTA'S BEEN SHOT IN THE CHEST!" the Guam guys shouted. "Bang bang!" said the instructor. "They're shooting at you!"

One of the Guam guys grabbed me from behind, sliding his arms under my armpits and lifting me from the shoulders; another grabbed my legs at the knee, and the two of them picked me up more or less effortlessly and carried me behind the dirt pile. They dropped me and then joined the other guys, who were peering over the top of the dirt pile with index fingers and thumbs extended, pantomiming shooting and shouting "bang bang bang bang bang!" (Only one of the four pantomimed holding a rifle; finger pistols were the order of the day). "Ok!" shouted the instructor. "Treat the patient!"

They got out a kind of bandage made of plastic called a chest seal ("wounds from neck to navel get a piece of plastic"), pressed one to the front of my chest and the other to the back where the exit wound would be. "Anything else?" the instructor asked. "NEEDLE DECOMPRESSION!" they shouted simultaneously. (One thing's for sure: you can't fault the Guam guys for enthusiasm). They got out the ridiculous needle for chest decompression, counted down the correct number of ribs, and then indicated they'd stab it in right there. "Good," said the instructor. "Not good," I said. "You didn't say anything about anesthetic."

"ROTATE!" they called, and off we sprinted.

The next station was on pressure bandaging. "Your buddy's bleeding heavily from the arm and leg! Fix him up!" the instructor said, waving to another instructor lying on the ground. Two of the Guam guys sprung into action, one with an Israeli bandage (a wrap with a piece of plastic embedded in it to act as a fulcrum for putting pressure on wounds) and the other with quick-clot laced bandages and an ace wrap. It quickly appeared to devolve into a competition to see who could use the most gauze, resulting in a mummy-like conglomeration that may or may not have been effective stopping blood flow but that was definitely fun to look at. "We would've just tourniqueted him anyways," they said.

Pressure bandaging was the last stop, and all the groups came back together; it had been a fun training and everyone was in a good mood, laughing, drinking water, and standing in the shade of the ambulance practicing different ways of carrying patients. "Fireman's carry!" they shouted. "Assisted walking! Doberman!"

"What's the Doberman?" I asked. "Well, you get down on all fours and straddle the patient," I was told. "He wraps his arms around your neck, and you drag him forward on all fours, like you're a doberman." One guy threw himself on the ground to demonstrate, lying face up on his back in the dirt. The other guy got down on all fours on top of the patient, as promised, and the patient put his arms around his neck and interlocked his fingers so he could be dragged forward. The medic took about single step, dragging the patient about a foot. The patient shrieked and let go -- apparently the act of dragging him had filled up the seat of his pants with a good amount of hot, fine-powder dust.

"All right, listen up!" the lead medic shouted. "We're not done! There was an IED attack! We've got a MasCal! The patients are just over that hill -- GO! You've got FIVE MINUTES till the med-evac birds get here!"

(A MasCal is a "MASs CasuALty event." The wonkiness of the abbreviation had never occurred to me until I typed it out).

We all ran over the hill, and all the medics who had previously been stations instructors had arranged themselves in various positions. I was in the first wave that scattered to deal with patients, while a second wave ran off to get supplies. I took the farthest patient, a guy who'd pulled his foot up into his pants to simulate losing a foot. I took his tourniquet from him -- everyone carries a first aid kit for the medics to use; you in essence carry your own medical supplies to be used on yourself -- and put it on his leg as instructed, as close to the joint as possible.

"Too high," he told me. "For a foot wound like this, you'd want it lower, so more of the leg could be saved once they got me into surgery." I moved it to below the knee. The lead medic came up behind me, stopping briefly to grab a shoe ("Didja lose this?" she asked the patient) before heading over. "Tourniquet's WAY too low," she told me. "Put it as close to the joint as possible." I looked at the patient and he looked sheepish, and I moved the tourniquet. Just then, two helicopters flew over head. "The birds are here! Move the patients! GO GO GO!" (The helicopters weren't part of the training; it just so happens that the running trail abuts one of the helipads, and the trainers got lucky in the timing of the landing).

A Guamanian ran up with a stretcher. They loaded the patient on and then started jogging him towards the ambulance. "Combat speed!" they said, promptly dropping him into the dust. "Try again!" they shouted, hauling him back up and, eventually, wobblingly, over the finish line.

CLS training was outstandingly fun and a good little refresher of how to use everything in the med kits we all carry, but I largely put it out of my mind until I got an email this morning, asking if I'd mind if Public Affairs used my photo in their newsletter. They try to find bizarre looking photos for the newsletter and then have people write in with captions for them, a la the New Yorker. A shot of me and one of the Guam guys sprinting between stations had been chosen. "Everyone," they told me, "will appreciate what appears to be a random civilian being chased by a crazed Guamanian."

I for one look forward to the captions.

So Much for That "Fitness" Merit Badge

I vowed before arriving in Afghanistan that I'd leave in better shape than I arrived. With not much to do in the evenings except hit the gym, it seemed like departure with a respectable physique was in the bag. But I was in the SecFor office just two days ago when I stumbled across an entire case of Tagalongs -- the chocolate-covered, peanut-butter filled shortbread girl scouts cookies. Tagalongs, as far as I'm concerned, are god's food, perfect in every way. I could make a meal out of Tagalongs, if doing so wouldn't cause your heart to explode out of your chest and deflate on the table in front of you. "Who do I need to beg for one of these cookies?" I asked.

"Dude, just take a box," Captain Firepower* told me. "They're not anybody's. We've got cases lying around -- they just show up in the mail. The girl scouts are…" (and here he grinned) "…very patriotic."

So I took a box and devoured a quarter of it on the spot, fingers covered in the outer chocolate made soft by the desert heat. But then that whole fitness goal came back to mind, and I guiltily decided to drop the rest off in the office next door to mine, where they had previous complained that my predecessor was a "net subtractor" from the office snack pool. "Be an adder, not a subtractor," they had told me, and Girl Scout cookies seemed like the sort of thing that would make me a hero and ensure that I could continue pilfering from them for the foreseeable future.

I strolled into their office brandishing the cookies and announced that I had great news. "I brought some Tagalongs," I said with flourish. "You'll note that I'm being an adder, not a subtractor."

"Oh god, more Girl Scout cookies?" they said. "There's a whole case of them under the TV. We put them away when we all started to get fat." I examined the area under the TV, and sure enough there were some 20 boxes of Girl Scout cookies -- Samoas, Do-si-Dos, more Tagalongs, a few flavors I hadn't even seen before. I ripped open a box of Samoas (my favorite!), shoveled two into my mouth at light speed and then put the rest next to the Tagalongs. I was almost dizzy at the idea of an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord of free Girl Scout cookies.

And now it's two days later. I've eaten more cookies in the past 48 hours than I probably have in the last two years. My Grand Master Plan involving healthy living and plenty of push-ups has largely been supplanted by a world where Girl Scout-endorsed shortbread products almost literally grow on trees. The guys next door have vowed to put the cookies away ("damn you for bringing these out again," they said), and part of me is hopeful that they will; the other part of me, though is wondering why anyone would bother striving for visible abdominal muscles when there are Thin Mints to be had.

*Captain Firepower is the plucky young captain in charge of ensuring we've got enough firepower on missions. I'm moving to a nickname only policy in this blog.

In Memoriam

There was a casualty on August 17th, the first since I joined the PRT. He was a member of EOD, Explosive Ordnance Disposal, the bomb squads made famous by the movie The Hurt Locker. He was on the team called when three IEDs were found in the Shewan district of Bala Boluk, where I had been just a few weeks prior; he had apparently defused one of the bombs and then picked it up to move it to another location for a safe, controlled detonation, as is common practice. It exploded, killing him instantly.

