Achievement Unlocked: Player Housing!

Yesterday was a good day.

First and foremost, all of the flags were full staff. I can't begin to explain how rare of an occurrence that is lately. I think it's happened two or three days out of the 39 days I've been on post. The greater amount of troops in country coupled with the height of the fighting season (read: summer) makes casualties extremely likely each and every day. When a flag is lowered to half staff, it usually stays there for at least two days, usually three. That means that for three whole days, we didn't have a coalition casualty in Afghanistan. That is definitely a reason to celebrate.

There is an Afghan flag at the Eggers flag plaza, but for some reason it is not lowered for Afghan Army or Police casualties. If it was, completely full-staff days probably wouldn't exist. The Afghans get hit hard by the insurgents. The more they attack the Army and police, the more they can discourage people from joining their ranks. I asked around a bit about why the Afghan flag wasn't lowered for their casualties when I first got here and no one was really sure why that was the case. The general thought was that each country takes care of its own flag and we don't have any Afghan security force members permanently stationed on Eggers (a problem in its own right, in my opinion) to handle that responsibility. It could also be that that's just not a tradition the Afghans follow. I hope that it's not just apathy keeping this from being done. They're out there fighting and dying just as much as we are. They deserve the salute of a half-staff flag as much as the Coalition guys do.

Second, it actually rained here. I mean really rained. Up to now, I'd only seen rain on three days, almost as rare as a full-staff flag plaza. On the occasions it did rain, either the rain only lasted for 10-20 minutes, or it was such a light sprinkle that it didn't even get all of the ground wet. But a couple nights ago, we saw our first good rain shower, the clouds stuck around and kept us cool, and it's raining again this evening. I really can't believe I'm saying this, but it's such a welcome change from the clear, sunny, blue skies we normally see here. No, I'm not crazy. Allow me to explain.

For those of you not from the midwest United States, we get, ahem, unpredictable, weather quite often. The saying in Missouri goes "If you don't like the weather, just wait 15 minutes and it will change." A few years ago we had 70 degree weather and a tornado on November 30th and snow on December 1st. A main source of entertainment during the summer time is watching the weather forecasters on the local news stations interrupt regular programming on TV to analyze the incoming storm and severe weather warnings. Its quite common for local rivers to flood nearby fields after several days of torrential rain. Weather isn't just an adjective to describe the day, its an event. So having day after day after day of the same weather is so incredibly boring, I can't even begin to describe. Not to mention that someone took the filter off the sun over here. It is bright. There's about three times a week I wish I had paid the extra money for the lenses that change from clear to shaded when I got my glasses. The overcast skies the past couple of days has been such a relief and welcome break from the eye-searing ball of fire we normally have. I will be disappointed to see the weather clear.

And third, I DON'T HAVE TO LIVE IN A TENT ANYMORE!! /glee! That's right ladies and gentleman, I, the lowly civilian, have been given permanent housing. After my ranting blog post the other night, I went the next morning to complain about the fact that I was kept awake until after 2 AM because of pendulous connex crates dangling over my sleeping area, to ask when someone was going to come clean the tent, and what was the status on getting me out of there. I ended up getting in touch via e-mail with Sergeant First Class that told me the housing list should be moving again within 48 hours, he'd get someone to clean the tent, and there wouldn't be any more nighttime construction. He was very quick to respond and gave me quite a bit of information, so I was content to give him slightly more than 48 hours to see if he could make good on his promises.

So slightly more than 48 hours later, when I still wasn't in a room and my tent still hadn't been cleaned, I went back down to the billeting office to see what the problem was this time. Apparently they had transferred their waiting list and housing records from one system to another, and in the process some information had been lost. My information was one of those. Thankfully they were smart enough not to delete the information from the old system so they could verify that I had been #1 on the wait list. And because they HAD slotted a bunch of civilians into rooms the day before (within the 48 hours promised, I might add) they were able to give me a key to the only room that had gone unclaimed from that round of room assignments. They said whenever the guy showed up to get his key, they'd tell him what happened and he'd go to the top of the list so he'd get the next available room. I'm sure he won't be very happy about it, but I waited 5+ weeks, darn it, and this room is mine!

My new quarters, complete with a decent mattress, two egg crates, carpet, a wall locker, and eight cases of MREs just in case I get hungry, I guess. Jackpot.

Compared to the tent, my new quarters are awesome. I'm actually in a real building, one that was here before we moved into the neighborhood. I have a single roommate instead of seven. I have carpeted floor instead of dirty plywood. The mattress isn't a hammock made out of metal wires. The air conditioner is on my side of the room (score!) There's a bathroom literally one step outside my door, though no shower. I still have to walk a little ways for that, but not far. I actually moved a little further away from camp than wear I was before, but it only added about 30 seconds onto a 10 minute walk, so no big deal. The only real complaint I have with this room is that the wireless internet doesn't reach this far out, so I have to use the broken, wiggly hard wire connection that doesn't stay in the port on my computer. If I look at the thing funny it disconnects me from the internet. Hopefully I can get the internet guys to give me a new one. Then this place will be perfect!

