Five Star Foxhole

Victory Dance

2010-12-18T12:27:00.000+04:30

The letter of release has been received. I made the flight manifest. I have cleared customs, checked my bags, and am currently sitting in the lock down terminal waiting for our plane to be made ready. I think it's time for a little victory dance, Will Smith style.

Heather and I at the Camp Eggers Smoke Pit on my last night in Afghanistan.

Ok, so I'm cheating on the picture a bit. Photography isn't allowed in the lock down area, probably so people can't study the area to figure out where to throw things over the fence and avoid customs. So I'm using an older picture from my last day at Eggers. You get the idea. My Victory Dance was kindly provided by one LTC "Smiley". (That really is his nickname, and it definitely fits. The guy smiles even when he's angry.) And it was delicious. I have another primed for Ft. Benning, after which I will probably have to forgo this tradition lest my wife, and probably my mother, murder me.

As I write this I'm sitting in the "Freedom Area", aka temporary holding cell. The compound is fairly large with multiple tents, the world's smallest Pizza Hut (about the size of a phone booth), a coffee shop, and wi-fi. In typical military fashion our show time was 0600 this morning to drop off our bags, while our flight doesn't take off until 2035 this evening. That's more than 14 hours for the mathematically challenged, most of which will be spent sitting doing nothing. "Hurry up and wait" is more than a mantra. When we finally do leave the ground, I expect to be in the air or on layover in either Germany or Ireland for around 16 hours. However, because I am a fairly heavy sleeper and don't have a very loud alarm with me, I chose to stay up all night rather than chance missing the show time. Thus, by the time the flight takes off, I should be all set to sleep at least half the way. That's the plan at least. If you've traveled on an airplane before, you know plans to rest usually don't survive very long. We shall see.

I have very little to say about the past few days, largely because I have been doing very little, but I'll see what I can come up with.

My officemates and colonel were fantastic in getting my letter of release completed in record time. I still have a hard time believing such a large piece of information was completely unknown to the Camp Eggers personnel office. When I first told my office that I needed the letter, all of them thought the lady was off base and tried to find a way around it. I can now say that she was definitely correct. Multiple people asked to see my letter of release during my check-in for the flight, and it was also required to drop off my equipment at the warehouse here in Kuwait so I could avoid dragging it all the way back to Ft. Benning. It is evident that somewhere between here and Afghanistan is a massive rift in communication. Being that this is the military, and how little attention are paid to civilians in general, I guess I really shouldn't be surprised. This is just a lot larger issue than what normally (in my experience) falls through the cracks.

The USO is an amazing organization. Both Kuwait (Ali Al Salem Air Base, to be specific) and Bagram Air Force Base had a USO building to provide folks a place to relax and hang out. I wasn't at Bagram long enough to enjoy that one, but I used the heck out of the one in Kuwait. At the USO, deployed personnel have access to comfortable couches, TVs, a movie room, free wi-fi, phone lines to the states without having to dial an operator, PlayStation 3 kiosks, a guitar, and even hot brownies one day. My last few days were spent nearly entirely inside this building, watching movies, playing games on my laptop, or Skyping with the family. It was also a great place to get to talk to all sorts of people that served at little bases all over Iraq and Afghanistan. Waiting three days for a space on an airplane wasn't very much fun, but the USO made it a lot easier to stomach.

Did I mention I watched a lot of movies? I watched a LOT of movies. Let me summarize and make recommendations (and I apologize if the links show up with German movie titles, I can't do anything about that, unfortunately):

Repo Men - Sci-fi action flick about repossessing artificial organs when their still-breathing owners can't afford to make the payments any more. Very bloody, mostly predictable up until the very end. The ending sold it for me, though I can see a lot of people hating it. Avoid unless you're really into sci-fi or blood spatter.

Baby Mama - Comedy about surrogacy (carrying someone else's kid). Avoid like the plague. I think I laughed twice. I only finished it because I was in Kuwait and had nothing better to do.

Date Night - Pretty funny, if a little raunchy at times. Steve Farrell and Tina Fey work extremely well together. Unique in that it's a romantic comedy that focuses on a married couple. Who knew married couples could have romance? If you're easily offended by sexual jokes or cursing for comedic effect (i.e., completely unnecessary) then avoid, otherwise it's worth your time.

The A-Team - I'm old enough to remember watching the show, but young enough to not remember a thing about it. Maybe fans of the show would enjoy this, but I really did not. Generally bad acting, thin plot, and unbelievable action sequences. I will say the villain's part was played rather well. If you like completely brain dead action movies or are a huge A-Team fan then go for it, otherwise stay away.

Jonah Hex - Western-with-a-twist based off a comic book. Mildly entertaining, but I actually paused the movie for an hour and a half to watch Remember the Titans on TV, so that should give you some reference. Worst role I've ever seen John Malkovich play, which was pretty disappointing. I wouldn't bother.

Terminator Salvation - The first of the second Terminator trilogy. (Did you follow that?) Totally worth it if you're a Terminator fan, otherwise probably not so much, as the plot revolves heavily around plot points from the original Terminator movie. For the fans though, this is good stuff.

Salt - Probably the best movie I watched of the bunch. Good plot, decent acting for an action film, familiar faces on the screen, twists keep you interested until the end. Worth watching if you don't object to military-type violence.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief - The Greek gods are real and are still having kids with mortals, a la Hercules and Achilles. Those kids play the staring role when the lightning bolt of Zeus is stolen. The movie is pretty simplistic, but it's designed for fans of the young adult novel on which the movie is based, so it gets a pass. Nearly every adult role is played by some recognizable actor, which was entertaining by itself as I tried to guess who was going to show up next. Highly disappointed they couldn't land Ozzie Osbourne to play Hades. Ok overall, especially if you're watching with kids, or by yourself in a giant, foreign sand box.

I think I've rambled on about nothing for long enough. In entertaining myself, I risk boring everyone else, so I'm cutting myself off. Still six and a half hours to go before our bus to the airport. Ugh. I think I'll go watch Salt again, or something. On a happier note, the next time I post a blog it will be from the good ol' US of A. /cheer

See you soon. Out here.

Gone, baby, gone

2010-12-14T23:31:00.000+04:30

Afghanistan is in the rear view mirror. So is Qatar. Current residence is Kuwait. And now I'm stuck here.

When leaving Camp Eggers, most people are required to secure a letter of release from the command, certifying that you have reached the end of your orders, your replacement has arrived, and you have had adequate change-over time to teach your replacement your job. However, when I asked about getting a letter of release for myself, I was told that civilians were not required to do this. I was rather happy, as they are kind of a pain in the butt to get completed, and could have delayed me getting home. So I left Camp Eggers, letter-less, hoping for a quick journey home, but prepared to slog it out one stop at a time.

The MRAP ride to Bagram Air Force Base left bright and early at 0600. My office mates came out to see me off and help me carry my bags to the meeting point. We had one last Monty Python joke, hugs goodbye, and then I was off. Two hours later, I was in Bagram, prepping to navigate my way through the endless adventure that is space available travel.

Space available, or Space-A, is exactly what it sounds like. If the plane has seats available, then they take passengers. If they don't, then they don't. Most of the planes leaving theatre are not taking passengers specifically, but cargo from one base to another. How much cargo they will carry and how much room that cargo will take up isn't known until shortly before the flight leaves. As such, how many seats are available is not known until shortly before the plane takes off. These seats are given out on a first come, first serve basis, leading to a long list of sign ups to get to where you need to go. I signed up for a flight to Kuwait more than a week ago, and I was 62 out of 250 on the list. The first flights leaving for Kuwait were the next day, so I figured that I'd have to spend at least one night in Bagram, and depending on the amount of space, possibly more than one. But the officer in charge of getting people home from Camp Eggers had another suggestion.

Qatar is a small nation south of Kuwait occupying a peninsula bordered by Saudi Arabia to the south and the Persian Gulf elsewhere. It's also a portal into the Southwest Asia theatre (Iraq, Afghanistan), and a little known exit route. While few people choose to go through Qatar to leave Afghanistan, it's a pretty efficient method. The planes going to Qatar usually don't carry much cargo, meaning there are a lot of seats available, and there are several flights from Qatar to Kuwait each day taking people back and forth on 4 day pass. As it happened, there was a flight to Qatar leaving at 1515 the day I arrived in Bagram, and upon switching my sign up I was number 19 on the list. Sure enough, when roll call came around, I had a seat.

After manifest, loading bags, waiting out a small dust storm and a three and a half hour flight on a C-17, I arrived in Qatar around 2100. Annoyingly, I was made to go through immigration, even though I would only be there a couple of hours. Then through a brief customs check, before going to check on a flight to Kuwait. There were two leaving in the next 6 hours, and I was number 9 on the manifest. Yup, this was definitely a better idea.

Another perk about going through Qatar was the improved quality of the terminal waiting area. Bagram's terminal was a temporary terminal with a concrete floor, non-insulated walls, and not nearly enough space for all the people coming in and out. Qatar was an actual building, tiled floors, bright lighting, and the best bathroom I've seen since I left home. They also had free wi-fi (that actually worked for a change) and was about 12 times faster than the wired connection I had been using in Kabul. I was able to Skype with my wife and actually have video rather than a slide show. I took thorough advantage of this perk until the 0130 roll call for the flight.

After another round of waiting, we loaded the airplane around 0330 and rolled out around 0400. Given the time change, at this point I'd been traveling for 24 hours and was pretty exhausted. Sleeping on a C-17 isn't easy, given the way the seats are set up. The seats are along the sides of the cargo bay, with no arm rests, no head rest, and no way to recline, so you are forced to sleep sitting up. But as tired as I was, those issues were only minor.

Now at 0600, I had arrived in Kuwait. Here was the first known quantity about my travel. I had scheduled myself for a flight back to Ft. Benning, Georgia more than a week ago, was confirmed to have a space on the aircraft, and knew it left on Saturday. I was hoping to find an R&R flight leaving sooner, but knew that worst-case I would be leaving on the 18th. My biggest worry of the travel was getting to Kuwait before the check-in time for the flight on Friday, as I thought I was going to get stuck behind all the people heading home for leave. Now that I was here, I expected smooth sailing.

Not so fast. Just one more little wrinkle.

You remember that release letter? The one that I didn't have? Apparently it's required to have one to board the flight out of Kuwait. This is a new regulation as of a couple months ago, one that the personnel office at Camp Eggers apparently had no idea existed. It's also a regulation that the contractor running the flights home failed to tell me about until I showed up at the counter. I tried to find some way to leave the country without needing a release letter to no avail. Bottom-line: I'm not going anywhere until a letter of release is signed.

Being that I'm no longer at Camp Eggers, I'm relying on my colonel and NCOs to get things worked out for me. Usually the hold up with release letters is verifying when your replacement is going to show up and enforcing the mandatory 10 day turn over. By hold up, I mean that letters of release need to be started about 30 days before you head home. I've got three and a half days before my flight leaves. Ugh. Since my replacement is already working, and our turn over already complete, and I'm already gone, I'm hoping that things can be moved along quickly, but I really have no idea.