I had seen him around base but can't say that I knew him -- we had never spoken. Press releases said that he'd previously won a purple heart in Iraq when the shockwave from a bomb had perforated his eardrum, leaving him deaf on one side. He was, by all accounts, well liked, and a lot of the members of PRT had hung out with him. Even without having known him, it's hard not to be affected by the quiet, almost disbelieving sense of loss on base. There's always hope that he'll be the last, but I can't imagine how I'll take it in the future if it happens to someone I know. He was two weeks away from finishing his tour.

His name was Derek. He was 24 years old.

Annie Get Your...

Every trip off base is considered a mission, and every mission is preceded by a convoy brief. Much of each brief is repetition, and my favorite part that's always repeated is the slide on the "principles of fire control." The first bullet points, high at the top, instruct one to destroy the greatest threat first while avoiding target overkill -- "one shot, one kill, hooah? Hooah." The final bullet point, way at the bottom -- almost like a suggestion or a plaintive request -- is to avoid fratricide.

("It should go without saying," the Commander told me when I asked why it was so low on the list. "But you did say it," I pointed out. No change to the slides).

During the Embassy in-brief, they remind gun-qualified people not to carry on compound unless they're specifically part of the perimeter defense plan -- to avoid not fratricide, but rather "a blue-on-blue incident," a euphemism I find pleasant.

Every uniformed American is required to carry a gun at all times except while exercising. For most people that's either an M4 or M16 rifle or a pistol worn in a holster under the armpit, strapped to the thigh or tucked into their waistband. A few unlucky people are stuck lugging around guns that are large enough to require kickstands to operate, like the 240B ("two-forty Bravo"), and it's odd to see them in essence hauling a large piece of machinery around with them to the chow hall or laundry room. Odder still is to see a rifle dangling by its strap on the towel hooks outside the showers, or the barrel of a rifle poking an inch or two out from under the shower curtains that partition off the stalls in the restroom.

The Lieutenant in charge of giving out money ("Lieutenant Moneybags"), next to a pile of guns.

The Bases of Greater Herat

It took five hours to cover the 250 kilometers between Farah and Herat, the cultural capital of Afghanistan and home to mosques, minarets and my boss. I had been pretty excited about the trip for a number of reasons, not least of all being that I was finally going to get to see the fabled Blue Mosque of Herat. I'd been scheming to get to said mosque since my failed efforts to sneak into Afghanistan while traveling after my junior year in college, when I was a carefree idiot and the Taliban were still in charge.

But of course I didn't make it to the Blue Mosque -- which, I discovered after some mournful googling, is actually called the Jumah ("Friday") Mosque, to avoid confusion with another Blue Mosque in Afghanistan, in Balkh province in the north. I didn't actually make it into Herat proper at all: our trip was exclusively to military bases on the outskirts of the city, first to Camp Stone (run by the Americans, with a chow hall that stocks both excellent onion rings and non-alcoholic beer), and then on to the heart of things at Regional Command West (RC-West, if you will) headquarters at Camp Arena, co-run by the Spaniards and Italians.

It was definitely an interesting trip, tagging along with the Commander of our PRT to his meetings to provide the governance-focused civilian view on things. We had scores of meetings, the most important of which was with the general in charge of RC-West -- a stately, handsome Italian one-star named Claudio Berto who looks exactly like you'd expect an Italian general to look. After years of working at huge embassies (tiny cog, enormous machine), it was definitely odd to be one of two people sitting down with a general in charge of thousands and thousands of soldiers, and to have my opinion matter to him.

I am slated to head back to Herat in September, and am determined to see the blue mosque come hell or high water. In the mean time, I was more than content with a truly excellent pizza, a half dozen espressos crammed into a 24-hour time frame, and a ride home that happened to pass by a small herd of wild camels.

Well, it was fun while it lasted.

I made it just over two months without trimming the hair on my chin. The photo above, helmet hair and all, is the end result of that effort: a decently commanding and certainly respectable beard. Afghans approved.

But the long hair on my chin was remarkably annoying while wearing a helmet -- the two-pronged chin strap curls the facial hair back under and makes your whole face itch. I also felt like the beard was getting some pretty unattractive 3-D puffiness to it that had to go.

I'm headed off to another city tomorrow to meet my boss. He's about 250 kilometers away from me, and I've been in country almost a month without having met him; the beard trimming was in no small part an attempt at respectability in advance of that meeting. The base he's located at is run by the Italians and is known for its pizza and excellent chow hall; I've only been in Farah about three weeks, but I can't pretend I'm not excited about that.

I do feel oddly naked with most of my facial hair gone, though, and a resurgence may very well be forthcoming.

Dust and Soil: Bakwa

Yesterday I went to my second province outside of Farah City Center: Bakwa.

"Ah, you're going to Bakwa, eh?" said the Doc. "It's, um, pretty bleak." "Bakwa?" said the coarse-mouthed First Lieutenant in charge of giving out money. "That place sucks balls."

I was again tagging along with our Ag guy, who was going to hold a shura (an Afghan community gathering, like a town hall) to discuss deep irrigation wells. I wanted to talk elections -- just to check the pulse in a rural area and see if anyone had any interest whatsoever.

Bakwa is very much a disputed district. The Marines have put in a lot of effort, but it's still a toss up on security, and some of parts of the district still have distinct Taliban leanings. There's little water but excellent soil, two conditions that make opium an attractive cash crop, and the district is one of the major poppy producers in the region.

This is what they're fighting over:

Taken from the window of a Cougar on the three-hour, forty-kilometer drive to Bakwa.

It was admittedly not all so bleak as that, and there were the odd splashes of green and a few strategically placed mud huts here and there. For the most part, though, it was wide open nothingness.

Also from the window; touched up to remove a bit of the glare, which definitely upped the color.

It was 120 degrees when arrived at Bakwa's district center, a sun-baked, trash-filled empty lot; I exited the Cougar next to a pile of burnt cans and chicken feathers, next to some cast-off concertina wire. We were in the "city center," though in reality there is no city, and not much of a district center, either. People come in from time to time to have meetings, but almost no one lives there, and even the village opposite is abandoned. The Marines, at the request of the populace, kicked out the Taliban and fixed up the central bazaar, but there are few merchants and even fewer shoppers. "We cleaned it up for you -- there's a butcher, a baker, some shops," they said during the shura. "If you don't shop there, the merchants are going to give up and go away."

The parking lot.

The actual district center, where shuras and meetings are held, was reasonably nice, filled with chairs and carpets; twenty five Afghan elders were waiting inside to talk about deep irrigation wells.

The entrance to the district center. The red words on the right read "in the name of God;" the white on the left is the beginning of the words "Welcome to the peaceful city of Bakwa."

Doc had warned me that every time he goes to Bakwa he ends up getting mortared; the Marines are fully tuned in to the sound of rocket attacks, and I was set to be the first one to hit the deck the second they shouted "incoming." But they never did: the population of Bakwa, no matter their political bent, wants deep irrigation wells more than anything. Ag (in lieu of his name, I'm going with his position) explained that at this time, the PRT can only fund twenty wells, and that the district leader, in negotiations with individual villages, would be in charge of determining where they would go. Farmers would be required to swear that they will not use the wells for opium production. Ag acknowledged that twenty wells isn't enough for everyone, but it's a start.

I briefly talked elections (a topic on which I will say nothing until after they take place on September 18). Our Marine liaison officer reminded the elders that continued funding for projects -- like the solar street lights previously installed, the upcoming deep irrigation wells, and a potential future program for fertilizer distribution -- were contingent on the continued support of the people for the Government of Afghanistan, and not the Taliban.

And then we had lunch. Bakwa is known for its wheat and Afghans, to the fullest extent of their ability, are definitely foodies with surprisingly refined palettes; stone-ground Bakwa flour is considered to make better bread (Indian-style naan, cooked quickly in a hot clay oven) than what's found in Farah city. The bread accompanied chicken and potatoes in an tomato-lentil sauce, and was indeed better than what we have in the city. ("Our bread tastes like feet," said the First Lieutenant, "except when it tastes like potting soil.")