*****

Every morning we get sent a summary of the major news stories involving Afghanistan so we can read about what the media is saying about our work over here. Obviously the amount of things written about Afghanistan can't be condensed into a single word document everyday, so there's lots of stuff we don't see, but we do see the things that are most pertinent to this command. I've decided to start posting links to the stories I think are worthwhile reading for your consumption. It'll give all of you an easy way to read up on the areas of the war that touch my work on a daily basis without having to scour the internet.

First up: illiteracy, the problems it causes, and the solutions being implemented to make the situation better. The article talks about the Education Division in CJ-7 at NTM-A. CJ-7 is the directorate I work in. I'm in the headquarters analyst cell, not in the education section, but they are people I see somewhat frequently.

That's it for tonight. Talk to you all again soon. Out here.

/boggle

As I write this I lay in my cot in my tent. It's almost 11 o'clock at night. Normally at this time the lights are off, everyone else is in bed, and I'm whispering into my computer's microphone talking to my family, or tapping away at the keys, talking to all of you. But tonight is not a normal night. Tonight the lights are on. Everyone is awake. One guy is watching The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King on his laptop. Another is Skyping with his family. Several are outside watching the spectacle. What spectacle you ask? Oh, just the building being built next to my tent.

Watching the Afghans construct a building in the middle of the night is a spectator sport.

I'm not kidding. 11pm. Building a structure. Less than 20 feet from my tent.

Now this isn't a normal building. This is temporary housing. Remember that picture I posted of some of the construction around here? These buildings are built out of metal shipping containers. They are moved by crane. As such, there is currently a crane lifting multi-ton metal containers less than 20 feet from my tent. In fact, an Air Force technical sergeant just came in and told me that it's possible that these multi-ton metal containers may actually pass over the corner of the tent closest to me, and that if it gets too unsafe he'll come in and let me know so I don't run the risk of being crushed to death.

Seriously. I can't make this stuff up. See for yourself.

Apparently this doesn't fall under the Air Force definition of unsafe. Ummm...yeah. The area of the tent this is hanging over is right about where my head should be. I'm outside now.

Unfortunately, this really isn't anything new. They've been building this thing almost since I got here. My first day, it was a gravel lot. Shortly afterward, men with pick axes and wheelbarrows began digging the trenches for the concrete foundation.  The next week they were back with wood, rebar, and handsaws to start building the forms.  The only machine I ever saw them use during this process was the cement mixer.  Thankfully, all of this work was done during the day.  You know, when normal people work.

The next phase of the project was to put in the septic tank. The sewers here are already so overloaded that there wasn't any point of hooking the new bathrooms into them.  Either way, septic or sewer, it would have to be drained by a truck each day.  The ground around this area is all poured concrete, so in order to put in the tank, they had to jackhammer before they started digging the hole.  Guess what time they started jackhammering?  Midnight!  It went until 2:30 in the morning before I was finally able to get a little sleep.  But that didn't last too long, as the backhoe was here at 6 AM to start digging the hole underneath all the newly-broken concrete. 

A few days later they were back, this time with multiple truckloads of gravel to dump and smooth in the spaces of the foundation (they didn't lay a solid foundation, just the outline of the boxes they've been setting on top).  All night long, trucks driving, dumping gravel, people shouting, shoveling, smoothing.  Right next to my tent!  Where I'm trying to sleep!  What gives?!

And of course, then they had to start bringing in the actual pieces of the building, the metal containers.  This is the third night they've been here doing this, spread over the last 2.5 weeks.  They started building at the far end and have moved closer and closer to my tent, so tonight is the first time that they've actually dangled instruments of demise over my head, but it's the third time they've kept me awake long past my bed time.  Work from here will consist of wiring the rooms for electricity, building the roof and the hallway floors, and dragging in the furniture.  The insides of the boxes are already finished, so at least there's not that.  I'm soooooo hoping that they do most of this work during the day.

Now for the reason I'm really ticked about this situation: I shouldn't even be in the tent at this point.  I've been at Eggers since June 21st.  I'm number one on the civilian waiting list for a room.  The military guys have separate waiting lists, divvied up by rank.  The longest any one of the military guys has been waiting for a room is July 10th.  That's 19 days less than me.  In fact, its less time than 33 other civilians on the wait list.  And why have we been waiting that long?  Because the people responsible for room assignments have been passing us over.

For some reason, the Billeting Office has decided that it will no longer place civilians on Camp Eggers proper.  We are only allowed to stay across the street.  It is their vision that when the building that I'm currently watching being stacked together is completed, the occupants of the tent will simply move into that.  Remember all that work I said remained to be finished?  We're at least a month from a move-in date, more likely two.  That means, if the Billeting Office has its way, I'll spend approximately half of my tour in a tent.  A tent that has no one assigned to clean it.  That is positioned so as to require I cross an extremely busy, locally traveled, street twice a day.  That has mattresses that could pass for hammocks made out of wire mesh.  And where at least once a week, I don't get to sleep because of the construction site.

I was fine with staying in the tent temporarily, especially when I could watch the waiting list move and know I was getting closer to the end.  I'm not fine with being told that I am so unimportant that I am required to put up with these living conditions indefinitely.  I understand that, generally, our soldiers make greater sacrifices than I do, and that they need to be taken care of.  On this base, that isn't the case.  I do the exact same job, with the exact same hours and responsibilities as the green-suiters I work with.  There's no reason for me to get shoved to the back of the line for a room, and be forced to watch people who haven't even been at Eggers a week get a place to stay. 