I trust the folks I'm counting on to get me out of here, but its not easy sitting in a different country, hands tied, with getting home in time for Christmas on the line. But if that's what I have to do to climb the last hurdle between me and home, then that's what I'll do. I just hope I don't go crazy.

Sitting, waiting, wishing. See you soon?

Out here.

Farewells

2010-12-13T00:19:00.013+04:30

Saying goodbye sucks. Goodbye to my family at the airport was terrible at the start of my tour. I did not expect saying goodbye at the end of my tour would be an event. But as it happens, I really hated telling my friends goodbye.

My predecessor did not have a very close office group. Each person did their own thing in the office and in their personal time, for the most part, and interacted with each other minimally. Our office is (I guess "was" is appropriate now, since I'm leaving) the polar opposite. We've done everything together, and had a darn good time doing it. I have made friends here that I will keep for my lifetime, even though we may not get to see each other for five years at a stretch. And after six months of seven day work weeks, long hours, hilarious shenanigans, and even some thrilling heroics, it's hard to imagine going through a day without these guys being around.

My farewell day started with lots of errands. There's always loose ends to tie up when moving from one place to another, whether it's switching jobs or moving houses. Re-deploying is no exception, and has the added layer of paperwork. Checking out of my room, turning in my cell phone and laundry bag, and suspending my e-mail accounts were all required. I also had to finish packing all of my acquired stuff into my limited bag space for the trip home. I mailed 59 lbs of stuff yesterday, and I still had more to carry. I was only here 6 months, how did I acquire so much crap?

After the mundane came the more fun sections. MG Beare, the two star Canadian general for whom I have done most of my work, dropped by our office to say thank you to myself and to Heather, who is also leaving in a few days. He gave us a nice send off, formally recognizing our efforts in front of our boss and our peers. I learned that some of the work I had done in the past was being used to motivate the Afghan Minister of the Interior to affect change in a particularly troubled segment of the police, and it's working. Noticeable changes have been seen since the information I produced was delivered to Afghan leadership. Having this kind of effect on things is the largest part of what makes (made...sigh, I'll get used to it soon, bear with me) this job so great. Impactful changes can be brought about on a timeline that allows me to see them. Having MG Beare illustrate to me just how much change I've been able to affect on Afghanistan was extremely satisfying.

After this was the formal CJ7 Hail and Farewell send off. My replacement was being welcomed as one of the new hails, and Heather and I were being farewelled (that is now a word). Since I'm leaving, this was the last opportunity to share with the organization about my exploits. And what fun would it be if all we talked about was work? Here is what my buddies came up with to be read aloud by my boss to the 60 or so people in attendance, in no particular order, with a little explanation about each one:

- Apache knife fighter
Ok, so I ended up being pretty decent at racking up kills with a knife in some of the video games we played extensively. I earned the nickname one night when we brought the PS3 to the conference room and played on the 60" plasma. I think I knifed Steve 7 times in a row on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, bringing much amusement to the crowd of on-lookers.

- Five Star Foxhole blogger
This one should be self explanatory for this audience.

- Resident hippie/20-something
I spent most of my deployment wearing my hair long, with my customary goatee. Decidedly un-military like, and definitely noticeable amongst the workforce. I had people in other offices convinced I was a surfer, and had several people not recognize me after I cut it all off a couple weeks ago. I was also the youngest member of the office, and helped bring the old farts I worked with into the 21st century by teaching them about Facebook and texting.

- Would have made it home 4 months ago if he'd found the trail of Reese's Pieces leading there.
So, I really like Reese's Pieces. Like, a lot. And they were the perfect snack for Afghanistan. Small handfuls of sweetness and peanut butter that survive shipping well. I had my wife send around 10 lbs of them during my tour. I shared with the office, but I ate more than my fair share.

- Haiku Artist
Every week we were required to turn in "3 liners", detailing each project worked that week in three lines or less. These are compiled and delivered to several people interested in what the ORSAs are doing. Well, one week, I submitted mine in haiku just for fun. The colonel posted my e-mail on his door, has them memorized, and frequently has a good chuckle over them even three months later.

And last, famous quotes, attributed to me:
"Hey, can I hold your gun?" - I was the only one in the office without a weapon and I was trying to learn. Apparently it was funny.

"You are evil...take those truffles away from me!" - Yeah...someone shipped us Lindor truffles. Bad news, man, bad news.

"Where is Steve? Is he playing Black Ops without me?!" - One of the video games we play. I was jealous of my controller time.

"There comes a point in each day when you know you're not going to get anything else done. Well, I hit that point in my deployment about five days ago. Thankfully, I can teach the new guy to do stuff for me."

Needless to say, much laughter was had.

After the ceremony and the medal presenting, we ate pizza in the one restaurant on camp, smoked a final cigar, watched Christmas Vacation, and made the rounds to say goodbye to people outside the office. It felt like just another night of fun. Unfortunately, it will be my last one with these guys. And that just really, really sucks. I'm very excited to go home, and I can't wait to see my family. I just wish there was some way to transport my entire office back to Ft. Leavenworth so I could keep my friends. Work won't be as fun without them.

We're already discussing annual road trips to meet up with one another. Steve suggested coming up to Ft. Lewis where he's currently stationed to go salmon fishing. John, Heather and the Anonymous One both live on the East Coast, meaning we could easily find something to do out there. I live in the middle of the country, where the travel would be equal for everyone. But we also all have children, and jobs, and budgets, and we know that it could be nearly impossible to coordinate something between all of us. I really hope we are able to get it figured out. I'd hate to think that the last time we'll all see each other is today.

I've got to be up in 4 hours to head to my MRAP convoy. My friends are waking up two hours earlier than normal to see me off. My journey home is about to begin. I'll let you know how it goes.

Out here.

End Of Days

2010-12-05T03:13:00.001+04:30

The end is near. After six months deployed to the world's largest dustbowl, my time is nearly up. I can't begin to describe my glee.

I have enjoyed the work. I have made great friends and connections. But I have hated the place. Part of that is just being 7,000 miles away from home and family, but most of it is earned honestly. This camp is dirty, dusty, smelly, cramped and crowded, silly, frustrating, and often infuriating. Putting Afghanistan in my rear view mirror is high on the list of things that will make K.C. happy. I am so looking forward to being at home and having some semblance of normalcy.

My replacement arrived on 1 Dec, wrung out after 70 hours of travel from Kansas City to Dallas, Maine, Germany, Kuwait, Bagram and, finally, Eggers. That was on top of flying back home for Thanksgiving with his family between CRC and deployment, dragging all his newly issued gear with him. Once he arrived at Camp Eggers, it was time for me to go through in-processing again, this time from the other side. Being the expert, knowing all the paths around Camp and all the people we were passing in the street, and trying to impart some of that knowledge to someone else was very surreal. I remember very clearly how timid and small I felt when I arrived, looking down the barrel of six months of long hours, intense workload, and painful family separation. Seeing some of those emotions in my replacement made clear to me just how much of a newbie I was when I started. Now wisened, grizzled, and more than a bit jaded, it was hard to grasp that the only thing between me and a ticket home was 10 days of transition time.

Transition time is critical to continued operations at CSTC-A. I have 10 days to teach my backfill everything he needs to know TO GET STARTED. There's no way I can teach him everything I know, let alone everything he needs to know, in 10 days, but it's what we've got to work with, and it's good enough to push him in the right direction. Speaking from experience, as the one doing the replacing it feels very much like the right direction is off a very high cliff with razor sharp rocks below. Now that I'm the one being replaced, I can say it's more of a small ledge with a thin mattress at the bottom. The learning process will be bruising, but it won't kill you. I tried to tell my replacement this, but he doesn't believe me. I don't blame him. Six months ago, I didn't believe my predecessor either.

So far, the best lesson I have managed to pass to my replacement is just how frustrating this place can be. The general chaos of a deployed position combined with messy data and infuriating technical issues make "normal" very different from our home station, and it takes some getting used to. Case in point: today he was working on making a Power Point slide, using data with known flaws, with a 15 minute deadline, for a briefing to a general that we didn't know was happening, for people that probably when his computer locked up and all progress was lost. That was quite the proper "welcome to Afghanistan" moment, I do believe.

When getting ready to deploy, EVERYONE told me how quickly six months would go by. I knew they were right, having been there and experienced it themselves, but it's very difficult to impress that upon the brain when you've just started. Now on the back end, I can say that, yes, 6 months does pass very quickly. The days are very long, but the months are mostly short. Until of course, your replacement arrives. And now time seems to be standing still. Relativity needs to die a slow and painful death.

As much as I'm looking forward to going home, I am dreading the travel. Because I am "re-deploying", i.e. going home for good, the military has no incentive to get me out of country quick. lt does them no good. As such, anyone going home on R&R gets priority for travel space over me. This is because it behooves the military to get them out of country as fast as possible so they can get back as fast as possible and continue doing their job. While the amount of people allowed to go on R&R at any given time is capped at 10% of the force, you can imagine that Christmas time is going to have a higher volume of people moving than other times of the year. That means I'm likely to be waiting several days at each stop for a plane ride, making the possibility I'm not going to get home before Christmas much more likely.

And while I'm playing roulette with airplane seats, getting bumped from one after another, it will be cold, I will be living in a tent, again, I will be alone, and have very little to do besides wait anxiously for the next flight manifest to see if I got a seat. Manifest calls can come at any hour of the night, meaning I will be getting very little sleep. I will be hauling two duffle bags plus a back pack with me everywhere I go, and assuming that they will be stolen if left unattended. I will have loads of time to sit and think about the next flight will be mine and if I'll get home in time for Christmas. (Aside: my girls told me that if the Air Force wasn't fast enough to get me home, Santa Claus could pick me up Christmas Eve on his way through Afghanistan and deliver me under the tree the next morning. Fearing crushing disappointment, I told them that Santa stayed away from Air Force bases because he didn't want to get shot down.) Movies and music can only entertain for so long before they either start to drive me insane or I run out of them.

But, dreadful as it may be, it must be done for me to get home, so I will gladly do it. I'd ride a camel home if it would get me back before Christmas. I'll have a couple more posts before I blow town, but after that I won't have a reliable internet connection, so updates may be a little spotty. I'll do my best.

All for this evening. Out here.

Range Day

2010-11-30T22:23:00.073+04:30

This weapon is illegal in three different ways in Missouri. All kinds of awesome.

There are certain perks to being deployed to Afghanistan. You get paid a lot. Movies are cheap. And no one questions when a civilian wants to shoot automatic weapons.

Back home it took multiple months of planning and permission granting to get a group of civilians from my home office to a range. Body armor had to be issued. Ammo had to be ordered. Every round had to be fired, and every shell picked up to be counted, lest an investigation into the fate of unfired ammo be initiated. It was a massive pain in the butt for 45 minutes of play time on the range.

Afghanistan ranges are so much easier.