Quoth the Gunny of the Marines: "this is a hundred dollar meal. You believe that? I gave them a hundred bucks. For this. WHERE'S THE RICE?" It appeared that the organizer of the shura had absconded with the remainder of the money, and I seconded the gunny's feeling: Afghan rice is ridiculously good.

I wandered outside to take a few more photographs (SecFor followed close behind; "you're not allowed to wander off alone, sir"). We weren't attacked or shelled, we got some work done, and I got a couple photographs of a pretty desolate place.

I secretly love this picture.

And that was that.

Fields and Canals: Shewan

My first trip out of Farah city was to Bala Boluk (literally "Upper Block") district, due northeast of our FOB. We were headed out to a series of villages near the town of Shewan to check on some USG-funded water projects -- a stream diversion project to keep the Farah river (the "Farah Rud," in Pashto) from eroding a town wall near Shewan itself; a dam-like "superpass" that will facilitate irrigation near the town of Tahksirak, and another canal-related project in the village of Shia Jinggal.

These villages are tiny, and there's no hope of knowing where they are. You won't find them on common maps of Afghanistan, and I include the names here only because I find them mellifluous and pleasant-sounding. Because of the Farsi influence, almost all place names have the stress on the last syllable; Shia Jing-GAL, Tahk-sirAK. Farah is no exception -- it rhymes with "hurrah," not with Sarah.

I was tagging along with our Department of Ag rep, a soft-spoken, good-natured Texan with an easy smile and a light southern accent. He's pleasantly self-effacing, but with a comprehensive knowledge of all things agricultural, he's arguably the most important civilian in bucolic Farah: he knows when and how to organize seed distributions, what sorts of fertilizers to hand out, how to drill wells and run irrigation lines. The link between poppy sales and Taliban funding makes poppy eradication and replacement high on the list of USG priorities; the PRT does a lot of Ag outreach.

The road to Shewan is paved for the majority of the trip, making it a relatively pleasant and quick jaunt through dusty fields of nothing -- about an hour and a half to cover about forty miles. The city itself used to be firmly owned by the Taliban, but the Marines booted them out and the PRT was quick to move in with quality-of-life projects; the waterworks that we were headed to are part of that.

We were supposed to meet the contractor in Shewan's city center and follow him to the stream diversion project, but he no-showed us. We tried to call him, and then to get through to him with the help of our Afghan assistant. No dice. The Lieutenant who's generally in charge of doling out money like candy notices that trucks -- tiny little Mazda pick ups -- were passing by laden with rocks, and he flagged one down. Through a Pashto translator, he determined that they were going to our water project. They agree to let us follow them; some officers from the Afghan National Police (the ANP) came along as well.

Here was the problem: we were not in cars. We were not in armored cars or up-armored Humvees, which themselves are pretty massive vehicles. We weren't even in MRAPs, Mine-Resistant Anti-Penetration vehicles, heavy trucks with a V-shaped bottom that explosions deflect up and away from.

We were in Cougars.




Cougars are massive vehicles that appear to be made from converted tractor-trailors, draped in inches of steel and so fully blast-resistant that insurgent rarely bother to waste their explosives on us, preferring softer targets. (If you look closely in the picture below, you'll note that SecFor has attached a Guamanian flag somewhere on each of the Cougars -- either on one of the antennas, or under the covering on the gunner's turret). They're enormous.



We were off the road for about four minutes when we got stuck.

I wasn't sure what was going on; generally speaking, the passengers are forbidden from getting out until the door is opened by SecFor. There aren't a ton of windows in the back of a cougar, and the five-point harness seatbelt keeps you pretty firmly tied down. And it's pretty unlikely that I, the least handy person on earth, would be of much help.

They eventually tied the bumper to the front of another cougar and bump-pulled it out of the gulch it was stuck in. We pulled into the riverbed of the Farah Rud -- it dries up in the dead heat of summer -- and drove to the project.

It was 110 degrees at 11 in the morning, but the project hands were happy to see us, and they pointed out what they'd done. The project is a community effort involving something called gabions -- strong, four-foot wire baskets woven by women in the cities and then filled with rocks by the men; they're stacked to create walls to divert the stream. Having women weave the raw materials for the project and the men provide the labor makes both genders stakeholders in the project -- something rare in Afghanistan. It also ups the number of people involved, providing both livelihood and a means of occupying otherwise idle paws.

A policeman, friends with one of the workers, pointed to a distant building across the flat, rock-strewn brush. "The Taliban were there two days ago," he said. "They shot at us, but we wounded two of them." I asked if they planned to stop work because of the threat and he shook his head. "They're always threatening," he said. "They told even told the shepherd to stop taking his goats around. They're not reasonable."

We walked down the bank of the river for a bit, past a massive marijuana field that probably covered the area of half a football field. Aside from the tiny plants that grow wild on the compound of US Embassy Islamabad -- DEA assured us it was low quality -- I'd never seen it cultivated before. "This is nothing," said the plucky captain in charge of ensuring that there's enough firepower on each of our missions. "It'll be shoulder high in a few months." He's in the army and by extension not a pot smoker, but he exudes West Coast and I don't doubt him.

Despite supporting agriculture projects in the hopes of finding viable alternatives to growing narcotics, the PRT is not in the business of drug enforcement. Dealing with a half a football field's worth of pot -- which, our translators assured us, is likely only for personal use -- is well out of our jurisdiction. We walk away.

The next project is in Shia Jinggal and as we're pulling up, the gunner leans down from his seat and calls out, "just so you know, sir -- this isn't exactly a friendly neighborhood."

Shia Jinggal is an ancient sun-baked mud-brick village with a single narrow street running the length of it. It was beautiful, albeit spare; I cursed myself for forgetting my camera. The surrounding area was lain with opium fields, harvested a few months prior; there were poppy stalks drying for next year's seed at the entrance to the village.

It was eerily empty, completely silent except for the sounds of our footfalls. "Anybody home?" called out one of the SecFor guys. Nothing. They pulled in tight around us. "This," I was told, "is definitely not the village to take your helmet off in."

We walked through the village without seeing anyone, ending up at a stream running behind it. There was an emaciated cow on the bank of the river, and piles of clothes left by women who had been doing the washing but run to hide at the approach of soldiers. The call to prayer sounded behind us.

We kept walking. The stream curved around the wall of the village, and there was a massive dog, an angry Afghan mastiff, chained to a tree and barking furiously; he threw himself at us but caught on his chain, yanking backwards each time and making himself angrier than before. "If they didn't know we were here before, they do now," SecFor said. We kept walking.

The project, headworks for a new canal, hadn't started. The Ag guy pointed out where it would be, but it was obvious that the no work had taken place. Eagle-eyes SecFor spotted a man in the fields, staring as us. They kept a close eye on him, I looked for him, but never saw him. We walked back.

In the stream near the village, three old men with long white beards were performing their required ablutions before prayer: feet to above the ankles, hands to the elbows. We tried to ask them questions, but they waved us off, focusing on washing. We walked back through the village, still empty and silent, creepy beyond any speaking of it.

A pack of kids was waiting at the entrance. There were probably twenty of them, none older than 13 or 14. They stared at us, silent and hostile. "Give us something," one called out. "Candy."

The lead for SecFor, an enormous Guamanian with close-cropped hair and a thin mustache, whirled around and moved in close to the pack of kids. "Do you remember the last time we were here?" he asked. "Last time, when we gave you pencils and candy? Do you remember what you did? Ask them if they remember," he told the translator.

And then pounding his chest, a wall of towering, furious muscle, he said hissed out "I remember. You broke the pencils, and you threw them at us. And rocks, too. It doesn't matter if you remember, because I do. I don't forget."

And then to the translator: "You tell them to think about what they did last time. And tell them that we'll be back, and maybe next time we'll think about giving them something, when we're damn good and ready." And he stalked back to the vehicle. I have never been so happy to leave a place.