Tomorrow I'm talking to my Colonel.  I don't know if I'm going to get anywhere, but I'm too fed up to keep quiet any more.  I, of course, will let you know what comes of it.

*****

I've had two posts planned for multiple weeks, and haven't been able to complete them due to unforseen circumstances.  The first is to be about getting my permanent room, and the differences between where I'm staying now and where I'd be moving to.  Unfortunately, that post seems like its now on indefinite hold.  The second post is about the weekly bazzar held on Camp Eggers.  However, due to security concerns surrounding the recently held Kabul Conference, the bazzar has been canceled for the past two weeks.  It should be running this week, but there's no way to be certain until I see people setting up tents in the MRAP parking lot Friday morning.  In any case, those posts are on the horizon, and will eventually be published, just as soon as the world cooperates with my writing plan.

Until next time, take care, and watch for falling shipping containers.  Out here.

Dramatic Title Reference!

Courtesy of cperce.wordpress.com, a depiction of the varied environments of Afghanistan a soldier may encounter. On the left, the gardens of ISAF headquarters. On the right, troops sleeping in holes in the ground. I'm very glad my experience falls more on the left side of things. Yes the picture quality sucks. I'm sorry.

I'm sure many of you have had this experience before (and if you haven't, humor me). You're reading a book, or maybe watching a movie, particularly enjoying yourself. You're well towards the end of the story, and have long stopped wondering what the odd title of the story actually means. So far, it hasn't made a bit of sense to you, but the story has been good so you haven't really cared. And then suddenly from left field - BAM! - title reference, and neurons fire as you make a noise of revelation: "Ohhhhhhh!" The conversation between Holden Caufield and his sister in The Catcher in the Rye. Learning at long last the identity of the antagonist in William Gibson's Neuromancer. Samuel L. Jackson's one-liner in the particularly awful movie Unthinkable (don't watch it unless you enjoy being angry).

Forgive me if I just spell mine out. I don't have a gift for literary subtleties.

When I originally decided to start blogging about my deployment experiences, I wasn't sure if I was ever going to tell anyone about it, or if I was even going to continue with it. It was just an experiment. But, just in case, I decided to come up with a name. It needed to be something more creative than "K.C.'s Deployment Blog". I started looking around at other military blogs (milblogs for short) for some inspiration. My favorite (though I would classify this guy as much more of a reporter than a blogger, but cut me some slack) is written by Michael Yon. He's been an embedded reporter in Iraq and Afghanistan almost continuously for the last six years. Unfortunately, his site is simply entitled michaelyon-online.com. (Aside: Go check it out if you haven't ever heard of it. Recently he's been covering the political unrest in Thailand, and it's been pretty interesting.) Titling my site after myself without having written a single word sounded quite presumptuous, so I passed.

Some of Mr. Yon's strongest critics have blogs entitled things like Blackfive and Mudville Gazette. That was getting closer to what I wanted, but I didn't want to come off like I thought I was in special ops or the next incarnation of James Bond. It needed to be toned down.

What finally tripped my switch was a visit to a blog run by another deployed civilian. This guy's blog was actually what gave me the idea to start my own, so in retrospect it seems appropriate that I drew title inspiration from him as well. The author deployed in February to an area not far from where I am, and went through a CRC process similar to my own, though at a different location (Indiana). His blog is entitled "Living In Harm's Way". (Unfortunately, he hasn't updated in quite some time.)

When I started reading this blog, I really hated the title. Yeah, you're in a combat zone, I get that. But to claim you're in "harm's way" seems pretty outlandish when compared to what the soldiers in the south are going through. In the south, there's a a realistic expectation of getting blown up every time you leave the wire (base). That's not the case here. Yes, it's possible, and you need to avoid getting complacent to that possibility, but the reality is that there have only been a handful of IEDs and attacks in Kabul in the recent past. This isn't the Taliban playground that Kandahar and Helmand province are. For cryin' out loud, if I feel like it, I can take a two minute walk to a massage parlor and get my back worked over for an hour by a Russian masseuse. A co-worker just got her nails done yesterday. In a combat zone. Clear and present danger or not, this does not feel like "in harm's way". In all fairness to the author of this blog, he is based on a much smaller base where attacks are more likely to occur, and they did have a rocket propelled grenade come over the wall not long after he arrived. It's his blog and his experience, and if he feels he's in harm's way, then by all means roll with it. I just knew that in my situation, that description was, in my opinion, completely inappropriate.

And thus, I struck on what came to be the title of my blog. The first part, Five Star, because I consider these to be five star accommodations relative to where I am. Yes, I live in a tent, have to smell sewage as it's siphoned out of the overflowing sewer on a daily basis, and can't drink the water lest my stomach rot out of my body. This is still FAR better than what the fighting forces in the remote parts of the country deal with. They're stuck in 115 degree heat, in the sand and dirt, with no idea when their next hot shower will be, meals out of a bag, and no chance of getting to call home everyday, or blog in their spare time. Five star, indeed, compared to that.

The second part, Foxhole, because foxhole is synonymous with your point of view in military lingo. "From my foxhole, it seems like..." A foxhole is also close to the fight. You have a better view of the battle from a foxhole because you're usually IN the battle. While I may not be "fighting", I am certainly in the fight here in Kabul, so foxhole felt appropriate.