As with many things in life, it's not what you know, it's who you know. One of our buddies works with a guy who was roommates with the guy that runs the range when they served in Ranger battalion together. A quick phone call between roommates was all that was needed to get a group of seven of us a reservation. We brought the weapons (well, most of them, more on that in a bit), they brought the targets and the ammo, and we were cleared until we ran out of time or bullets, whichever came first. (Unfortunately, it was time. Running out of bullets would have been a lot more fun.)

After a long and arduous SUV ride, detoured by protesting Kabulites and lazy traffic police, we arrived at Darul Aman, on the south side of the city. The area was pretty interesting. On one section of the base were ruins of a palace built by Genghis Khan. Nearby were the King and Queen's Palaces, built in the 1920s to house, presumably, the king and queen of whatever monarchy ruled Afghanistan during that era. And near the entrance to the base was a new construction site where an Afghan Government building is being built. Four separate buildings home to three different ruling parties from three different centuries. The one time in my life I wished I was a history major.

The King's Palace on the right, flanked by the new Government building on the left,

with the city of Kabul in the background.

The Queen's Palace with spy blimp on overwatch.

Up the mountain from these buildings and the surrounding camp was the range. Upon a arrival we were introduced to the crew in charge, a British corporal, an Australian naval officer, and an American Marine gunnery sergeant. The gave an abbreviated safety brief, crushing our hopes of shooting without having to wear body armor in the process. As they set up new targets for us and broke out the ammo, we loaded magazines and prepped the weapons. And one in particular attracted more interest than the others.

Everyone (minus myself) brought a Beretta M9 pistol, the basic weapon for senior enlisted and officers assigned at Camp Eggers. We'd also secured three M4 assault rifles. One of these was special (I'm holding it the picture at the beginning of this post), as it was equipped with a shortened barrel, a holographic red dot sight, and a detachable suppressor, aka silencer. It had been issued to one of our resident officers by a Special Forces team at his home base. I have no idea why they issued such a weapon to someone that was going to be working a desk job. I also don't care. I'm just so happy that it happened to someone that was willing to lend it to us to put through it's paces.

Seeing the suppressed rifle, the range crew felt compelled to make a trade. If we would let them shoot the suppressed rifle, they would let us shoot their fully automatic rifles. Needless to say, that wasn't a difficult decision. So to our pool of available armaments was added the British L85A2 Carbine, a shortened version of the full rifle made for vehicle crews to carry in tight quarters, and the Australian's Steyr Aug. (They also intended for us to be able to shoot an AK-47, but the guy that was supposed to be bringing the ammo for that gun flaked out and never showed up.)

The British L85A2 Carbine. A short little weapon with great sights

and little recoil, but LOUD. You knew when someone was shooting this.

The Steyr Aug. Fun to shoot, but much trickier than the other weapons.

I can see quite a bit of training being needed to use this weapon effectively.

Commence the entertainment.

Besides the silencer, each of the three M4s had a different optical sight attached. One had an ACOG, and the others had two different types of red dot sights. These weapons were stationed at one end of the range and were free for whoever wanted to fire them to do so. The Brit and the Aussie each ran a station for their weapon, helping the user understand the proper way to compensate for each rifle's quirks. The Carbine was the most odd. Besides pulling the trigger, everything was done with the left hand. This even required reaching over the top of the stock to the right side of the weapon to draw back the bolt and chamber a round. Lefties would HATE it. It felt a little odd to me, as I was only using my left hand to hold the weapon when I was shooting the M4, but I was getting used to it by the time I ran out of ammo. The Aug's special quirk was it's method of selecting how many rounds to fire. You could either fire on semi automatic, or one round at a time, or on fully automatic, or rounds fire until you stop holding the trigger. Most weapons have a switch on the side that lets you choose one or the other. The Aug had a two-stop trigger. Pull back to the first stop, and you fire one round. Pull back to the second stop, and you fire many rounds. This was very strange to adjust to, and I don't think I ever hit the target more than once when I was firing on automatic. For one the kick was much greater on this gun than the others, but I was also consciously thinking about how far I depressed the trigger, wondering if I was going to get one shot or several. This would be a hard weapon to get used to.

From near to far, A2 Carbine, M4 rifle, and M9 pistol.

In stark contrast was the silenced M4. Lightweight, low recoil, large, bright, clear sights, and quiet. It sounded like a nail gun instead of a rifle. It wasn't quiet enough to be completely stealthy in a quiet environment, but outside from more than 50 meters, or in a large building from more than a few rooms away, I don't think the gun would be audible. This thing was an absolute blast to shoot. Dealing with the ammo magazine, on the other hand, was irritating. We had a couple of cheaper plastic magazines that kept trying to give the rifle more than one bullet at a time when firing on three round burst mode. I quickly learned how to clear the breach on my own, but after getting rounds jammed on three straight trigger pulls, I switched back to single shot mode and didn't have any more problems.

After we were done shooting we policed the range for our brass. I had to laugh at the difference between this range and the one I had been on back home. At home we had one person shooting at a time with everyone else far behind the line, to the point we couldn't even see the target being shot at. Here we had multiple people shooting, swapping weapons, shooting again, only pausing to let some soldiers at the far end that were adjusting their sights walk down and check their targets. Back home we knew exactly how much ammo we had, we fired every round, we picked up every spent shell, and the empty cartridges were weighed. The scale was sensitive enough to detect a difference of 100 rounds out of pallet load of spent ammunition. Here we weren't even sure how much ammo we started with, had no idea how many rounds had been fired, picked up the brass we could find but didn't fret over every single one, and certainly didn't worry about counting them afterwards. The fact that we were in a combat zone and that weapons training was an expected part of that freed the range officers from many of the annoying restrictions we put up with in the States. This experience was a lot more enjoyable.

The palace and it's outbuildings have all fallen into extreme dis-repair.

Being occupied by the Russians didn't help anything, as evidenced by all the bullet holes.

Before heading home, we decided to drive up to the Queen's Palace and have a look around. Like any good castle, it was built in a defensible position at the top of a decently sized hill, with no other major terrain features for a mile in any direction. This arrangement offered a spectacular view of the city and surrounding mountains.

The beginnings of the Afghan countryside on the outskirts of Southern Kabul.

The end of the Queen's Palace, and currently the only

entrance not sealed off by concertina (razor) wire.

Inside the palace was quite amazing. The damage done to the structure was significant enough that you really had to imagine what it looked like in it's hey day, but the potential for greatness was readily apparent. The most striking architectural feature were the large columns running the entire height of the three-story structure, and tiled in green marble.

Marble columns in the Queen's Palace, Darul Aman, Afghanistan.

As I walked through, I thought to myself that if this palace and it's larger companion across the way were ever to be refurbished, that would be a day when we would no longer be needed in this country. When the Afghans can put together the planning, technical expertise, and funding to pull off a restoration project of this magnitude, it will be long after the conflict currently underway. If I ever come back to Afghanistan in the future, I hope that this will be the case.

As I write this I am less than two weeks from the end of my tour and departing Afghanistan. There's not going to be a lot I miss about this place. But experiences like these are going to be one of them.

All for tonight. Out here.

Turkey Day

2010-11-25T18:00:00.001+04:30

Part of the Thanksgiving feast at Camp Eggers. Yum.

Today is a day for remembering what you have and not taking those things for granted. It's about family and fellowship and, of course, turkey. I had fellowship with my friends. My family is 7,000 miles away. I actually skipped the turkey in favor of rather delicious ham. The last check mark is giving thanks, so...

I am thankful for:

- 22 hours off work. The duty day ended at 1500 on Thursday, and our customary morning off on Friday is still in effect. That means I get ALMOST one whole day off. What a luxury.

- My thoroughly awesome office mates. We've been with each other 14 hours a day for almost 5 months and we still haven't killed each other. We all share a similar sense of juvenile humor, which makes the day go by much easier and much faster. I really don't think I could have picked a better group to spend my deployment with.

- Good security. The only times I've had to wear my body armor were either voluntary or for a practice drill. There have been very few incidents in Kabul during my time here, and none of them serious.

- Friends that push me to work out. Hitting the gym isn't something that do for fun in my spare time, and I don't have the discipline to stick with a routine that causes me pain on a regular basis. Having buddies to push me to do better has been key to me getting in better shape.

- The forethought to load Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant" on my iPod. It just isn't Thanksgiving until I listen to that song.

- Freedom from Christmas songs. I can't STAND to listen to Christmas music anytime before Thanksgiving or after New Year's. My family, on the other hand, would listen to them all year long if allowed. They are taking full advantage of my absence in this respect. They even put up the tree last weekend. Don't get used to it guys.

- Quality Thanksgiving entertainment. Namely, the Today Show on NBC broadcasting live from Camp Eggers. It was pretty cool to walk past the cameras, the crowd of people trying to get on TV, the reporter, etc, then watch the scene on TV while eating dinner.

Today Show correspondent Lester Holt prepping for a report from Camp Eggers.

- PS3s and 50" TVs. Combined with people who have never played video games, hilarity ensues.

- Only 17 days until my convoy leaves Camp Eggers! Then begins the waiting game on flights to get home. I have hope that I'll get home before Christmas, but trying not to get those hopes too high, as there is still a pretty good chance that I'll be in Kuwait instead.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Stay safe on the roads, stay sane on the shopping trips.

Out here.

Meager Gestures

2010-11-18T00:15:00.005+04:30

Sorrow wears a sweater.

America is rich. Even our poor people have enough access to food to become fat. In the midst of financial crisis and high unemployment, it's easy to forget how blessed we are to live in the land of the free and the home of the brave. But when confronted with poverty of great severity, the disparity between ourselves and others becomes all too apparent.

Consider this. The average yearly salary for a worker in Afghanistan is around $400. Yearly. Salary. Consider also that a house (like you and I think of) in Kabul costs hundreds of thousands of dollars because of international agencies and Coalition contract money driving up the price. The high cost of living combined with the low earning potential makes Kabul ripe for class disparity. The rich are very rich, by Afghan standards, and the poor are very poor, by any standard. We are fortunate to be in a position to help.

The Volunteer Community Relations (VCR) program at Camp Eggers takes donations of clothes, school supplies, toys, and toiletries and arranges opportunities to distribute these items to the neediest of the needy in Kabul. Every week, volunteers come together to sort the items by age group, size or category, and parcel out the items into equal portions. About once a month, the organizers put together a convoy to visit a local refuge camp or an orphanage or other area where these items are needed. To be eligible to go out on one of these missions, you must have participated in at least one VCR sort, and those that haven't been on a mission previously get preference over those that have for filling the spaces. It's a good way to get out of the office, get off camp, and assist in doing the local folk some good.

An Air Force officer showing the kids pictures of themselves on his digital camera.

Minds = blown.

The mission that ran most recently was entitled Operation Get-Ur-Done. No, I'm not kidding. It was actually rather appropriate. This mission had been canceled four times due to planning snafus. The chaplains office has primary responsibility for the VCR program, augmented by other volunteers. Everyone involved has their "real" job to do, making finding time to organize VCR stuff difficult. The people in charge of planning these missions also have very little mission planning experience, making it take longer than it really should. An infantry officer would be able to do this stuff in his sleep, but a chaplain, not so much. A site must be found, surveyed for security purposes, traveling routes planned, security escorts coordinated, vehicles reserved, passenger information gathered, mission briefing planned, mission briefing given, cats herded, all before a single item can be given away. All of this must be done on top of the sorting and the packaging of the actual goods. It's a lot of work, and it's a testament to the dedication of the volunteers that it gets done at all.