In the vehicles, we debated moving on to a third locale. The day had already gone long because of difficulties in locating our destinations, but the Ag guy said he knew where the final village was -- a third of a mile walk from a washed out road where we'd stopped before. They asked me if I was game. "As long as it's less hostile than Shia Jinggal, then absolutely," I said.

The vehicles dropped us in an empty spot near the highway where a small dirt road quickly became impassable, cut with a ditch from a dried out stream. We started hiking, leaping the ditch and then continuing on past hip-high corn fields fed by low irrigation ditches. The walk took maybe ten minutes.

The canal works were in beautiful, a tree-lined grotto adjacent to a walled village. The concrete for the first stage of the canal had been poured, and a few kids with bare feet and sun-bleached hair were working on it halfheartedly. The military assumed the brunt of the work had stopped, as is traditional, because the mid-day heat is too brutal to work in.

A passing goat shepherd waved to us, and a few old men came out to greet us. "Welcome to Tahksirak," they said. A pack of kids came out to talk to us, to shake hands and hang out; it was infinitely more relaxed than Shia Jinggal -- pleasant, even, in the shade of the trees next to the running water. I took off my helmet; some of the kids grabbed for it, and I rapped it with my knuckles, pantomiming that it can stop bullets.

The elders pointed out what work had been done, and thanked us; they were grateful for the canal. We asked if they'd had any problems with the Taliban, and the oldest looking of the group, with a long, white beard and thick round glasses, kicked his sandaled foot into the air. "I'll stomp them myself if they try to come here," he told us. The engineers took photos for their reports, and I waved my goodbyes to the kids. The elders shook our hands and told us to come back any time, and they clearly meant it. We were maybe five miles from Shia Jinggal.

Background Info: Subnational Governance.

Before I get any further along, I think it's time to dig a little bit into the subject of Sub-National Governance -- that is, the structure of local politics in Afghanistan.

Doing so is terrifying for a handful of reasons:

1. It's complicated as hell and I'm pretty likely to get some things wrong, which is bad because it's in no small part my job to know and understand this stuff.

2. It's entirely possible that I'll get all wrapped up in the subject (I won't lie: this stuff turns my crank) and get carried away, and in the mean time the few readers of this blog may slip into a coma at the how dry the material is.

3. Saying too much or (worse!) editorializing on the topic would put me WELL out of my lane and get me thumped on the head. And I nobody wants that.

With that in mind, here's a quick sketch of how the politics of Afghanistan functions at the provincial level:

At the top, you've got the Governor. As you might expect, he's in charge. Here's the thing, though: the Governor is not an elected official. He's appointed by the President, and he's not necessarily from the same province he's appointed to. It's as if Obama were allowed to choose the Governor of, say, Georgia, and it wouldn't be unexpected for him to pick a Michigander for the post.

The Governor isn't democratically elected, but the Provincial Council or PC is. In Farah, the PC is nine people, and it's mandated by law that a certain percent -- a third, I believe -- be women. They're the elected representatives (at the Province level) and are sort of a conduit for the cares and concerns of the people whom they represent.

Here's the thing, though: neither the Governor nor the PC have a budget to work with. There is, in fact, almost no such thing as a Provincial budget. Ponder that for a minute: if the Governor or the Council want to build a road or a school are accomplish any of the other millions of things a functioning local government does, they have no money to do so.

When things need to be accomplished, it's up to the Provincial Line Ministers, also known as Provincial Department Directors, to make it happen. In order for them to do so, THEY have to contact Kabul to get the money. So the Ministry of, for example, Education, has a guy on the ground who's the Province-level head of education, and he -- or, very occasionally, she -- has some money that comes from Kabul for opening or closing schools or what have you. It's not a lot of money, because the nation of Afghanistan is pretty cash-strapped as of now, although obviously that big mineral find of a few months ago may change that.

So, if the Governor and the PC determine that they want, say, a road built, they can't just authorize it. They have to work with the Line Minister for Rural Rehabilitation and Development, who himself may have to lobby Kabul for funds. It's supposed to something resembling checks and balances, though it's hard to say how effective the checking and balancing actually is.

Being wholeheartedly American, it's easy to come in and try to Monday morning quarterback the whole arrangement and "fix it" with a bent towards democracy as we know and love it: have the Governor be popularly elected, give him a budget and the PC veto power, tie PC seats directly to districts so there's some semblance of geographic representation, and move on from there.

But the part that's easy to overlook that we so firmly lack in America is that the physical geography of Afghanistan is overlain with an extraordinarily complex human geography called tribalism. Tribes are generally associated with (but aren't strictly limited to) the Pashtun majority. They tend to end in 'zai, the Pashto word for "sons of" -- the Popalzai and the Barakzai, the Nurzai, Alizai, and Achakzai, what have you. There are tribes upon tribes, and (because it's not already complex enough), there are also sub-tribes to contend with.

By definition, an election means that there are winners and losers, and in a tribal environment, that would translate directly to a win or loss for an entire tribe. Accusations of corruption in elections would be magnified by the stakes involved in getting one's own tribe elected. By bringing in a Governor from another province, entrusting ministers from Kabul with the budget and having them be advised by a group of locally elected officials, you reduce the influence of tribalism in the distribution of public goods. It's not perfect, but it does, to a degree, make sense.

Wheels Down

When the flight from Kabul breaks through the clouds over Farah, it does so over a vast expanse of nothingness. The ground is an ocean of red mud studded with occasional mountains, and there's neither greenery nor people as far as the eye can see: no trees, no villages, no roads or houses or signs of life. There's no water, either -- nothing but flat, dusty, hard-baked red clay nothingness. As you approach the PRT (in a small 18-seat prop plane too small to stand fully upright in, flown by Australian contractors), things don't improve much. You pass a few dusty walled compounds, zip by more mountains, and just when you think you may be moving vaguely in the direction of civilization, the ride ends and you suddenly come in for a landing.

It's beautiful, though in a stark sort of way.

I was met on the tarmac by the entire civilian crew of the PRT, who helped me drag my bags out of the airplane and load them into the back of an armored Land Cruiser. We dropped off the bags in my temporary quarters -- a bedroom with room for three, though I was the only occupant -- and then I was taken to my new office.

Amongst my favorite Chinese expression -- and one that I find myself using here all the time -- is, "The sky is high, and the emperor is far." Nowhere has that phrase been more applicable than in my new office. "This box," I was told, "has all the servers in it, so don't spill anything on it. The computers break down all the time so you'll need to call IT in Kabul and have them walk you through how to fix it." (Fiddling with servers when you're at an embassy is, generally speaking, frowned upon). And then, far more comical: "Those boxes are all parts to your Land Cruiser. You'll definitely need to replace the battery and probably do some other repair work as well." I didn't realize I was getting a car -- much less an armored one -- but it just goes to show how far the Emperor really is: if I were in Kabul, there would be a hundred employees and a thousand different regulations standing between me and "light repairs" on an Embassy-owned vehicle.

They gave me a windshield tour of the massive compound, which seems to go on for miles. "One thing we don't lack for," I was told, "is open space." The base is sprawling and full of identical, unlabelled buildings; I anticipate being lost frequently. There's plenty of room to run and a long jogging trail next to the airstrip, which itself abuts a long range -- that is, a mortar range. The air in Farah in July usually hovers around the 120 degree mark (it was a balmy 105 on my arrival -- "when is this cold snap going to end?" asked the XO), so the range is generally in use before the day gets too hot; I was told to anticipate waking up to the sound of outgoing mortars.

We swung by a military staff meeting so I could be introduced and then hit chow -- lasagna night, not a ton of healthy food but definitely not bad lasagna, and all the ice cream you can eat at a price -- $0 -- that can't be beat.

I spent a few hours talking to the guy I'm replacing about everything I could think of -- who the movers and shakers in the province are, which areas are Taliban controlled vs. not, all the way down to the nitty gritty like how to do laundry on base. (You drop if off with in the laundry with a yellow ribbon tied on the bag to indicate "civilian clothes;" it gets washed and folded and returned, usually the same day). And then it was bed time.