Add salt and pepper to taste, and there you have it. The title reference. Hopefully I didn't ruin the ending for anyone.

*****

So if my experience is worthy of five stars, the U.S. Embassy down the street must be somewhere around eleven.

A while back, a group of us from work went to the embassy for dinner. They actually charge you $8 to eat there, so we were interested to see what the place was going to be like. We had to walk about a half mile off post to get there, but were still in the green zone. On either side of us were the walls of various compounds with machine gun nests overlooking the street. Knowing there were heavily armed people watching over me felt reassuring and ominous all at once.

When we got to the first security checkpoint, there was a large sign that said "NO PHOTOGRAPHY: VIOLATORS WILL BE APPREHENDED". Ok, then. Glad I left my camera at the office. I guess that makes sense though. After all, the embassy is where all the important people stay, like the politicians and lawyers. Without them we won't ever win this war.

Three more security gates later, we were led into a small building to be scanned by a metal detector before given final clearance to step inside the embassy compound. On the other side, we opened the door and stepped through to...

America.

I kid you not. On one side of the door was war-torn Afghanistan, with its razor wire, dirty children and heavily armed guards. On the other was the United States of America. Western architecture. Freshly cut lawn. Landscaping. People dressed in normal civilian clothes, talking in a group around a picnic table. Real office and apartment buildings. Apartments! A beach volley ball court, complete with beautiful people laughing as they frolicked in the sand. If you looked close enough at the illusion, you could see the armed guards patrolling the fence line, and the sand bags stacked against the temporary buildings, but painted white to blend in. (I'm serious, they painted their sand bags. Outrageous.) But you had to look HARD to be distracted from the Americana oozing from the surroundings.

In my daze I thought I heard a voice say, "Lets gather for a photo over here." Now I knew I was dreaming, as there weren't supposed to be pictures taken here. Wasn't there a very large sign outside with veiled threats of handcuffs and iron bars? But as I turned, indeed, we were gathering for a picture. A soft alarm bell rang in my ears, as I said to the camera man, "Are you sure we can take pictures in here? I thought the sign said no." I was assured that the sign was only telling you not to take pictures of the security check points. I gave him a look, but he had been here before and knew what he was talking about, so I went along and smiled, albeit uncomfortably, for the camera. Click. I flinched and waited. No guard dogs. No alarms. Everyone else looked happy. Hmmm. I guess I was wrong. I relaxed my shoulders a fraction.

Next we walked over to the embassy building itself. We took turns standing in front of the U.S. Embassy seal that was directly under a security camera while having our picture taken. My turn came to hold the camera. Feeling ok with this now, I pointed it at the seal and my subject. Click. I checked the photo to see if it came out good. And then: "Sir!"

Oh. No.

I turned to my left to see a rather large fellow in polo shirt, khakis and combat boots with a pistol on his hip approaching me. He was clearly wearing body armor under his civilian clothes. "Sir, there's no photography on the premises. You're going to have to come with me."

I gulped. "Ok", I croaked. I turned to my compadres standing under the security camera. (Did I mention we were taking pictures right underneath the security camera?) Every one of them had taken a picture with the camera I was holding. And wouldn't you know it, they were all slooooowly backing away.

"Sir, lets go. This way, please"

I turned and stepped forward, accepting my fate, taking a bullet for the team. I was escorted inside the embassy building to the main security counter. The guard took the camera and set it against the back wall, then radioed for his supervisor. I started wondering if I was going to get to eat dinner tonight.

A girl in her mid twenties wearing a nice dress and high heels approached the counter to get a new holder for her embassy ID. Her old one had broken. While she waited for the guard, she turned to me. "What are you in here for?" In my uniform, I stood out starkly from the normal embassy crowd.

"Umm...taking pictures." I bowed my head in shame.

"Ohhh, you're in big trouble," she chided, her voice lilting in mirth, before moving on through the card swipe door beyond. Ugh. This was getting worse. At least it wasn't my camera.

After about 10 minutes of torture, the guard not answering my questions, no sign of my friends, the supervisor showed. The guard handed him the camera and the supervisor asked me to show him what I had taken. I ran through the photos. He nodded and looked at me. "Did you see the sign out front?" I had. "Was that not clear enough for you?" I was told it was only for the security points. "Who told you that?" My friend. "Did he see the sign?" Yes, yes he had. I simmered.

After the supervisor was done having fun at my expense, he let me go, pictures intact. After examining them, there wasn't anything sensitive photographed, so he didn't see a need to delete them. "Next time," he said, "ask a guard first if you can take the pictures, and they'll tell you if it's OK or not." Incredulous, I quickly made my way outside to freedom.

Of course I was mocked without mercy by my group of "friends" for being the one to get caught. Except for my buddy Andrew, the one who had told me it was OK in the first place. He felt bad about getting me in trouble, especially since it was his camera. I forgave him. I was just glad I wasn't tied to a chair in a concrete room with an exposed light bulb hanging from the ceiling.

I tell you all this so that you'll better appreciate this otherwise boring picture.

Many bothans died to bring you this information.