This mission was to be fairly large with five fully loaded SUVs and a box truck to carry the goodies. We were visiting a refuge camp that houses people from the southern region of Afghanistan, people that had lost their homes or their livelihood in some fashion or another. The booty was 90 trash bags full of stuff. This wasn't enough to give one bag to each family living in the camp, so the group running the camp held a lottery, drawing names of 90 families to receive aid. It's unfortunate we weren't able to supply something for everyone, but we only do what we can do, and hope we have an opportunity to visit again in the future. An added wrinkle to this mission was that instead of having an American infantry platoon provide security for us, we would be meeting up with an Afghan National Army (ANA) unit. And not only were they going to provide security, they were bringing other items to give away to the refuges. I was quite interested to see how this was going to turn out.

An ANA soldier stands guard from the bed of his pick-up truck while

children watch from the window.

The drive to the camp took about 20 minutes through the heart of Kabul. On the way to the camp, we passed by the Iranian Embassy, which was an interesting experience. Seeing the guards standing guard outside the gate and knowing that they could be guarding any number of things designed to disrupt Coalition efforts in Afghanistan made my skin crawl a little. I was lucky enough to be seated next to a local resident that served as an interpreter for Camp Eggers. He was able to point out several things in the city that we would have missed otherwise, and answer questions we had about the things we did see. As it turned out, he only lived about three blocks from the refuge camp, and he apologized profusely for not being prepared to have us come and visit his home. For all the things the Afghans aren't, one thing they are is hospitable. These people will give until they bleed and ask if you'd like seconds.

On arriving at the camp, I was rendered speechless. The dwellings where these people were living were clay brick huts, clearly hand-built, with a tarp for the roof. While this by itself wasn't really that surprising, the juxtaposition of these mud huts next to a ten-story apartment building was striking. The camp appeared to have been built on an empty field in the middle of a city of 2.5 million people. Coming from America where zoning laws and building codes and public health regulations and any number of other things would render this little shanty town illegal, it was hard to screw my mind into the reality staring me in the face.

The road leading away from the refuge camp into the nice part of town.

Unfortunately, I was too gobsmacked to take pictures of the camp itself on the drive in,

and we weren't in a position to see the camp during the distribution.

The ANA set up their perimeter and brought in the supplies they had to distribute while we got the box truck in the right spot and got the bags ready to hand out. Someone produced a rope and stretched it across one end of the road for the people to line up behind. There were kids crawling all over the place to see what we had brought for them. I'd dealt with kids in two different spots in Afghanistan before this trip: the German school, and the street outside ISAF. The school kids are clean, well kept and well mannered. The street kids are dirty, persistent, and prone to picking pockets if they think they can get away with it. The kids at the refuge camp were filthy beyond belief, very polite, and genuinely glad to see us. Not in the "Yay! I can make money off you today!" way of the street kids, but in the ecstatic, bubbly, hyper-curious way children act on Christmas morning. Most of them were dressed in clothes from America, obviously handed out to them by some organization once upon a time. I was glad we were here to help them further, but the supplies seemed so meager for a need so great. I wished we could do more.

If sandals are all you have, you wear them. Even when it's muddy.

Once the distribution started it was bedlam. The people getting supplies were orderly, waiting their turn to have their hand marked with a sharpie before being allowed to cross the rope to the truck. Everyone else was going nuts. There was a small trench near the road where people were walking back and forth, climbing the low dirt wall to see if they could convince someone to give them something, even though they weren't one of the ones in line. There were kids just curious to see what was going on, underfoot like an annoyingly adorable kitten. There were herds of goats being ushered through our midst. But through all the madness, the ANA were amazing. They took charge of the distribution, not only of the stuff they brought, but of the stuff we brought as well. The Camp Eggers crew was quickly but politely brushed aside to let the Afghans pass out the aid to their countrymen. Which ended up being perfectly fine with me, as I got to snap away on the camera and take in the scene.

An Afghan girl collecting supplies for her family.

To only be able to help 90 families was hard. Judging by the size of the camp, there were at least several hundred families living here, I wanted to be able to help them all. Sadly, it was not to be. The supplies disappeared quickly, and were soon gone, spirited away on the backs of children, women and old men (very, very few working age men came to pick up supplies, interestingly) into the mouths of clay huts. As we loaded back into our cars, some of the kids gathered around the vehicles asking for pens or candy. One old man made it very clear through pseudo-sign language and charades that he was hungry and wanted us to give him food. But we pulled away, aid tapped for the time being.

Stinky, smelly goats being herded through the distribution. I had to laugh.

And the goat herder. His flock of twenty or so animals was completely under control.

The experience was rewarding, and definitely something I needed to see. I understand now why they give mission preference to people that have only been to one VCR sort over the people that have been twenty times. Seeing poverty and sorrow and strife on TV or in a magazine doesn't punch you in the gut like it does when you see it first hand. True recognition of our privileged existence requires staring into the face of a child who doesn't know where his next meal will come from. Going on one mission is all you need to want to help out in anyway you can.

A few days after the mission, my Little One had a birthday. She turned four. I was able to "attend" the party through Skype and watch her and her friends make crafts, eat cake and ice cream, and, of course, open presents. As I watched her rip open her packages, dwelling on each box only long enough to absorb what she had received before moving on to the next one, I was overwhelmed by how lucky my little girl was. She had a warm home that wasn't made out of mud, a full belly, the beginnings of an education, and not a care in the world, beyond whether or not the present she wanted was in the box with the blue paper or the purple paper.

I tried to imagine what the toys and money being lavished on my daughter would mean to the little girls huddled together for warmth in the refuge camp. How many meals would that money buy them? How many nights would they be kept warm and dry by the clothes being unwrapped?

I wondered if their wildest dreams even approached my little girl's reality.

Somehow, I doubted it.

*****

If you have any items you wish to donate to the VCR program, box it up and send it to:

VCR Program (Pool House)

Chaplain's Office NTM-A/CSTC-A

APO AE 09356

Donations accepted include clothing, toys, school supplies, toiletries and other hygiene items, diapers, etc., etc. Think about what you'd donate to a homeless shelter. Those items will be welcome. Try not to send anything with pigs or a religious message, as these will not (and actually cannot) be distributed. And DON'T put the word "Afghanistan" ANYWHERE on the box. If you do, the box will get kicked into the Afghan mail system instead of the military mail system and will never be heard from again.

In addition to the Afghan outreach, VCR also sends boxes to soldiers on remote operating posts around the country. Magazines, microwave popcorn, old DVD movies, and anything else you think a soldier in the mud would relish are welcome as well. Many of the places around the country don't have a store to shop at, so they depend on home for resupply of all the good things in life, like Gold Bond and clean socks. Trust me, you'll make some grunt's day.

That's all for tonight. Out here.

The Ghar

2010-11-08T23:29:00.005+04:30

Kabul Military Training Compound on the left, Kabul on the right,

and some very tired LTCs in the front.

As a rule, they don't let us out much here at CSTC-A. There's not a lot of need for operations research analysts to go out on convoys around the city, and definitely not outside of the city. So it's fairly exciting to get out of the office for some "R&R". Well, only the second part of that term is applicable in this case. There was definitely no resting.

"Ghar" is the Dari word for "mountain". The spot we call The Ghar is a relatively small pile of rock on one of the Afghan National Army (ANA) training sites just on the outskirts of Kabul. Groups from CSTC-A used to organize trips to hike to the top fairly often, but the approval procedure changed a few months ago, making it a lot more difficult to put together. My predecessor had climbed several times, but I'd been here for almost 5 months and still hadn't gotten to go. Thankfully, one of my office mates got to be buddies with the aide of the approving authority and was able to get a Ghar trip cleared. As the adage goes, it's not what you know, it's who you know.

Friday mornings are the only suitable time to go climbing a mountain. Fridays are the low battle-rhythm day, meaning no work until 1300. It's a chance to sleep in, recharge the batteries, go do some shopping at the bazaar and generally relax. Having the work day start that late gives time to travel, climb, return, rest and recharge before the job begins again. Unfortunately, this means waking up at 0415 on my sleep-in day. Boo, times two. We met up at the parking lot at 0500 for a final briefing before rolling out at 0530. Security precautions necessitated multiple groups of cars along multiple routes all meeting at the same place around 45 minutes later. We started hiking up the slope just as the sun was peaking through the clouds on the horizon.

Here comes the sun, doo-do-do-dooo...

Now, I've been working out 6 days a week while I've been here, weightlifting for the past few months. My body has changed shape, and I feel pretty good about myself.

Then the mountain decided to serve me some humble pie.

Total ascent on this "relatively small" mountain was around 1,000 feet. I'd climbed maybe 50 when my lungs and I had to have a little chat. They were filing formal complaint about being used so strenuously somewhere where the air was so thin. In their opinion, I should turn back now before they go on strike and make me pass out. There were threats on both sides, but I won out in the end by offering frequent breaks on the way up. I'm just glad they didn't have a union. Seeing the coup I won over my lungs, my legs' protest was fairly weak, as they knew my determination was no match for their pathetic whining. They made their objection, it was noted in the log, then I beat them into oblivion to drive home the point that I would not be denied a summit.

The path up the slope was not always apparent, often times requiring scrambling hands and feet over large rocks, or trying to climb up little, loose, sliding pebbles. There weren't any rock walls to scale or anything, but it wasn't exactly a gentle hike either. My method of ascent was to pick a big rock up the mountain a ways, set a goal to reach it before taking a break, then push my goal back to the next big rock instead. I knew if I didn't push myself I wasn't going to get up the mountain fast enough to have time to enjoy the top. That worked out pretty well for me. In no time I was nearing the crest, raising my head over the rise to see the end...

Wait a minute. Why are people still walking around the corner? Where are they going? Don't they know this is the end? Let's just follow them and see what's over h-...awwww, crap....

The mountain had tricked me. Complete fake out. From the base, the spot I was standing on clearly was the top. Now from the "top", clearly there was more mountain to climb. /fume. Trudge, trudge, trudge, trudge, pant, pant, pant, pant, top in sight, nearing summit, keep moving, keep moving....

Now what is this? Seriously, I'm at the top this time. Where is everyone? Wait, what's over here? Oh, you've got to be kidding me...

Just as deceiving as a low-down dirty...deceiver.

I can't explain how soul crushingly terrible it was to find out that the mountain had made a fool of me again. I mean, c'mon! False endings are an annoying gimmick in a movie or a song, but they're downright infuriating on a friggin mountain. So, once again, I'm climbing, climbing, this time I can see a crowd of people at the top so I know I'm actually nearing the end. And those two stupid fake endings made reaching the real one all the more sweet.

The CJ7 gang at the top of the Ghar. No, the anonymous one is not in the picture.