The next morning started with a convoy brief, the meeting in advance of travel to make sure everyone is on the same sheet of music as to where we're going and how we're getting there. The meeting is run by SecFor, or Security Forces, who are there to protect the members of the PRT, both civilian and military. The SecFor team in Farah is an instantly-likeable group of happy-go-luck guys from Guam, enthusiastically upbeat and outgoing to a man. Half of them responded to roll call with an enthusiastic army Hooah, and when I was introduced as the new State guy, they were the most welcoming of the bunch. Convoy brief is largely for the SecFor themselves and for routine missions is mostly a review. At the last slide, left on the screen for half a second at most, the SecFor lead noted -- "really, if you don't know this stuff by now -- that's as wrong as two boys kissing and the Pope watching."

And then I was taken to meet the Governor.

So here's the deal: I am thirty years old. I have a batchelor's degree in worthless from a second tier university (possibly even a low-ranked first tier university, depending on who you're talking to and whether they graduated from the same school as me). I have about six years of work experience with the Department of State, and of those six years, three have been spent in language training (thank you, US taxpayers). Prior to State, I worked as a contractor to the United States Department of Education, where I was primarily in charge of unjamming the Xerox machine, though occasionally my boss would entrust me with a dollar fifty to go get him diet cokes. What I'm saying here is that I'm a mid-level functionary in a large government bureaucracy. And I'm here to help.

And all of a sudden I'm in the fourth largest province in Afghanistan, a province that covers an area about twice as large as Maryland. It's got just under a million people, which puts it on par with Montana, population wise. It produces some legit agricultural products -- a lot of wheat, some pomegranates, some grapes and corn and a few other things -- but it also produces a heck of a lot of poppy. Of eleven districts, one (Purchaman, which literally means "full of orchards") is accessible only by air; a second, Gulistan ("the land of flowers"), is three days drive away due to lack of infrastructure, despite how small the province is. Some areas are fully under the control of GIRoA; others are still wrestling with the Taliban, and laid over top of all this is a complex map of Pashtun tribalism. It's mind-blowingly complicated.

And the Governor wants to meet me, because I am replacing a person with whom he has built a slow and steady relationship over two years, whom he trusts and turns to frequently for advice and counsel, and I am somehow supposed to take over that role.

I think I'm up for it.

Obviously there's more to say on this topic -- this will be a year-long saga -- but it's bed time. After a week, I finally got internet installed in my room, so more regular posts should be forthcoming. In the mean time, to everyone who emailed to check if I was ok during the long silence -- not to worry.

Onward and Upward: to the PRT

Tomorrow's the big day: deployment to my PRT in Farah province, in the southwest of the country along the Iranian border. Sandwiched between Helmand province in the south -- famous for its opium production and home of the big Marine Corps offensive in Marjah -- and Herat, a relatively stable province in the north, Farah is truly the middle of nowhere.

I was surprisingly productive during the extra days I was stuck in Kabul. I spent a few days checking in -- making sure all the IT stuff worked, filling out paperwork to get my danger, hardship and language pay correctly lined up, collecting equipment for the field and getting reinforcement lectures on embassy policies, security, what have you. Admin type stuff: important but mind numbing.

And then I had consultations. "Consultations" are usually 5 days just before you leave for post during which you're supposed to be meeting with people who know about where you're going and may be useful in your future; in reality, those five days are rarely so productive as all that and generally involve a lot of leisurely latte drinking. But my consultations in Kabul were actually useful: meeting with people who either know about Farah or want to know about Farah, or who have too much money lying around and need someone to help them hand it out before the end of the rapidly approaching fiscal year.

I was introduced to a USAID guy who had just come back from Farah. He, a former Marine with a booming voice and an infectious oorah-enthusiasm for the province, gave me the full run down on everything he could think of: what kind of projects we've funded and in what areas, where the Marines are and where they're pushing, where the Taliban is more in control and the Government of Afghanistan (GIRoA, or the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, pronounced "Jie-rowa") is less in control, and vice versa. He pointed out rivers and mountains, major transportation links, and gave me a rundown of how the various Pashtun tribes are distributed.

He made me extraordinarily excited to be heading to Farah.

"Get a good look at all these plants now, though," he said. "All this greenery -- there's NOTHING like that out there."

So tomorrow I head out to my dusty corner of nowhere, to the military base pictured below, surrounded by miles of flat nothing in the hot Afghan desert for the next year. ("It's beautiful. Kind of. In a way," I was told). I'll be with about 500 American soldiers and 500 Italians, sandwiched between peace in the north and full-scale war in the south. I'm nervous, but in a first-day-of-school sort of way: will the Governor and other local leaders like me? Will I get along with the soldiers? What if there's something important I've forgotten to do? Ultimately, it will be fine. In 24 hours, it will be home.



And just for good measure: a few photos of Farah, culled from the internet.

Pashtun no more?

The quest for a commanding, Pashtun-style beard may be coming to a rapid close: this morning I shaved the neck portion of my facial hair and I feel infinitely better. The rest may need to be trimmed down shortly.

The Kabul Conference and Clinton

So, Clinton was here.

The Secretary walking in with Ambassador Eikenberry. Probably not my strongest photography ever.

Let's try a different shot.

This photo is perhaps even worse than the last one.

So, despite my not so good photography of the event (I'm sure my parents are thrilled that they dropped a bazillion dollars at Christmas to get me the camera that recorded that moment for posterity), it was still cool to see Clinton. I'd like to think she came just to see me, but the reality of it is that she came for the Kabul conference, the single largest donor conference to take place in Afghanistan in a good fistful of decades. The whole world was here, it seemed -- Clinton comes with an understandably large staff, and and there were Foreign Ministers from dozens of countries, each with their own entourage.

(Through a series of coincidences, a buddy of mine ended up sharing a car with the Egyptian Foreign Minister. "Did you talk to him?" we asked over dinner last night. "A little," she said, "but what was I going to say? Lecture him on bringing democracy to the Middle East?" She, tasked with note taking but inappropriately badged to get past the hordes of security, spent the majority of the conference in the parking lot).

The conference basically shut down Kabul, including the US Embassy. Most of our local staff were off and consequently most non-essential/non-conference support sections were closed. The commissary and coffee shop on compound were likewise shut and the Embassy felt like a ghost town: everyone was sucked into working.

The conference is the reason I'm still in Kabul. I was slated to fly out to the field more or less ASAP on a regularly scheduled Embassy flight, but all of our planes were grounded for the big event.

(The Embassy, through the offices of USAID -- the Agency for International Development -- owns and operates an airline for domestic flights in Afghanistan. Formerly known as PRT Air (Provincial Reconstruction Team Air), Embassy Air owns and runs over ten aircraft and operates in all provinces of Afghanistan on both a regular schedule and charter basis).

I had exactly nothing to do with the Kabul Conference. I kept waiting to be tapped on the shoulder and asked to go take notes, but it never happened. That's not hugely surprising -- as a field officer, I'm assigned to a section of the Embassy (IPA, or Inter-Provincial Affairs) that had nothing to do with the conference, and it's rare for one section to poach from another. And I was in the check-in process, which is somewhat sacred since if you don't do it, you can't function in your job -- you'll lack computer access, and info on who to contact for what, and your pay won't be right, and what have you. On top of all that, about half the world was flown in TDY (that is, on a temporary basis), so there were plenty of hands on deck besides mine.

But I did get to hear Clinton speak, in the main lobby of the chancery. She thanked the Ambassador for his hospitality ("Ambassador Eikenberry," she clarified jokingly. "I mean, you guys have a whole STABLE of Ambassadors here." She's not kidding -- there are five people of Ambassador rank at the Embassy, with six if you also count SRAP Richard Holbrooke, the President's Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan).