After the brush with incarceration, we had a really nice time. The food was a step up from Camp Eggers, but only one step, nothing spectacular (though they did have six flavors of ice cream instead of the customary two). However, the venue was incredible. Inside was an actual dining area, not a tent or a modified house. The floor was spotless. Floor length windows looked out on the patio. Since the night was nice, we decided to eat outside. Seating on the patio was at glass top picnic tables under a canvas canopy beside a swimming pool. We were occasionally interrupted by tennis balls bouncing over the fence from the court just down the way. Things couldn't possibly be more different than the hodge-podge base I lived at down the street. (You'll just have to imagine it, 'm afraid, as I wasn't about to chance more photography after what I went through earlier).

The night was breezy and cool and clear, and we sat and talked and ate for an hour, forgetting the war and the stress and the pace of the jobs waiting for us down the street. We talked of home, and it seemed we were talking about somewhere just around the corner, rather than several thousand miles away.

And just before we were able to completely slip away into our reverie, the chatter of automatic rifle fire carried over the wall. We stopped mid conversation, each of us listening for any follow-on shots or explosions, waiting for a cue to run to a bunker or continue on with our meal. When no further sounds of violence came, some one made a joke. Just a car backfire, right? We laughed uneasily, and resumed dinner, now firmly grounded in the reality of our location, fooled by the illusion no more.

That's all for tonight. Thanks for reading. Out here.

1, 3, 8, 12, 17, 23...Wait, start over...

Unfortunately, this guy can count better than the Afghan government.

This war is a partnership. On one half we have NATO, a partnership of its own. For the other half, we have the Afghans. We are working hand in hand with the country's residents and government to try and turn around the state of fractured government that allowed terrorism to thrive here for so many years. Part of a partnership is allowing your partner to handle some things on their own. It builds trust, and lessens dependency. Lessening dependency is a big one for this effort. We want the Afghans to learn to do things on their own so we can eventually go home.

Unfortunately, even basic things, like counting, are sometimes too much for our Afghan partners to perform on their own right now.

We depend on the Afghan National Police (ANP) to give us an accurate count of their numbers. We can count how many people we recruit and train, because these are processes and facilities that we control. Once those soldiers and policemen leave our facilities though, they belong to the Afghan units and we no longer track them ourselves. We depend on the Police to tell us how many people they have in the unit. Why not just add up all the trained people we've sent to the unit, you ask? Well, people quit. People get killed. People disappear with their weapons, never to be heard from again. Occasionally some of these people come back after weeks or months gone from the force (not the dead ones, obviously), after simply traveling home to be with their family for a while without telling anyone. All of these events have to be tracked by the individual unit.

For a society where computer use is common, like America, tracking people is simple, or at least routine. Name a company in the United States that doesn't track how many people it's employing and how much they're getting paid and you're likely naming a company on its way to bankruptcy, or one that has less than 10 employees.

Afghanistan is different. First, how many people are they trying to count? For just the police: one hundred. And seven. Thousand. By flipping hand. Why by hand? Because they have no computers, and often no electricity to run one even if they had it. Payroll is done by handing it to the individual. Record keeping is done with pencil and paper and filing cabinets.

Again, you may ask, so what? The process may be antiquated, but it could still work with proper controls. Let me remind you: paper and pencil don't work either in a country where only 20% of the population knows how to read and write.

So, the process of counting your men is to have them physically show up to roll call. The process of paying them is to physically hand them their pay. Record keeping is done with hand-written notes. Let us assume that all of that goes swimmingly and we get a 100% accurate head count every time. Incoming monkey wrench: what happens when someone that is supposed to be there doesn't show up for roll call? What then?

Enter the real crux of the issue. There is no standardized process for counting people that are absent from the force. We count these absentees under the broad category of "attrition". People that are killed or wounded badly enough that they can't rejoin the force are easy to count, as there's no room for interpretation. But what about people that just walk off? How long do you give them to return before you write them off? Should they be counted as AWOL or simply as absent for duty? Where does that break point need to be? The answers to these questions vary from unit to unit, and even from commander to commander, resulting in very uneven and inconsistent counting of the force.

On top of methodology being inconsistent, there is also the problem of corruption. A corrupt commander may choose to keep counting policeman that are absent from duty so that that policeman's pay continues to be sent to the unit. Every month the commander simply pockets the money. There isn't a tracking system for the money to know exactly where it went, so there's no way to know how often this happens. Now the problem isn't just ignorance or neglect or subjective interpretation. Its intentional deception.

Despite all the challenges, at the end of every month, each unit is required to report something. This report is often hand delivered to the Ministry of the Interior (MoI) for consolidation with the numbers from the rest of the country. Sometimes it's telephoned in. For seven days, the one and only person - ONE GUY - at the MoI that knows how to use Microsoft Excel handjams the numbers in one at a time to a spreadsheet. While he does know how to use a computer, he doesn't speak english, so those spreadsheets have to be translated.

Eventually, those numbers are delivered to my office, where we use a mathematical model to predict future ANP strength based on the attrition percentage (the amount of people that leave each month), the number trained, the number recruited, and the total people we had at the end of the month. Notice that half of these factors are outside of Coalition control.