The view from the top of my newly conquered mountain was pretty amazing. On the south side of the mountain was Kabul and the Army training grounds. The city looked like quite the sprawl, as it should be, home to around 3 million people and all. The thing noticeably different about this city was the lack of tall buildings. Even in my relatively small hometown of Kansas City, home to around 1 million people, there's a couple dense clusters of skyscrapers. Kabul might be lucky to have a building that tops 10 stories. On the north side was the valley leading away to the mountains that eventually blend with the Himalayas some 300 miles from here. The landscape was dotted with defensive fighting positions for armored vehicles, though whether they were an extension of the training grounds or left over from the British or Soviets I do not know. I took a hometown newspaper up the mountain with me, and a card from a kid in New York named Jack who's class sent us letters and candy. I also took pictures of my girls, and took pictures of their pictures on top of the mountain. Even if they couldn't be there in body, I brought them there in spirit.

Left to right, Daughter Prime, Wallflower, and Little One, at the top

of the Ghar in Afghanistan. Sort of.

After an all-too-short stay at the peak, it was time to head down and back to Camp Eggers. Whereas the ascent saw my lungs and legs complaining, the descent was the cue for my toes to join the whining. Good balance on my toes was the only thing that kept me from rolling down to the bottom in more than a few spots. Finding that balance in combat boots is not simple. I breathed a thankful prayer that there are men out there better than I that volunteer to hike these mountains carrying 50+ pounds of armor, weapons, ammo and other gear in search of the enemy. I didn't have a true appreciation for the difficulty of that task before. I do now.

Me in my body armor on the way back to town. Very happy

I only had to carry the pistol on the ascent.

The ride back to Eggers was interesting in its own right. On the way to the Ghar, the sun wasn't even up, so it was dark and there weren't a lot of people around. On the drive back into town, the streets were packed. It was, after all, Friday morning. Friday is the Muslim holy day, and while traffic was reduced from typical levels, more people were out on the street than I had seen during my two previous trips through town. Lots of shopping was going on at the roadside fruit vendors and butchers. Sadly, the burger joint looked closed. No, I'm not kidding.

Apparently we've brought our bad eating habits with us from America.

The Ghar is one of the best experiences I've had during my time here. We get to spend quite a bit of recreation time together as a group, but it's so much more satisfying when you can go somewhere besides the office or the dining facility to do it. We're planning to go once more before I head home, some time in early December. It looks possible that my replacement will actually be on the ground by then. Hopefully that is the case, as that would be pretty cool to hike to the top with a co-worker from back home. We'll just have to see.

Coming up next, more exciting adventures outside the walls of Camp Eggers. Stay tuned. That's all for tonight. Out here.

Happy Halloween

2010-10-31T23:00:00.036+04:30

The gang dressed for candy gathering. Left to right: Han, Sith Lord, Padme,

Obi Wan, Qui-gon, Anakin, Storm Trooper.

I just went trick or treating in a combat zone.

Well, that was a strange sentence.

Our office had been planning this for weeks. It was against regulations, technically, and we weren't entirely certain what the reaction of the general populace was going to be, but we decided to beg for forgiveness rather than ask for permission. Since trick or treating as an individual is pretty lame, we decided to go as a group and coordinate the costumes. Being as there were 6 of us, we had to find source material that would allow us to all have a character. We considered several different options, but Star Wars was going to be the easiest to pull off. Besides, we're all nerds anyway, so the shoe fit perfectly.

Before making our rounds, we had an office Halloween party. Really it was just supposed to be a "morale maintenance" time, where we could all take a couple hours off to mess around together, but it happened to coincide with Halloween. We had some dinner and played some games, laughed at ourselves playing Catch Phrase, and generally were able to relax and forget about deadlines for a couple hours. After the party, it was time to get dressed.

Our group consisted of a Sith Lord (me), Qui-gon Jinn, Anakin, Han Solo, a storm trooper, and Padme. Most of the costumes were ordered online and shipped to us a few weeks ago, but Han used his dress blue Army pants, black jump boots, and tactical holster (complete with 9mm pistol) for his outfit. The only thing he had to buy was a vest, which he had made in the bazaar by one of the locals. Our lone girl, Heather, was the one who had originally suggested that we all dress up. However, upon receiving her costume, she took quite a bit of cajoling and convincing to wear it in public. I guess she wouldn't be a girl without being a little self-conscious about wearing a semi-see-through body suit.

After getting dressed, we ran into someone dressed as Obi Wan Kenobi. He had gone to a little more effort than we had. His costume cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $300, and would be acceptable to wear to a Star Wars convention. Those of us dressed as jedi/sith had a bit of light saber envy, as Obi Wan's made sound effects when waved through the air or clashed into things. None of us had ever met him before, but we invited him to tag along with us as we toured the camp, and he gladly accepted. Safety in numbers.

Our colonel jokingly treated us like his children, making us pose for pictures before he would let us leave the office, and warning us not to talk to strangers and not to eat any candy until he had screened it for razor blades and poison. He also instructed us to tell anyone that asked we were from a different office, one we don't particularly like. As I said earlier, this was technically against the rules. The soldiers here are supposed to wear either their fatigues or their gray shirt and black shorts PT uniform. Halloween costumes don't quite fit the uniform standard.

We ended up making FIFTEEN stops on our tour of the camp. Everyone had friends they wanted to visit at different offices, making our journey a little longer than expected, but it wasn't too cold out so it wasn't so bad. Our storm trooper had a (very) difficult time seeing out of his helmet, so the night was probably longer for him than the rest of us. We were nice to him though, and didn't walk him into any poles or ditches, though we did almost manage to get him to walk into a port-a-potty. We tried to go visit the some of the generals, but they were either out of the office or in meetings. Their staffs, however, were highly entertained by our appearance. In fact, everywhere we went tonight we attracted quite a bit of attention. While this wasn't entirely unexpected, what was a pleasant surprise was that all but a couple of people were happy to see us. Every office was ready with a camera, and most with candy, so if the spoil sports existed they were keeping quiet about it. We took one community bag for candy collection and made out like bandits. I estimate some where between six and seven pounds of candy was collected. The sack is now sitting on our already well-stocked goodie table. We'll have to make sure to take a bunch of it out to the street kids, lest we eat it all ourselves.

Tomorrow is the start of the last full month of my stay in Afghanistan. I have about 45 days left before I being my travel home. Sometime in the next two to four weeks my replacement will be headed to CRC and begin his own adventure. Given the time table, I'm not sure which holiday I'll be celebrating first, my youngest daughter's birthday or my replacement leaving the States. Either way, I will be happy to celebrate, as it will mean I am that much closer to coming home.

All for tonight. Happy Halloween everyone. May your candy be plentiful and your costumes reflective. Out here.

The Good Idea Fairy Needs To Be Shot

2010-10-26T01:03:00.000+04:30

Wanted, Dead or Alive: Flying fat man in a tutu carrying a light bulb on a stick,

for crimes against intelligence and common sense.

When you turn a kid loose in a candy store, what happens? They fill their bag with every type of candy within reach. Kids don't have much of a concept of money. The have even less of a concept of money in relation to items. Kids think cars cost $100 because that's the biggest number they can think of at the time. A bulging sack of candy that costs $40 won't phase them because they don't realize that price is high for junk food. All that kid is concerned with is getting candy in large amounts. Likely he or she would pick out a few things that they don't even like along the way, because they're caught up in the moment, but that doesn't matter either, because the sack is bigger with the bad stuff than it is without it.

As it happens, there's a very similar occurence when a general learns that he likes analysis. He orders every type of analysis he can think of, in large quantities, to be delivered as soon as possible, without regard to the resource cost. We call this an attack of the Good Idea Fairy.

Once a general officer's thirst for quality analysis has been stoked, there's little hope of quenching it. Every thing said general, or his staff, can think to "analyze", they task out to some one. These strokes of brilliance are often accompanied by the phrase "Hey! That's a good idea!" Thus, the phenomenon is named.

The Good Idea Fairy leaves in its wake a path of destruction unparalleled in the annals of history. Humongous Power Point presentations, exhausted analysts, usually lots of scratched heads. The time, money, and brain power spent fighting the Good Idea Fairy is uncountable. Successfully fending off a Good Idea Fairy attack is rewardable with a medal for valor.

The dangers of the Good Idea Fairy are legion. One: not everything can be, or needs to be, rigorously, analytically, examined. The Good Idea Fairy does not believe this to be the case, and blesses people with pseudo-epiphanies every day. For instance:

General: "Tell me, good analyst, what will happen if I put this loaded pistol to my head, disengage the safety, and pull the trigger?"

Analyst: "Well, sir, you would likely die."

General: "Yes, but how likely?"

Analyst: "Well, I determine the probability of death, P(Death), to be roughly 1 - P(dud) - P(misfire) - P(miracle). Further analysis would be required to determine the exact probability, but its safe to say probability of death would be very close to 100%."

General: "Hmm. Go do some research and come back to me with an answer to the twelfth decimal place. Anything less isn't accurate enough for this critical information. Have the answer on my desk in an hour."

Good Idea Fairy: *cackles gleefully*

Often requests to analyze problems that can be solved with common sense are born out of fear or ignorance. Fear, because last time someone got burned and they're going to make darn certain it doesn't happen again. Ignorance, because the requesting authority has never done mathematical analysis, and has no concept of it's limitations or proper uses. Of course the problem with spending resources, i.e. analysts, on problems that do not require rigorous analysis is that it's a waste of time. Wasting time makes the important initiatives slip to the right (take longer to complete). Timelines for important intiatives slipping to the right usually isn't accepted in a combat zone, so instead, extra hours must be dedicated towards both projects, meaning long nights and more work for the analysts doing the job, causing burn out, fatigue, crazed rampages through the office, etc. All because a trivial problem had to be over-analyzed.

The key to combating this is communication. You have to be able to explain to the requesting authority why a simple answer is good enough, and the impacts investigating a complex answer will have to all the other work being done. Sometimes this works. Often it doesn't. The usual solution is to just go with it for the majority of cases, only pushing back when the analysis would be particularly asinine, or the analysts are unusually busy.

Danger number two: when the Good Idea Fairy strikes, and analysis requests are flying fast and thick, it is INEVITABLE that at least one, and usually more, of those requests will be impossible to fulfill.

An Army officer back home told me a story once about metrics the command in Iraq was trying to use to determine how secure Baghdad was during the middle portion of the war. One idea was to count the number of kids playing sports (basketball and socccer, mostly) in a public area, like parks or school playgrounds. The thought was that if kids were outside playing, then their parents must think the area is safe. More kids outside would indicate an improving security situation.

Now, the premise is fine. More children playing outside WOULD be a good indication that their parents thought the area to be safe. But, how, with a force of ~100,000 troops, would it be possible to accurately count children playing outside in a city of 6 million people? What time of day should they be counted? What day of the week? Should they be counted only when it's perfectly sunny outside, or in any weather? How often does this number need to be reported? How many people should be diverted from security patrols in order to perform this task? You can quickly gather how this task would be nearly impossible to accomplish. Furthermore, the information sought through this method (how secure IS the city?) could likely be gathered in simpler ways, saving lots of wasted effort. In this instance, other metrics were utilized, and the analyst responsible was revered as a genius amongst soldiers.