She thanked the Americans working in Afghanistan and then gave a special thanks to the Afghans who work at the Embassy, recognizing that doing so often puts them at risk. She joked about conditions at the Embassy -- she seemed to know that housing is the number one morale issue at post -- and gave us a quick rundown of her participation in the Kabul Conference and the document that Karzai had presented to chart the way forward.

In short, her brief remarks (maybe five minutes total) made her seem both extraordinarily competent (she's clearly up on all things Afghanistan, as one would expect) as well as extremely dialed in to what's going on for all of us on the ground. Little things like acknowledging the housing situation and thanking our local staff for putting themselves in harms way made it clear that she wasn't giving a standard set of remarks. Bottom line: I remain completely enamored of my boss.

That's all I've got for now (more on the process of checking in at the Embassy in a day or two). But in clearing off those photos of Clinton from my memory card, I also came across a few photos of me from training, including this awesome shot in body armor, so I'll close with that.


Both rugged AND enthusiastic. Perfect for match.com? Oh yes.

Rockin' the Kabul Look

There's definitely a US Embassy Kabul look. And that look, amongst the men at least, definitely involves facial hair. I've had a beard since 2006, where I grew it in Pakistan as a joke but kept it once I realized how much I liked it. Beards were definitely making a comeback in DC over my last year at home, but not like here: EVERYONE has at least a little bit of scruff, and I for one am feeling right at home. I don't plan to shave much, if at all, over the course of the next year, and when I mentioned my plan to grow what I lovingly refer to as a "hostage beard" to some guys at the Duck and Cover, someone immediately chimed in with advice:

"Dude, get some scissors," he said. "You've got to trim the mustache part. I had about three months worth of facial hair on me when I bit into an apple, and a good inch of 'stache got caught between my teeth and the apple, and I about ripped off part of my face. I was honestly near tears -- and when I pressed my upper lip to try to make some of the pain go away, my hand came away all bloody. You can go all ZZ Top on the chin part -- but get yourself some scissors for the mustache."

The Embassy Kabul look also features khaki cargo pants (which I invested in heavily) and polo shirts. There's a slim minority at the Embassy sweltering in suits in the 100 degree heat, but the majority seem to be rocking polos.

The Kabul look also seems to involve sidearms carried in thigh holsters.

I've never been around so many guns and I think it's gonna be a while till it starts to seem normal. Some of it isn't too out of the ordinary -- the contract guards carrying M4 rifles and the Afghan National Army guys holding AK-47s, and that's all fine and good and close to normal, especially within the context of Embassy and foreign and all that. But then you realize that the barricade in front of you, the one you've walked by a dozen times without thinking, is actually a machine gun nest. And it's actually manned, by a guy with his hand on the butt stock of the weapon: this isn't a game.

More people on compound carry guns than I've ever seen before. And it's strangely comforting. I'm not armed and don't plan to be at any time (I'll leave that to what my military Subject Matter Expert in Indiana referred to as "our trigger-pulling friends in camouflage"), and diplomats are, technically speaking, forbidden by the Geneva conventions from carrying weapons. I'm not sure how much regard the Taliban will have for my healthy working knowledge of international treaties and vast array of intimidating ballpoint pens, though, so I can't say I'm unhappy to have so many people at arms distance who have a pistol strapped to their thigh.

Equipment Distribution

Before you go to Afghanistan in general, but in particular before you go to a PRT (that is, a Provincial Reconstruction Team -- the reason I'm headed to Farah), everyone's got advice on what to bring.

Definitely bring a flashlight and a leatherman; you'll constantly need to do light industrial repairs. Be sure to bring a sleeping bag, and you'll need a backpack for overnight missions. Buy a hand-held GPS so you can give coordinates if you need to call in a medivac. Definitely bring a kindle; no, don't bother with a kindle -- you'll never have time to read. You'll need chemical lights. Don't forget granola bars and other high-energy non-perishable foods. Unless you're keen on bleeding to death, purchase and carry a tourniquet with you at all times.

And so on: everyone's got something that they couldn't have lived without when they were in the field in Iraq, or that their cousin told them they wished they'd left at home when he deployed to Afghanistan, or that their fiancee asked them to mail while they were supporting a PRT, or whatever.

Today was gear distribution today, and I was under the impression that we'd be getting body armor and a helmet (made entirely of kevlar and called, appropriately, a "kevlar"), and maybe a laptop to go with it, although maybe not since maybe the guy I'm replacing already has a laptop and maybe I'll just take his.

And so I was quite surprised when the packing list of gear they distributed took up more than one page, with half of the things I'd been told to buy and a lot of which I'd lugged from home handed over for free by the Embassy. For posterity's sake, I'm going to include the whole list here, in the hopes that it may help other people who are headed to PRTs in Afghanistan with their planning and save them from purchasing and hauling over a lot of unnecessary gear.

Embassy Provided Gear:
-- Body Armor (including plates) and Kevlar Helmet
-- A laptop (with the promise of a second laptop later), with mouse.
-- 8 port ethernet router
-- 500 gig external hard drive and an 8 gig memory stick
-- Digital Camera with 4 gig memory card
-- Iridium Satellite Phone
-- Ballistic Sunglasses, including both tinted and clear plastic lenses.
-- Hand-held Garmin E-Trex GPS device
-- Fireproof Nomex flight suit
-- Fireproof Nomex protective gloves
-- Sleeping bag
-- Backpack
-- Leatherman multi-tool, including a carrying case
-- First Aid Kit, in a camouflage bag that can be worn on a belt
-- Water purification tablets
-- A "rescue flash" signal mirror
-- A "heat sheet" space blanket
-- Chemical light sticks
-- A keychain-style "microlight" flashlight
-- A flashlight, in a carrying case
-- A miner-style headlight flashlight
-- Trauma shears/medical scissors
-- Ear plugs
-- A big, plastic, rolling "gorilla box" to carry it all in
-- Padlock for the gorilla box.

The only recommended item they did NOT/NOT include was a tourniquet.

And now I'm off to mail home an unnecessary sleeping bag and other crap I no longer need.

Arrival in Kabul

With the exception of immigration officers, no one working at Kabul International wears a uniform -- not even a name badge. This makes it hard to know if the person in jeans and a sporty striped shirt demanding information actually needs to know where you work or if he's just shady and wants to know. Likewise, the guys pushing carts and trying to help you with your bags -- they could be freelancers looking to make a couple Afghani, or they could be airport provided, or they could be someone else: unclear. There was a pack of foreigners -- 90 percent of the plane, it seemed -- trying to fill out the supposedly mandatory registration forms. Guys who might've been working (without uniforms in a chaotic environment, it's surprisingly hard to tell who's a worker and who's a hustler) asked where I worked, and when I whispered US Embassy, they waved me forward: no forms required.

My bag, an enormous military duffel that's far too large and will have to be scaled down, miraculously arrived. The guy from USAID's bags arrived as well and I was glad he was there: two Embassy people meant double the chance of a ride actually showing up. We grabbed rickety carts (the right wheel of mine was ellipse shaped and rolled like an egg going end-over-end) and pushed through, and a guy just beyond baggage claim was there holding an American flag sign. It turned out I had nothing to worry about: the Arrivals and Departures Unit at the embassy is massively organized, and unbeknownst to me I was one of something like 8 people arriving on that flight.

They led us to cars, past a large sign reading "NO WEAPONS" with a Kalashnikov with a crossed red circle over it. In the parking lot there were large police cars mounted with huge UN-style antennas that arc from the back the front bumper, where they're tied down when not in use, and the sides of the cars were stenciled in Dari with Poliis dar hidmat-e-mardum, "Police in Service of the People." Our drivers distributed body armor, triple checked that everyone was accounted for, and drove us into the city.