We have a saying in the analyst community: all models are wrong, but some are useful. No model can take into account every single factor, as it would then cease to be a model and become reality. But, a model can take into account the important factors and give you rough picture of what is going on. Our model has four main inputs, listed above. Two of them are suspect to some unknown degree. This leads to another saying: crap goes in, crap comes out. Until we get accurate data on how many people are leaving the force, we aren't able to accurately predict if or when the Afghan National Police is going to grow large enough to take care of their own country.

Part of the solution is, as always, education. More literacy means more understanding of the process, which means more accurate reporting. The other part of the solution is to teach them a standardized process and get them to follow it. This will be difficult, but absolutely necessary. Without accurate reporting, there's really no telling how fully staffed these police units are. Without knowing how full the units are, we have no idea how many more we need to recruit and train, and no way of truly evaluating the ANP's progress.

*****

I've been doing some counting of my own lately. The spreadsheet that I use for a time card over here was built by someone with a sick sense of humor, as they developed a section that will let you input your start and end dates and output the amount of days, hours, minutes and seconds you have left to be in theatre. Devilishly evil. I was explicitly warned against starting to count the days until late in my deployment, but when I saw that section on my time card, I couldn't resist filling it in. Now every day I go to clock in, I am reminded that I am only 17.5% complete with my time in Afghanistan, and that I have 14 million more seconds to go before I leave. I try hard to ignore it, but to no avail.

One event that I am counting down to is the day I'll get my own room. I'm still living in a tent, and thus still living out of a bag. My kingdom for a wall locker. I'm currently number two on the civilian list, but I also just passed on a room that would have moved me one closer. The guy on the list right behind me wanted to move into an open space in a five man room, where the other four occupants were all co-workers. I didn't have a problem letting him leapfrog me, especially since it meant I got out of having four other roommates. Two will be plenty for me, thank you.

I assume since I got the cricket treatment when I asked for writing topics that no one is reading this thing and I can continue to write about things that are only interesting to me. In the event that my small flock of followers aren't all advertising or spam bots, if any of you have anything you want to know more about, or have some feedback you'd like to register, utilize the comments section at the bottom of each post to do so.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading. Out here.

Play

Well, one down, five to go. As of tomorrow, I will have been away from my family for a month, and in Afghanistan for three weeks. It’s more comforting to know that a month has already passed than it is discouraging to think that I’ve got five left til I head home. I take that as a good sign. I’m just hopeful I don’t wear down too quickly.

As I write this, I’m sitting in the office. It is 9:30 at night, and I’m waiting for my boss and a colleague to get back from a meeting I was supposed to go to so that they can review the work I did for an urgent RFI for information to put in a brief to the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee (Sen Levin, D-Mich.) My work day started at 8 this morning. I was up at 5 to go work out, shower and eat breakfast. Rinse and repeat six times a week, (we get the morning off on Friday), and you have a typical work week. Needless to say, when my head hits the pillow, I sleep like a rock.

So what is there to do when I’m not working 13-14 hour days? Really, not a whole lot. But, considering how little free time I have, it seems like quite a bit.

First, you can eat. You can ALWAYS eat. Hot food is served for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and midnight chow. Sandwiches are available 24/7. There's two chow halls to choose from, both with mostly the same food. Marshall dining facility (DFAC) is a permanent structure with a large outdoor patio, and an enormous grill area. The Goat (yes, that's its actual name) is a tent, and has a bigger salad bar and fruit selection. All the fit people eat at the Goat, cuz the Marshall grill will make you fat, and its just safer to stay away than to try and have discipline.

The grill has a set schedule every week. (The normal food still rotates unpredictably, just the grill is set). Monday is Mongolian barbecue night. Build your own plate of noodles and veggies, pick your sauce and meat off the grill. Delicious. Friday is Big Burger for lunch, surf and turf for dinner. The surf varies. So far we've had catfish, fried shrimp, and lobster tails. The turf is an average quality steak, but hey, its a real steak. I'm not complaining. Other nights feature grilled chicken, fried catfish, stir fry, and jumbo sausage. See, I told you it was safer to just stay away.

Second is exercise (PT). I'm sure most of you are thinking I'm nuts for mentioning PT as a form of entertainment. I would agree. However, remember the audience here is 95% soldiers. Most of those soldiers are of at least average fitness. Exercise is part of the gig. But in order to make it as enjoyable as possible, a wide variety is available.

There's two gyms. Robinson is where are the free weights are, and where the meat heads hang out. It used to be a fairly nice building. The treadmill room here has a spiral staircase right in the middle of the machines. Warrior gym has machine weights downstairs and treadmills, elliptical machines, rowing machines, and some stationary bikes upstairs. There's also an aerobics room. The atmosphere here is much more relaxed. Warrior is where you come to run off job stress for an hour or so. Robinson is where you go to show off your muscles.

There's also a wide variety of classes you can take. There's several sections of spinning (stationary bikes), a martial arts class, hot yoga (they make the room as hot as possible while you're working out), p90x, Insanity, Crossfit, and aerobics. I'm a week in on p90x (at 0530 - that's why I wake up so early), and it's been kicking my butt. One thing we don't have is a courtyard to play any sort of sports. Not even a basketball goal. There used to be a "soccer field", but they built housing on it.