The key to fixing this problem, in my experience, is demonstration. This is unfortunate, as demonstration requires you to do all the work in order to show how stupid a solution is before you can get leadership to decide you don't need to do all the work that you just did to get them to decide you didn't need to do all the work to begin with.

Still with me?

Demonstration is the only course of action because the word "impossible" does not exist in the lexicon of the U.S. Army. The closest you can come is "infeasible". Infeasible is smart speak for "waste of time" to a general, which is exactly the acknowledgment you're going for. So the quicker you can demonstrate the infeasibility of a suggested course of action, the quicker you can get back to the real work.

A personal story. Just last night I was waylaid by this monster. Walking back to the office from a marathon meeting, a senior leader recognized his chance to grab three ORSAs and bounce his ideas off us. He talked excitedly about these ideas he had come up with, analyzed himself on a napkin (literally), and already talked to the commander about. He was convinced of his idea's feasibility, and demanded that our office set aside time to run the numbers and confirm his stance. Meanwhile, we're shaking our heads, telling him that there's no way he will be able to accomplish what he's after, that we've already done similar analysis that invalidates everything he's saying, and that further analysis isn't a good use of our time. But it was too late, the good idea seed had been planted and we were stuck. Now we've got at least 3 days of modeling, analyzing, prepping and briefing ahead of us, for a problem we already know the answer to. ARGH!

In this case, we tried communication. Unfortunately, this method of attack did not work, so we move to demonstration. Though this method will take a lot of work, if properly executed, we can put this problem to bed without being tasked to do anything further. At this point, that's the best option. We know the three days required for a proper "demonstration" solution are already sunk, but we'd like to stop the bleeding right there.

So, if anyone sees a little winged person carrying a stick topped by a light bulb, please kill it. The bounty on this creature's head is high, and you will be rewarded handsomely. I even think it's possible that with this menace defeated, I may be able to end my tour early.

All for tonight. Out here.

General Impressions, Part Deux

2010-10-18T00:20:00.000+04:30

When I wrote this article a couple months back, I thought I was going to be briefing the NTM-A commander in a few days. As it happened, that chance never materialized. The work morphed, a different organization took the lead, and I ended up only in a supporting role. I was pretty bummed that I didn't get to follow through with the briefing, especially since chances to brief leadership at that level don't come along everyday.

Well, today I got my second chance.

Lieutenant General (LTG) William B. Caldwell IV is the NTM-A / CSTC-A commander, and has been since November 2009. The rank of Lieutenant General is signified by three stars, and surpassed only by the rank of General (just General, no qualifiers), which has four stars*. In the U.S. Army, there exist somewhere around 50 three star generals for the entire force of 548,000 soldiers. In Afghanistan, there are only four: General Petraeus' deputy commander, Petraeus' Chief of Staff (both foreign officers, one French, one British), the Commander of the ISAF Joint Command (COM IJC, LTG David Rodriguez) who controls how Afghan and Coalition forces are employed in the field, and COM NTM-A, LTG Caldwell.

*Ok, so technically I'm ignoring the ultra-rare, five star rank called General of the Army/Navy/Air Force. In the history of the U.S. military only nine people have attained the five star rank, so I think I'm safe.

During "normal" war time operations (force on force battles), a three star general would command a force element called a Corps, made up of several divisions, totaling 20,000-40,000 personnel. Here in Afghanistan, LTG Caldwell has total command over the recruiting, training and assignment infrastructure of the Afghan National Army and Police. He is entirely responsible for building the Afghan security forces to the point where they can take care of their own country. He commands a budget of around $12 billion. Yes, with a "B" - billion. And as the ORSA cell for the NTM-A command, he depends heavily on our shop to provide analysis to his constituent organizations in order to facilitate decisions. As you can imagine, briefing LTG Caldwell is kind of a big deal.

Usually we don't get to do much of the briefing to the commander, as we are in a supporting role to the subject matter experts instead of in the lead. But, in this case, the organization we were supporting felt more comfortable having us brief the results than having us teach them how. It was good for us, as it reinforces to the commander our importance in the scheme of things, and will (hopefully) make him more likely to question "analysis" that didn't come from our shop. Of course, to make that impression, we had to actually do well on the brief. Cue preparation.

The briefing we were to be a part of is a monthly "deep dive". The commander tells the two star general in charge of the Afghan Police, Deputy Commander - Police (DCOM-P), what topics he wants to cover for the month and we drill into it as deep as we can in two hours. This month we were talking about how many training centers we will need to sustain the police force after we finish growing, and how we can grow two types of police more efficiently to better secure the country. The first was fairly technical, and was briefed by one of my co-workers. The second is somewhat contentious between the trainers and the operators, and briefed by myself*. Neither topic was going to be easy to cover, so we had a meeting with the general every single night this week to cover the slides and the presentation. This is highly unusual. A two star general has a lot of things to do. Meeting with his staff every evening for an entire week for the same topic was a very visible testament to how important he considered this Deep Dive briefing to be. By the time the brief rolled around this morning, I think I could recite my slides and my briefing notes in my sleep.

*Neither of these topics were classified, but I would consider them sensitive, so I can't go into a ton of detail. Vague references is the best you get. Sorry.

Personally, I was hoping for my first briefing to COM NTM-A to be a smaller affair with only a few people present. Say, 10-12. Sadly, it was not to be. The Deep Dive is a well attended event, but this one more so than usual, as several outside organizations were coming, as well as representatives from the Afghan Ministry of the Interior. Even knowing the place was going to be packed, I was unprepared for what I walked into. Holy sardine can, Batman! I counted 65 people in a room designed for 30. Three people were sitting on the floor. One was standing in a corner. The aisle to the "spectator" seats was blocked by another row of chairs. I was thankful that as one of the briefers, I had a choice seat with my name on it along a side wall and a slide packet stapled and waiting for me. I'd been to these things before and had to fight for a spot, but not today.

Generals from the Afghan Police, IJC, and EUPOL were special guests at the table, along with all of the other generals from NTM-A. Total, there were five one star generals, four two stars, and the three star. I have no idea how many colonels and other ranks were in the room, but as I have grown accustomed to, I was definitely the most junior, both in "rank" and age. I was definitely a bit nervous due to all the brass, and very thankful I was briefing second.

When my time came to brief, I was expecting it to be rocky. As I said earlier, my topic was somewhat contentious, as those responsible for operating the force and those responsible for training the force don't always see eye to eye on those topics. IJC, the operators, were requesting specific items from NTM-A, the trainers, and my analysis showed what we were doing to accommodate them. I was worried that the two star general from IJC in attendance at the meeting would object to something I was briefing, but he was very agreeable to the information I was providing, and LTG Caldwell was very pleased with the presentation. He even gave me a thumbs up and a "You're right on track" when I told him our first course of action was clearly not going to satisfy IJC's request. Through 40 minutes (for only 10 Power Point slides) of discussion with the staff, we came up with some very reasonable ideas on how to tackle the issue. We've got a lot of work to do, and, as always, not very much time to do it in, but nothing that is impossible. As I sat down and the next briefer took over, I received an appreciative nod from the commander. I figured that meant I did ok.

After the brief, my suspicions appeared to be confirmed, as LTG Caldwell's Chief of Staff congratulated me on briefing a difficult topic so well, and several senior NTM-A leaders that had never spoken to me before echoed his sentiments. Not that I was expecting to fail or anything, but things went far better than I had imagined them going. I was grateful for the preparation time, and for the tips those with experience briefing these kinds of audiences had given me. I'm not sure I'll get this chance again, and really wasn't sure I wanted to have it in the first place, but having suffered through it, I'm glad I did. The experience of briefing a commander in a combat zone is unique, and can't be gained just anywhere. The lessons learned will be invaluable in future briefings as I move on in my ORSA career. One more reason to be glad I came to Afghanistan.

That's it for now. Out here.

Fast Friends

2010-10-04T21:51:00.000+04:30

The whole gang at the office. Front to back: Steve, Heather, John, and Anonymous.

My worst nightmare about coming to Afghanistan was getting in over my head on an analysis project. I was afraid that there would be some technique that I would need to execute, and have no idea how to do it. While I was getting ready to come over here, listening to my predecessor talk about the projects he'd worked on scared me a bit, as it sounded way over my head. I wasn't sure I could handle it. Thankfully, the things I needed to learn I learned, and I had people to ask about the things I needed help with. So far, I haven't fallen flat on my face, and my support structure here won't allow it.

A close second to this was my fear that I would get stuck in an office with a bunch of people that I hated. Our office is very small, maybe 10 feet long by 25 feet wide, and we fit 5 people into it. We're stuck in here together between 12 and 14 hours a day. Sharing that much time, in this small a space, for six months, would be absolutely horrible if I didn't get along with my office mates. Instead I've found the complete opposite. Each of my four co-workers are people that I would be willing to hang out with back home. Instead of driving me crazy, my co-workers help keep me sane.

The first person I met here was Heather. Heather deployed to Camp Eggers the week before I did, and we'll end up leaving about the same time. During the first few weeks here, Heather and I stuck together, mostly to ourselves, as the people we worked with at the time weren't all that social. But slowly, each of those people were replaced by new blood, and we drug each new guy into our circle. Our wolf pack was two, and has grown to five.

Heather is a bit camera shy, so I have to ambush her.

Heather has definitely become the little sister of the group. We pick on her pretty mercilessly, although in good fun. She's good-natured enough to take the teasing, practical jokes, and incessant girlish giggling at her expense. She's also feisty enough to keep us from getting out of line, and dishes out her own brand of humiliation. She has a hilarious habit of leaving half-empty water bottles everywhere she goes, like the little girl in the movie Signs. She's addicted to Pixie Sticks. We militantly protect her from idiots asking for analysis to be done at midnight for a brief the next morning, as she has a tendency to take on any problem she encounters. We all love her to death.

John is the quiet one, and the last of us to arrive in Afghanistan. He likes to work by himself, and needs quiet time in the office a couple times a day to get stuff done. But when he's not focused on work, he's just as fun-loving as the rest of us. John developed "TAITh": Thank Allah It's Thursday (Friday is our sleep-in day, no work til 1300). He can usually be counted on for a devestating one-liner when it is least expected. He's a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, but hey, we all have our flaws, right?

Steve is the honorary ORSA of the group, and the only one of us here for a year. His first circle of friends all redeployed back to the States at the same time we were showing up, so we laid claim to him before he could fall in with the wrong crowd. Steve is definitely the crack-up of the group, which is saying something around these jokers. He's the only one that knows what I'm talking about when I start a conversation on video games or computers. He likes to try and do every single weightlifting exercise possible in one work out. He has the nearly unforgiveable character flaw of being a far-weather Yankees fan, meaning he's not even aware the baseball season has started until the Yankees are in the playoffs. This October could put a strain on our relationship.

This is what Steve looks like when he discovers the praline ice cream is all gone.