I was expecting Islamabad -- a sort of leafy green sleepiness with groups of men clustered around markets but the streets relatively empty and dotted with the odd donkey cart. Instead, it was Beijing: packed beyond any speaking of it. Cars were everywhere, veering down the wrong side of traffic, honking, pushing forward with little regard for traffic laws. Pedestrians were everywhere, seemingly with no regard for self preservation, leaping into traffic without looking and appearing to throw themselves in front of our cars. (A friend who works in Saudi told me that most Islamic head coverings eliminate peripheral vision for women, and I couldn't help but wonder if they could even see us coming). It was rush hour and the streets were packed with truly massive numbers of people milling around, almost what you'd expect to see outside of a stadium during a major sporting event in the States.

We passed checkpoints manned by guards carrying what appeared to be snub-nosed AK-47s. (The AK has a distinctively curved magazine that's significantly longer than those on the rifles that our guys carry, and that's what I'm going on; despite weapons familiarization, I know almost nothing about guns). It was hot and dusty on packed streets, and in an armored car wearing body armor I felt very conspicuous.

We arrived at the Embassy remarkably quickly and were met on arrival by representatives from Kabul/IPA/FSU -- that is, the bureau of Inter-Provincial Affairs/Field Support Unit. I was taken to my temporary housing (one of three beds in a surprisingly nice building; not the six-beds-in-a-hooch situation I was expecting). I took a deep breath, feeling like I'd made it: I was ok. I brushed my teeth in celebration.

They gave us cell phones ("consider this phone to be part of your uniform; carry it at all times") and had us fill out some paperwork -- standard Embassy forms acknowledging receipt of cell phone, requesting access to the computers, what have you. They gave us a quick tour of the compound, through the Embassy logo store (polos, t-shirts, keychains and other stuff emblazoned with the Embassy logo, as well as, somewhat inexplicably, a selection of locally grown vegetables). We swung through one of two cafeterias, where all food is free for the price of your initials. We passed the pool and volleyball court, and looked through the window at one of three gyms.

The USAID guy peeled off for a welcome dinner with other AID types, and I ate with the guy in charge of my in-processing -- surprisingly tasty chicken teriyaki, steamed vegetables, a pineapple juice box. I swung by the Marine guard to get my Embassy badge (different than a State badge, applicable only to Embassy Kabul) and then walked to the Embassy bar -- the Duck and Cover -- to meet a friend from training for a beer.



The executive summary is that Embassy Kabul looks good to very good. The main chancery is even architecturally sound (I'd include a picture but photography is strictly verboten), which isn't bad given that we're in a war zone. Compound life appeals to me: it's like college, where everyone's around all the time and there's always something going on if you know where you look. Only unlike college, there's a significantly larger amount of danger pay and I don't have to wait tables.

And all of that is good news, because I just accepted a handshake on a second year in Afghanistan, transferring from my post in the field to a position in the Public Affairs section in Kabul. I'm guessing that after a year in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a thousand soldiers and an incredible amount of dust, a swimming pool and a couple hundred like-minded civilians will do me good.

Transit

Dubai Airport and things are already a charlie foxtrot. I had checked my bag in Dulles all the way through to Kabul ("You can do that?" "We can do that. Trust us."), but Safi Airlines indicated that in order to transfer the bag from United, they'd need the baggage claim number. I had been late for my flight -- it was pouring in DC and my cabbie stopped in traffic and informed me that he wasn't willing to go to Dulles, and I had to beg another cab for a ride, and arrived at the airport late. In the sprint from check in to gate via an intensely slow security line, I lost the baggage claim tag.

"You can't have checked the bag through to Kabul," Safi Airlines told me. "They don't do that." ("They said they DO do that!")

"We can't locate the bag without the claim ticket," they told me. "Go to the gate and see if you can find it in your bag. You can't talk to United here because they only run night flights, so they're closed until the evening. And you're late, so run."

I tried to run to the gate but got stopped at customs, waved to a separate office where an officer scanned my passport, type type typed something into his computer, stared at the screen, called over another officer, type type typed some more, keyed in my passport number again and again and again, stared at the screen, typed, stared, waited. I had done the same thing thousands of times to visa applicants in Islamabad and karma picked a hell of a time to come back and bite me in the tail. Ten minutes later, near frantic, I was stamped through and allowed to leave. I have no idea what the delay was.

I was flying on Safi International (the name is derived from the word "saaf" and roughly means "cleanliness") and our flight was delayed at least an hour. This was great news, since it gave me a window to locate the baggage claim number. I called United in the UAE; they routed me to the airport baggage desk. "Have you filed a report for your lost bag?" baggage asked. "I just need the tag number," I said; "The bag isn't lost. Yet." "Ok," they replied. "Do you have the tag number? We can't file a report without the tag number."

I tried again and was transferred to India. "Cargo services; what is the nature of the material you'd like to ship?" Try again. "Reservations. Do you have an existing itinerary?" Panting in panic. God only knows what these phone calls cost me, on my US cell phone, roaming on Dubai telecom.

Finally I got through to baggage in the US (via a call center in India), who gave me the number, which I gave to a sparkling gate agent named Sama who was lovely and helpful and with whom I fell instantly in love. "Check back at noon before boarding," she told me. "I'll know then if we've located the bag." I did; they had: everything was ok.

I struck up a conversation with another guy at the airport and found out he was a contractor working in aviation out of Kabul airport. I ran into another colleague -- a USAID guy whom I'd met in Indiana -- and we started talking. The aviator asked what we do and I muttered State and the AID guy said AID, and then all of the training I'd had about loose lips sinking ships kicked in and I got started to get panicky that maybe we should just stop talking because god only knows who's listening. This is the paranoid schizophrenia that State wants us to have, and it was by god driven into me. They kept talking and I couldn't handle it (DID YOU LEARN NOTHING?), and so I put on my iPod so I couldn't answer more questions.

Safi Airlines. I was crammed into seat 24 Bravo; back of the bus, middle seat, sandwiched between two enormous gentlemen.

This is the profile I observed of people traveling to Kabul: heavily American (based on the accent of overheard English) with an added dash of Arabs (guttural Arabic) and only a few Afghans (more Pashto than Dari overheard); amongst the Americans, an almost equal split between white and black; significantly more male than female; stocky to muscular with little in the way of a neck; heavily tattooed. One guy wore a shirt proclaiming When I die, I'm going to heaven. I've done my time in HELL: Konduz, Afghanistan. The "hell" was in flaming block letters; I felt less conspicuous in my jeans and polo shirt.

Tuckered out from my fight for my baggage, I fell asleep immediately. They woke me up for the in flight meal (beef with rice and vegetables, side of mango pudding, definitely not bad), and I fell back asleep until near landing. I woke up as we were starting our initial approach over desolate, red dust mountains and low-slung houses in valleys. Either it was hazy or there was a dust storm, but visibility was limited. We approached, came in for a landing, and then pulled up hard for a second go around, denied landing permission by the tower. We came back ten minutes later, landed hard, bounced twice, and then taxied to the gate.

Welcome to Afghanistan.

Laying the Ground Work

T-minus 36 hours till I board the plane for Dubai, and I'm more or less hyperventilating at everything I still have to do: hit the pentagon to get the ID card that allows me to eat and shop on base; repack my bag so it's light enough to carry by myself; return my tags to the DMV and cancel my car insurance, as well as my cell phone plan and gym membership. And I need a haircut, and some dental work, and there are still goodbyes to be said.

The process of getting to Afghanistan is far more daunting than the idea of going to war. The paperwork is incredible, so much so that State has hired contractors to help streamline in-processing. There are checklists upon checklists. Things that seem like they go without saying must be specifically requested, and if all the boxes aren't checked, you'll be denied landing permission. Do you need transportation from the airport? Do you need housing upon arrival? Will you be collecting danger and hardship pay? Request them in writing or expect to be be denied.

My favorite piece of paperwork was the gym membership waiver, reminding those of us headed to a war zone that moderate physical exercise can result in injury and the Embassy is not responsible should things go pear shaped. This was on top of the form reminding employees that Afghanistan is a hardship tour and we should be prepared to wear a minimum of 30 pounds of armor and expect our housing to be sub par.