Third, there's scheduled Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) events. Movie night is every Monday at 2000. Last week it was Iron Man 2, this week was the A-Team. There's a monthly poker tournament, with three nights of play. There's Dari language classes. There's guitar lessons. There's basket weaving (kidding!). The problem with most of these (for me at least) is that they're often during the day or early evening hours, making it difficult to attend. I plan to get to Dari classes in the future if possible. Would be nice to know some of the local language.

Last, there's the places to just hang out. (There's also the Bazzar, but that deserves it's own, forthcoming, post.) Ciano's is an Italian restaurant in the middle of a "Chinese" garden. You can buy pizza or a calzone and sit out amongst the gazebos and flowers with some friends. It's a pretty nice setting. A couple weeks ago I had tea here with two Irish police officers in country to train the Afghan police forces.

The other main hang out joint is the Green Bean. Think knock-off Starbuck's, open 24/7, on a nice open courtyard that's close enough to the wireless hub to surf the internet while you sip your drink. This is the place I most enjoy going. The people who work here seem to actually like their job, unlike some of the other service employees here, and create a very friendly atmosphere. The espresso is pretty good, too, which definitely helps. And the area is always fairly crowded, making it easy to go by yourself and still find someone to have a conversation with.

For the middle of a combat zone, I don't think all that is too bad. The soldiers seem to agree with me. Compared to all the guys out at the forward operating bases (FOBs) in the middle of nowhere that don't get a shower or a hot meal for weeks on end, this is practically paradise.

Of course what I spend most of my time doing is calling home or writing to you, my readers. I try and call home twice a day, once right after my PT and once in the afternoon. There's a 9.5 hour time difference, so morning my time is almost bed time back home, and afternoon here is early morning for the family. If I'm ambitious, I also try and Skype home once I get back to my tent at night, which translates to midday in the States. Skype happens about four times a week. It takes a chunk out of my sleep time, but it's worth it to get to see my family.

As for the blog posts, I probably spend about two hours planning and typing for each post. My laptop battery hates it. The topic is loosely planned ahead of time, but my writing is all off the cuff. I usually don't edit except for typos and grammar, as I'm of the belief that the first take is the most honest. Hopefully that comes out as you're reading.

*****

I'm missing my first big event tomorrow. Before I was informed I was going to Afghanistan, the family and I had made plans to go on a church mission trip to Colorado. This was to be our first real family vacation, and the first time the girls will have ever seen mountains. Thankfully, even though I'm away, Amanda and the girls decided to still go, and tomorrow is the day they leave. I wish I was able to be there for the trip, but I'm pleased that they are going to be doing something fun without me.

If anyone out there has anything they'd like me to write about, please let me know in the comments section. As I said earlier, I've still got five months to go. If I update twice a week, that's roughly 40 posts. While I've got some topics planned for the future, I don't have THAT many. Help me fill in the spaces by letting me know what you're interested in and I'll do my best.

That's all I've got. Until next time. Out here.

Work

Recognize these two white-haired fellas? Sen. McCain and Lieberman, along with Sen Graham and Gen Petraeus, paid our camp a visit on the 4th. Unfortunately they didn't stick around long. Something about a national TV interview. Sheesh.

Today was the last day that I had someone to hold my hand for me if I needed it. My predecessor left this morning, his six months of service ended. At 0630 the MRAPs rolled out, carrying he and the former commander of my section (the new guy showed up yesterday) to Bagram Airfield, where they hopefully will catch a flight tomorrow evening or Wednesday morning to Kuwait. If all goes well, they will be in the states on Sunday, and home Monday night. (Update: so far things not going well. No flight tonight, may be having to catch a plane to Qatar, then to Kuwait. This does not bode well for me going home and trying to get there in time for Christmas.)

So from now on, its my ship to sink or sail. I feel pretty good about it, really. We've had more than two weeks of overlap, which was probably a bit too long. Andrew did a good job of letting me lead the effort the last week or so, but the people we were communicating with would usually default to him for an answer since they were familiar with him. It really didn't matter how much he tried to defer to me, he usually ended up giving the answer. With him gone now, there won't be any more distraction for whomever I'm assisting, which will be a nice change. I will, however, miss having the security blanket there.

Now that I've been here for a couple weeks, I have a lot better idea of what my section does around here. For review, I work for the Combined Security Transition Command - Afghanistan (CSTC-A, pronounced see-stick-a), which is under the umbrella of NATO Training Mission - Afghanistan (NTM-A - just say the letters on this one). This organization is concerned with finding ways to hand-off responsibility for Afghanistan's security from Coalition and US forces to the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). This command reports to ISAF, down the street, where General Petraeus just took command.

So how do we transition responsibility from the Coalition to the ANSF? Well, first there has to be an ANSF to begin with. Building the force is job number one. ANSF has two heads on one body, so to speak: the Afghan National Army (ANA) and the Afghan National Police (ANP). I'm not yet an expert on their roles in providing security, but from what I gather, the ANA is a more offensive force, looking for the enemy in order to kill them, while the ANP is more defensive, running security checkpoints and cordon and search type operations.

Growing the force is hard. For starters, jobs in both the ANA and the ANP are dangerous. The insurgents like to attack these guys, because if they can demonstrate how unsafe it is to volunteer, less people are likely to do it, meaning a smaller and less effective security force, meaning more freedom for the insurgents. Second, once people sign up, it's hard to get them to stay. For the Army and parts of the police, they are deployed far from home, just like Americans. Several months out of the year they don't get to see their families. Another reason they quit is because they get intimidated by the Taliban, a secondary tactic when bombing them doesn't work.