The last member of our group is an enigma, wrapped in a conundrum, and fried in bacon. His past military experience has left him paranoid of any evidence of his existence being present on the internet. As such, I shall simply call him the Anonymous Analyst.

AA is an aloof individual. Goofy is his natural state of being. Dead pan delivery of subtle sarcasm is his specialty, causing lots of headscratching and strange looks amongst those who have just met him. This guy is the primary instigator of all practical jokes in the office, and the first person held accountable in the absence of a claim of responsibility. As such, he is often targetted for retaliation, both real and imagined. Remember I said he was paranoid? Just a cryptic mention that he might be missing something important will cause hours of entertainment as he searches for whatever it is you "hid". It takes much longer to convince him you were kidding than it does to spin him up in the first place.

AA is best friends with the staff at the dining facilites, specifically so they will slip him the best and/or biggest piece of whatever kind of meat they are serving that evening. It is not unusual for his meals to consist of four or five types of meat, with a side of cantalope to make himself feel better. He claims he's in his "bulking phase" of weightlifting, and he needs all the protein to refine his physique. We know better. We nicknamed him Meatasaurus, and bought him a can of Spam for his birthday. Surveying his desk right now, I don't see said Spam anywhere in sight. I assume he ate it.

Our little group spends tons of time together, and not just in the office. Lunch and dinner each day are a group event, barring interference from meetings and AA's impatient, spine-gnawing, meat-craving hunger pangs. Me and the guys go lift weights 6 days a week while Heather does CrossFit at the same time outside the gym. Thursday night is cigar night, followed by a movie. (In actuality, any night we don't have to work past 8:30 has the potential to become movie night, but we're particularly protective of Thursday.) We play video games together in John and Steve's room, and sneak away for coffee and conversation at the Green Bean (the combat-zone version of Starbucks) whenever we're able.

The aforementioned practical jokes are a daily staple. Here's a sampling of some of the fun we've had so far:

- Changed e-mail signature blocks to include creative nicknames on all e-mail traffic, including messages to general officers.

- Slowly added half-empty water bottles to Heather's desk, and convincing her each time that she had left them there herself. This only worked because she has, on average, 7 open bottles of water on her desk at any given time. She caught on after the total crept north of 20.

- Sent numerous e-mails from our supervisor's computer to a member of our group when he leaves his computer unlocked. Usually the message directs the recipent to perform some terribly redundant/useless/tedious task immediately. The joke is only revealed after the task has been partially completed.

- Rigged a cigar with a wire so that the ash would never fall off. Through carfeul power of suggestion, guided the deputy of our department (and founder of cigar night) to choose that cigar to smoke. During our contest to see who could keep the ash on their cigar the longest, we "discovered" the clueless deputy was "cheating" after four and a half inches of ash refused to sucumb to gravity. He knows he was set up, but he doesn't know by whom.

- Unplugged Heather's mouse from her computer, but left mouse and cord in place, so it looked like nothing was remiss. Giggled under our breath while she restarted her computer four times in an effort to fix the problem.

- Swapped locations of adjacent keys on Heather's keyboard. While her typing was unaffected (she doesn't look at the keyboard), copying and pasting and other shortcuts were reversed. She couldn't believe she kept messing up the keystrokes. It took her 10 minutes to realize that we were to blame.

I conceed that some of these are lame. However, what is lame back home is hilarious while deployed. The same concept applies to movies. Trash that I wouldn't watch even if someone paid me back home is a decent distraction over here. Anything you can do to forget that you're thousands of miles from home and could be shot at at any moment is welcome. Even if it's lame.

Our bosses are pretty awesome, too. The lieutenant colonel directly in charge of the analysts gave a good belly laugh when I turned in my weekly project report in haiku. The department deputy organized cigar night, and joins us for movie night more often than not. Our O-6 watches football with us, as long as we don't disparage his Eagles. Break that rule at your own peril.

Overall, I really don't think I could ask for a better work environment. Obviously I'd rather be at home with my family, but my deployed family keeps me company. Without them to distract me from my longing for home, and pick me up after a hard day at the office, my deployment would plain suck. I'm very thankful for the friends I've found. I just wish I didn't have to go half way around the world to find them.

That's all for now. Out here.

Halfway there

2010-09-21T22:14:00.000+04:30

All signs point to the end of my time in Afghanistan drawing closer and closer. Fall has arrived, officially. The air is getting cooler, the pomegranates are ripe, and the grapes have been harvested. Snow is beginning to cap the mountains that loom over the city. The last batch of my office mates to go on R&R have just returned. And I now have less time remaining than I have accumulated. Though the days are still going by quickly, in truth, they can't go by quickly enough. Don't get me wrong, I am enjoying this assignment. The work I do here is extremely satisfying, and my co-workers keep me sane through the long hours. But I can only stand being half a world away from home for so long.

In celebration of my halfway mark, I'm looking forward to the end. Here are some things I can't wait to get home to, and some things I can't wait to leave behind. Some are big, some are small, some are obvious, but none of them can come soon enough.

Things I'm looking forward to at home:

- My wife. Going to bed alone every night sucks. Being limited to 10-15 minute conversations over the phone every day sucks. Throwing up for two days without anyone there to take care of you sucks.

- My kids. My three little girls are growing fast, and I'm missing a lot of milestones while I'm over here. First day of kindergarten, first day of pre-school, first gymnastics meet, first soccer goal scored. I'm hopeful that I'll be home before Christmas to spend part of the holiday season with them and catch up on all I've missed.

- Normal work hours. The fewest hours I've worked in a two week pay period while deployed has been 156, and that included the first days I was on camp and was allowed to sleep off my jet lag. This pay period is going to be close to 170 hours. I get paid overtime, so the money is great, but stringing together 80+ hour weeks for 26 straight weeks is brutal. Thankfully, I get a weekend to recharge...

- Weekends. About those. The weekend here lasts from end of work Thursday evening (whatever time that may end up being) to 1 PM Friday afternoon. I sleep through most of it in order to recharge my batteries from 12-14 hour days. Time to myself that doesn't come at the expense of sleep would be awesome.

- Fast, unfiltered, cheap internet. The internet at work is approaching fast, but most sites are blocked, so no surfing even after work is done. The internet you can pay for (at $100 a month) is unfiltered, but it can take a minute for a site to load, and several hours for videos on YouTube. Don't even think about trying to download games or movies or music. Skype video freezes up and becomes unuseable within 5 minutes. Yes, I am aware I am complaining about having crappy internet in the middle of a combat zone. I am glad that it exists, and it is better than nothing. But I want my cable internet back.

- A good storm. Unfortunately I'm going to miss all the fun, noisy, summer storms, but at this point I'd take snow just the same. The weather here is BORING. Cloudless and sunny 95% of the time. I want some overcast, rainy, mellow days to break up the monotony. My home in the Midwest has plenty in supply. Here, not so much.

Things I look forward to leaving behind:

- That Afghanistan smell. Dirt. Sewage. Hash smoke. Dead flies rotting in the fly traps. I border on vomiting from the stench a few times a week on average. Will. Not. Miss.

- The air. The air quality here sucks. Kabul sits in a bowl, much like L.A. All the smoke produced by the locals burning things is trapped, contributing to the problem. I've heard it gets worse in the winter, as people will burn anything they can get their hands on in order to keep warm. On top of that, an air quality study done here shortly after I arrived found that 17% of the particulate in the air was human feces. Yummy. The one time I went for a run outside, I got sick the next day, and I'm convinced it was from sucking down the dirty air in large quanities.

- Dirty looks when I use my camera. People are super paranoid about cameras here. It's either someone that believes taking pictures of the cats at the DFAC is a violation of operational security, or shows obvious disdain because photography lowers me to "tourist" status. I had one Army sergeant make fun of me because I went through a lot of effort to get pictures of the Secretary of Defense when he visited a few weeks ago. I know what I'm not allowed to take pictures of, and I don't point the lens in that direction. The people that try and control me beyond that are extremly irritating.

- Football games at midnight. I like the NFL, but I just can't stay up that late to watch the games. We do get to see some of the replayed at more sane hours of the day, but most of the fun is taken out of it when you already know the final score.

- Guys with guns guarding where I sleep. I am thankful they are there to protect me, but I will be happier when I am sleeping in a place where the protection is not required.

- Politics. I'm tired of my analysis being used as a weapon to further someone's agenda. Analysis should be objective, and speak the truth, not subjective and speak the catch phrase of the week.

I could probably come up with a lot more, but those are the highlights. I am thankful that I am on the downhill slide to seeing these things come to pass. The thought of home is staving off burn out from the long hours. I am hoping hard that that continues.

Happy Autumn everyone. Out here.

Patriot Day

2010-09-11T23:06:00.000+04:30

The day was cool, but the sun was warm, making my shoulders itch under my uniform. I stood at parade rest, an uncomfortable position of half-attention with my hands clasped at the waist behind my back. On my right was a small table with two oil lamps and a notebook filled with with names of those who have been killed in action the past nine years. On my left hung an American flag, on which were written the names of all emergency personnel killed when the Twin Towers fell. On the other side of the flag plaza hung a similar flag, with the names of the people killed at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and United 93. In between were myself and my office mates, paying our respects to the victims of the attacks on 9/11 and all those that have fallen defending us from a repeat performance. Standing guard over the memorial, we honored their memory, and paused to reflect on the road we've traveled through the aftermath.

As I stood immobile, my thoughts wandered across the topic at hand. 11 September 2001 I was sitting in my high school psychology class, watching the world change along with everyone else. Outside the window planes headed to various destinations around the country were ordered to land, leaving racetrack contrails in the sky. Not once did I imagine that the events of that day would draw me, nine years later, to Afghanistan, fighting the same fight that started that day in New York. My stream of consciousness wandered the path I'd walked from that day to this one. I thought about all the actions taken in the name of defending America from further terrorist actions. I wondered if the people who's names were printed on the flags I was honoring would approve of what we've done in their names, what we continue to do.

Nine years of war. Nine years. My children do not know America in peace. My entire adult life has played out under the spectre of conflict. The length speaks to the immensity of the task, but also to all the mis-steps we've made.

No one - no one - expected American troops to be in the same theatre of war for nearly a decade. If someone predicted nearly a decade of combat lay ahead of us on September 12th, they would have been ridiculed. Mocked. Because it would have been ridiculous. The military machine was powering into high gear, and we were told the conflict would be mere months, even weeks, of American troops steam rolling the mountains of Afghanistan flat, crushing the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and Osama in their wake. Iraq was immaterial. The enemy had painted concentric circles on Afghanistan, and the U.S. was warming up for target practice. We were not likely to miss.

Unsurprisingly, the resistance was quickly crushed. But what we didn't know until too late was that we didn't crush them effectively enough. Distracted by our own success and playing second fiddle to the "real" shooting war in Iraq, we allowed our enemy to slink away, bloody but unbowed, struck down but not destroyed. We squandered the time we had to make sure there was no way for them to crawl back to their former stronghold. And here, nine years later, we're paying for letting them off the mat daily with lives of soldiers both U.S. and Coalition. We're paying for our failure to secure the country then with added years of conflict, money and responsibility. And nine years later, we find ourselves in a position to ask, "Is this worth it?" On 11 September 2001, no one could have imagined that this question could be anything but rhetorical. How do we answer it now?