There were weeks of training. My 39 weeks of Dari, the Afghan dialect of Farsi, ended three weeks ago and I'm already slipping, despite spending all my time chattering to myself in broken phrases.

And then there was Indiana, an intensive intro to Afghan village life and working with the US military -- the ins and outs of protective details and how to be protected. It was taught at a mock Forward Operation Base (FOB) in rural Indiana, three hours from nowhere: FOB Panther, named for the local high school's mascot.

The scope of the training was incredible. Groups of 8 civilians, each coupled with one military and two civilian "subject matter experts" (SMEs -- "smees") who had just returned from working in the field in Afghanistan. Each group of civilians was being protected by a small contingent of 6-12 National Guardsmen who'd been called up to spend two weeks learning personal protection tactics, as well as how to deal with the somewhat persnickety animal that is a Federal Civilian.

("We should call this OEF-1," one of the Guardsman said in reference to us and playing off the acronym for Operation Enduring Freedom. "That stands for 'Over Educated Fucks.'")

The bridge between each group of civilians and their protective soldiers was a Sergeant, tasked primarily with training the soldiers but also with making sure the civilians know their role in the game of personal protection -- how to act, how to react, and how to be a help rather than a hindrance.

Our Sergeant was a Scottish immigrant who combined Hollywood-style drill sergeant gusto with a highland brogue. He had for a healthy contempt for civilians, and generally referred to us as "you lot" -- as in, "what YOU LOT forget is that if you ask these people what time it is, they'll tell you how to build a fucking watch!". Having been tasked with molding us into war-ready team members in a scant six days, he was determined to make the best of it even if he couldn't make us do pushups. He was, in short, awesome.

He spent a week berating us into being better protectees, lecturing us about how idiotic civilians always refuse to keep their helmets and body armor on (our military SME later conceded that it would be impossible to conduct a meeting with a helmet on). He drilled into us that if at any time he or another member of the security force barked out the code phrase "Bayonet! Bayonet! Bayonet!" (always three times, to be clear), that we should run for the door.

("If YOU LOT were put in charge of selecting the egress word, you'd probably pick something STUPID. Like 'lunchtime.' If I called out "lunchtime! lunchtime! lunchtime!" would any of you be running?" And then gesturing to a more heavyset member of our group, he added, "Well, except him?")

We practiced "downed driver drills," taking control of armored humvees from the backseat using a throttle control lever on the dashboard. We learned how soldiers communicate by the sounds of their guns -- that certain guns shot for certain periods of time signal a safe curtain in which you can bolt for the safety of the armored vehicle. We were in mock ambushes and mortar and IED attacks, simulated with fake grenades and light arms filled with blanks. I learned, in no uncertain terms, that I am the first to take cover. I confirmed that my fight-or-flight impulse is keyed squarely to flight, and that few people are faster than me. Lacking a gym, I spent my evenings running the perimeter of the base in body armor.

The military had purchased a former mental hospital, and littered the lawns with rubble and the charred, rusted carcasses of bombed out automobiles. Some of the buildings they detonated and some they sledgehammered to make them look old. They covered the walls in graffiti in Dari and Pashto: "Death to America, death to the Soviet Union. The Mujaheddin are the champions of the nation." They hired Afghans as role players, to act as translators and partners, adversaries and devils' advocates. It was as close to Afghanistan as you could be, though lacking mountains and with significantly more corn.

We practiced sitting at a table across from a group of people making demands: the clinic needs money for medicine. The roads are poorly paved and need resurfacing; promise that you'll do so. Your government must pay to refurbish this building; you built it two years ago but already it's falling apart. The point is to focus on the long term, emphasizing sustainability. If we refurbish the building, will it be falling apart again two years from now? What are your maintenance plans and who have you hired to implement them? What resources do you already have that you're not utilizing? There was enormous pressure to cave and promise resources that weren't ours to promise -- State promising USAID money or committing the military to something not within our purview. Our SMEs confirmed that we can expect more or less every meeting in Afghanistan to have an element of high pressure salesmanship to it.

We offered condolences to the family of someone mistakenly killed by a US airstrike. We met with the Governor, the Provincial Development Council, and leaders from civil society and NGOs. We visited a remote combat outpost and considered requests for the expansion of civilian personnel in the outlying districts. We rode a blackhawk, which filled me with a child-like sense of glee. It was like summer camp, only with a lingering sense of dread that we could be attacked at any moment. I have never felt more prepared for an upcoming assignment than I did following the training in Indiana.

And then came a few days in West Virginia, at a State-contracted raceway in the middle of nowhere. First was offensive driving training. How to stop at high speed, reverse at high speed, use your car to ram another car out of the way. How to generally be street aware and keep one's eyes peeled for potential insurgents, car bombs, IEDs, ambushes.

Did I crash the Crown Vic assigned to my group? Maybe. Maybe I lost control of the car while backing up at 40 miles an hour, and maybe I turned the wheel the wrong way and got a little panicky and maybe I slammed on the brakes (in contravention of everything they taught us) and maybe we had a little dust up with a concrete wall. And MAYBE the car stopped working after that and had to be towed off. The world may never know. (My colleague, taking a cue from me that speed kills, practiced escape by reversing at an outrageously slow pace. "Ah yes," I said, "here we are escaping from the terrorists at a nice, leisurely pace." Although by that point, I wasn't really in a position to be making fun of anyone).

Then came explosives familiarization: classes on the physics of explosions, the creation of blast waves and primary, secondary and tertiary dangers of explosions (which are, respectively, the blast itself, the shrapnel caused by the blast, and any impact a person may have with a ground or other objects when lifted by the blast wave). It was accompanied by video after video of things blowing up -- of car bombs and truck bombs and people dying. And then came a demonstration: low explosives and high explosives, det cord (high explosives contained in wire), a blasting cap, TATP (the liquid explosive that prevents one from taking a water bottle though airport security), and finally a lump of C4 about the size of half of bratwurst, stuffed into the ashtray of broken down Cadillac. "This demonstration," I told my colleague standing next to me, "has eradicated my desire to go to Afghanistan." "I was just thinking the same thing," he told me.

And finally weapons training. Three hours of classroom time taught by a firearms loving ex-marine. (My burning question: "With the exception of pulling the trigger, is there any way to make that gun go off?" The answer: an emphatic no). Then two magazines with five bullets each for five different guns; fifty rounds total. I started with a baretta, the service pistol carried by our troops. I waited in line, got to the front, and told the instructor that I'd never touched much less fired a gun and was skittish. He walked me through it: safety on, safety off; magazine in and out; hands here, second hand wraps around, grip tightly, aim through the sights and fire. He was extraordinarily patient. I think I hit the target once or twice.

Moved to the Glock and then on to one of two rifles -- the M4, carried by our soldiers. I repeated my spiel: first time touching a rifle, third gun ever shot, kind of skittish. "Pffft. My fifteen year old daughter can shoot this gun," the instructor sneered. "Ok, that's not helpful," I replied.

Then combat medicine: how combat medicine is different than civilian/EMT medicine (there's more focus on bleeding and hypothermia), how to tourniquet and pressure bandage to stop bleeding, how to treat puncture wounds to the chest to prevent lung collapse. "I know some of you are squeemish about seeing people bleeding," our medic instructor told us before putting on a video. "But this next video only LOOKS gruesome. It's fake. If you look closely you can tell that it's actually just a rump roast that they put into a pair of pants and are pumping fake blood through."

And that was that. Afghan prep: one glorious year, complete.

I finished writing this in the air over the Persian Gulf, off the northern coast of Saudi Arabia. I'm about half an hour from Dubai and less than a day from Afghanistan. I'm more nervous about simple logistics -- will there be anyone at the airport to pick me up? What will my room look like in Farah? Do I have too much stuff? -- than I am about being in Afghanistan. I feel well prepared. I also feel like I have no idea what I've gotten myself into.