So find people, convince them to stay, grow the force. Great. But how effective are they going to be? Somebody has to teach them how to be a soldier or a policeman. Thus, the second part of the problem of security transition, and of CSTC-A's mission, is training.

The first part of training the force is getting them an education. In order to have an organized, effective, professional, Afghan-led force, you have to have organized, effective, professional, Afghan leaders. In order to be all those things, you need to be able to read, and have some sort of education. Unfortunately, only about 20% of the country is literate, and for the Army officers and the elite police units, they need at least a 6th grade education. In a country where schooling was banned for several years, that's not easy to find. The pool of candidates is just too small to make recruitment easy. If we can't find them, we have to make them. As such, a lot of the training courses have a built in literacy component. This is actually a perk of the job to a lot of folks. They WANT an education. It has been denied to them their entire lives. Learning to read and write helps balance out the danger and the inconvenience of the job. Oh, the things we take for granted in America.

And of course there is the actual tactical training, ambushes and react to fire and all that fun stuff. After convincing the right people to join your fledgling force at great risk of life and limb and crappy family life, you have to get them somewhere to learn how to be a soldier or a policeman. You can't pick up this stuff on-the-job (though many were frequently asked to exactly that in the recent past - a large part of our problem now is figuring out who needs training and who doesn't). Training may require them to travel, again, and has to be done in a proper facility with the proper teachers. Both of these resources are scarce, facilities more so than trainers. The engineers here are building as fast as they can, but it's going to be later this year before we can really ramp up the amount of students graduating the academies.

So, to recap, dangerous job, far from family, requires education, requires training. Four out of five applicants can't read, training facilities and trainers are scarce. Oh, by the way, we have about 300,000 positions open. And we need them all filled by July 2011 so the Coalition can go home.

Sound like fun?

So what do I get to do in all of this? Essentially, my main responsibility is to be the data manager for the ANP. Other organizations are technically own the information, but they don't know how to analyze it, how to organize it in a spreadsheet, how to present it intelligently in a slide deck, etc, etc. If a question needs to be answered about ANP numbers (how many police do we have, how many did we lose last month, how many voluntarily signed up for another tour), it probably is going to get run through our office. So far I've handled requests for information (RFIs) from ABC News, General Petraeus and staff, the Afghan Minister of Defense, Sen. Levin, and the White House. Yes, that White House. Now, don't get any grand picture of things in your head. We don't have a bat phone in the corner where panicked policy-makers can call us for a fix to all their problems. The requests trickle down through all levels of leadership until they finally hit the level where an answer can be formed. That's where I reside.

From what I'm told, during the December Congressional hearings on Afghanistan, our office will turn into RFI hell. A senator asks a question that someone doesn't know how to answer, they turn to their aide who gets on their blackberry and messages the generals here, who tell us we've got 20 minutes to produce an answer. It's also about 3 AM here, since Congressional hearings are generally held during the day time. The last one was apparently a doozy. I think it kinda sounds fun. Especially since it will almost be time for me to go home by then.

*****

Small things I've had to get used to since I arrived:

- Navigating to yahoo.com and being directed to the Singapore version by default. Thankfully still in english.

- Wearing long sleeves in the summer time.

- Hearing the Muslim call to prayer broadcast over the city five times a day.

- The smell. Kabul sits in a bowl in the mountains much like LA, so pollution hangs in the air all the time. Also, nothing is ever clean here, from the streets to the people, leaving an odor everywhere you go. (Disgusting foot note: supposedly the most recent air quality test showed that 17% of the particulate matter in the air in Kabul is fecal matter. Ewwwwwwww!)

- Wearing a necklace all the time (dog tags).

- Using the Muslim solar calendar when working with dates at the office. That's what the Army and police use to track time, so we have to as well. Currently we are in the month of Saratan, year 1389.

That's all for now. Out here.

Happy 4th

The Camp Eggers flag plaza, honoring the fallen with a half-staff salute.

The flag plaza here is dichotomous. On one hand, it's a great testament to the multi-national force that's in Afghanistan working together to achieve something that's never been achieved before in this region of the world. On the other, it's an instrument of news for the Taliban and other insurgent groups active in-country, as they play a morbid game of whack-a-mole on the staves. When I took the above picture earlier this week, America and Canada were the latest casualties. Tonight it's Great Britain. The enemy doesn't care who's flag they strike, as long as they fall often. And unfortunately, rare is the day when the half-staff is not occupied.

So today, while you're in celebration of our country's birth, I ask that you remember our country wasn't born without blood, and blood must still be paid from time to time. The soldiers here have all volunteered to make that sacrifice, if necessary. When you shoot off your fireworks, remember the men and women here facing a much more frightening round of pyrotechnics. When you raise a glass (or a can) at your barbecue, raise another for the soldiers here unable to partake. And when you wave your flags in honor of America, remember the flags on the shoulders of our troops, always moving forward towards the goal, and the home front beyond.

And to the revelers at the Sperry's and the Wilson's, don't burn off your eyebrows.

Stay safe everyone. Happy 4th.

Out here.