I mused about what I would tell my children about this day and it's consequences when they were old enough to grasp it's magnitude. How will I explain hate and terrorism, pre-emptive strikes and IEDs, asymmetric warfare and little white headstones, when I don't fully understand them myself? Can I adequately word the confusion, and subsequent nausea, felt throughout America as the realization that two planes striking two towers in less than 20 minutes could not possibly be an accident? How can I explain the enormous courage displayed as the FDNY rushed into a building doomed to die, when every natural human instinct was to run away? How do I convey the black grief in the sound of 343 emergency beacons chirping in unison, their owners buried under falling rubble, never to rise from the street? Is it possible to transmit the pure hatred towards our government and their actions circa 2005 to someone that didn't experience it themselves?

My relief stepped lightly up the marble steps and stood in front of me. He spoke quietly. "I stand ready to relieve you." I replied, "I stand relieved." In normal circumstances, the soldier would have rendered salute, but being a civilian and unable to return the courtesy, he did not extend it, instead exchanging curt nods of acknowledgment. I stepped aside and he took my place, folding one hand behind his back, the other holding the barrel of his rifle skyward, the stock balanced on the ground. Down the steps for a group photo, and then back to the office, and working towards bringing us home sooner than later.

And as I stepped away from the flag plaza, I wondered, where will my steps take me from here?

Wow is too small a word. Courtesy of reddit.com.

/salute

Out here.

Black Magic

2010-09-07T23:00:00.002+04:30

Math is hard for most people. It's confusing and requires different thought patterns that have to be cultivated. Starting with addition and moving up the ladder of operations and subjects, most people start to get a brain cramp around algebra, glaze over at geometry, and stop paying attention at trigonometry. This isn't any different in the military. The percentage of people who are capable with math is higher than the normal population (among the officers that is, no data on the enlisted ranks), but it still is quickly confusing to most soldiers. Especially the kinds of funky things we end up doing. Most of these guys were taught to shoot guns, drive tanks, or blow things up, not differentiate or run analysis of variance. We often joke about our models being the "Black Box of Mystery". Repeatedly adding numbers in a spreadsheet is treated like black magic. I'm sure calculus would be like alien technology. It would be funny if it weren't so darn inconvenient.

Math addled brains cause two large headaches in my life.

First: because most leaders do not understand math at a deep level, they trust you to understand it, and convey it to them correctly. If you gain their trust by presenting them with solid analysis, they will be more inclined to trust you in the future. If you screw up, and lose their trust, it is very difficult to get back.

Unfortunately for us analysts, numbers can be made to say anything. Inserting bias in numbers is extremely easy if you know what message you want to convey. (For example: a few years ago a river boat gambling proposition came up on the ballot in Missouri. The advertising campaign for this measure claimed that "84% of residents in X area voted 'Yes' on this measure in June in order to get it to a state wide vote". In actuality, 84% of the voter population had turned out to vote, and the measure had passed. The message of the ad implied that 84% of people had voted yes, when in actuality, 84% of people had VOTED, and the overall answer was yes. The difference is subtle, but striking, and was pretty tough to catch in a 30 second TV spot.)

As a result, those whose reputations are established on the accuracy of our number crunching, such as analysts like myself, must be very careful to represent our analysis as accurately as is possible. We are painstaking in our work, often having multiple co-workers check over our calculations for mistakes. We vet the assumptions our work is based on through the subject matter experts, so that we can reasonably conclude that our work is based on solid foundations. We are purposefully spirited away in a dark corner of the command structure so that there is no possibility of a general officer barging in our door demanding that we modify a spreadsheet. We regularly accompany briefers during their meetings to make sure someone is present that can accurately explain the analysis, and characterize the results. And, after learning the hard way, we never, ever, trust our raw data with anyone outside of our office.

That hard way I speak of. Oh yes. There are those who use the numbers we produce for evil. Aye. Evil. There have been instances where organizations have taken our data out of context. *Gasp* Unpossible, you say? It gets worse! There have been instances where organizations have taken our data files, changed the data points, and ran to the boss with the new "analysis" that fit their agenda. Dastardly villains they are. We don't like them. Of course if any questions are imposed upon these people they simply throw up their hands and say "The ORSAs gave it to us!" And short of having a duel with 9 MM pistols in the general's office, we usually have to swallow our vomit and take the beating.

The alternate route of deception is more underhanded. Recently we performed analysis for a group that I would consider shaky. The numbers were fine, but there were bunches and bunches of "IFs" that had to be met to get to those numbers. "If" we do this and "if" we do that then the whole world just looks better and better. And imagine, no one was talking about the probability of meeting all those "ifs", even when probed. Repeatedly. But that was ok, as we had been invited to the meeting where our analysis was being briefed in support of the larger topic. Only, at the last moment, our meeting invite was rescinded. No seats left in the general's office. Sorry. No credit for your work, and no reality check on our crazy assumptions. But we'll make sure we throw you under the bus when this all crashes down on our heads! Ok now? Buh bye! /simmer

Of course there are consequences for evil doers such as these. These naughty agencies no longer have access to our data unless we are in the room while they present it, or better yet, while we present it for them. They also don't get the raw data charts that can be edited, but rather picture files of the charts that show exactly what we intend to portray. Where trust has been breached, it is not easily re-earned. And after being burned a time or two, having our name and reputation attached to shoddy and untruthful work, we've learned it's just easier to keep all the data under wraps and only pass out the final, vetted results. Even the potentially legitimate requests get turned down now, for the most part, simply because we don't want two different answers being computed off the same data source using different methods. Math is scary. How would you explain to a three star general that the same data generated different answers and still get him to trust you at the end of the brief? It's not easy, so we just don't do it. It is detrimental to information sharing, I agree, but an unfortunately necessary action to prevent outright fraud with our numbers.

Second: because most leaders do not understand math at a deep level, they ask for impossible analysis. Why are we still in Afghanistan after 9 years? I want the answer shown in one chart, on my desk in the morning. Thanks so much.

This is by far the more common of my two headaches. Cretins intending to misuse our work do so at their own peril, and they know it. Leaders asking for two weeks of analysis to be done in 5 hours just don't know any better. Just today I had someone ask why attrition changed from last month to this month. My e-mail reply: Why did it rain Sunday instead of Wednesday? It just did, man. I can't point to ONE reason, or even five. Numbers rarely have a big neon arrow pointing at the cause of its perturbation. Rarely is there only ONE cause! In the case I was asked about today, there were literally thousands of tiny causes, few of which are being tracked and none of which can be directly affected. Asking this question is akin to asking an artist to draw the beach down to the individual grains of sand: time consuming, and adds nothing to the overall product.

We try hard to educate people on this, we really do. But the military mentality of "complete the mission, damn the cost" gets in the way. A lot. In the face of mathematical ignorance, what are genuine reasons as to why the task cannot be completed sound like excuses for failure. As such, a lot of the time we suck it up and pull an all-nighter or four. We save our push back for the most impossiblist of impossible tasks, so that people know we mean business whenever we say no. If they could be done easily in time, and we're asked to do them in no time, we generally say yes. Crazy tasks we have undertaken that fit this description include major modifications of the software we use to project how many people will be working in the Army and Police on less than 24 hours notice, and building Power Point slides from scratch less than 10 minutes before they are to be briefed to a general officer. Tasks that were absolutely bonkers, like rebuild our main model in one day (would take AT LEAST a week) have been successfully rebuffed. Our sanity is better for it.

One thing you can say for certain about this place: you won't be bored.

*****

My next post will not be about work. I promise. In fact, I hope that my next three or four won't be about work. I'm tired of writing about the office and all that stuff, and I think I've covered it well enough for right now. I will move on to other topics. I don't know what yet, but I'll figure it out as I go. I always do.

All for this evening. Out here.

Goals

2010-08-31T23:21:00.000+04:30

It's good to have a goal. Setting goals for yourself gives you a mark on the wall to reach towards, and measure progress against. Getting measurably closer to that end-state validates the hard work you're putting in, and spurs you on to greater gains. And after you meet the mark, set a new one, bigger and better than the first. Simple self-motivation.

The real trick to setting a goal is that you have to write it down. You have to make it a public announcement, even with an audience of one (i.e., yourself). In needs to be short, succinct, and specific, so you can't change your mind as to what it meant at some later date. Tack that sucker up on your door, refrigerator, office wall. Write it on your bathroom mirror with a grease pencil and don't erase it 'til you succeed so you have to look at it every morning. When you start to slack off, or get complacent, or decide that your current state of affairs is good enough, you can look at that cold, hard fact, staring at you accusingly, and be reminded of what you were trying to accomplish. You can't give up without settling, admitting that you were deceiving yourself into thinking you could do better. And that just can't stand. Unless you're a low down, dirty...deceiver. (A cookie for you if you can spot where that came from.)

The Coalition's overall goals in Afghanistan are very nebulous. There's a lot of wiggle room when evaluating whether or not Afghanistan is "secure" enough for us to relinquish the lead. What qualifies as a "professional" Army and Police force? This ambiguity makes these goals difficult to achieve. One general's definition of secure will certainly be different than another reporter's definition. The President and the American people may see "success" from very different (and current polling data suggests that this is the case). Thankfully, I don't have to deal with this ambiguous mess in my job. That's above my pay grade. No, in stark contrast, NTM-A/CSTC-A's goals are rather specific.

NTM-A is responsible for building that "professional" Army and Police force, and we have very specific goals we must fulfill in order to be considered a success. The Army must reach an end-strength of 171,600 soldiers by October 2011. The Police must reach an end-strength of 134,000 by the same date. These numbers can't just be made up of any Joe Schmo, either. The ration of Officers, Non-Commissioned Officers, and Soldiers/Patrolmen is specified, so as to achieve the best balance of leadership and grunt work in the force.

Underpinning these strength goals are several other goals. Training, for example. We have to put each one of these guys through training. That's where the "professional" part of the force comes from. We can't just hand these guys AK-47s, slap em on the back, throw em into the fray and expect quality results (though at points in the past, that is exactly what happened). As such, we have to build and adequate amount of training facilities, hire enough trainers, and design courses long enough to be effective, but short enough to meet our personnel demands in the force. Recruiting is another. We have our target end-strength, now we need to go find the people to get us there. Obviously we can't recruit 134,000 people all at once for the Police, so we set monthly goals that need to be met consistently. High goals are set in the winter, when there's no other work to be had, and low goals are set in late summer and fall, when the harvest time and Ramadan occur (though Ramadan is really a moving target). The big goal is attrition. We know a certain amount of people are going to leave the force, but we have monthly goals that we work our tails off trying to meet so that we can keep the losses to a minimum.

All of these goals are interconnected, some easier to meet and maintain than others. If the recruiters have a bad month, attrition needs to be lowered to compensate, while training space stays empty. If we can't build training sites fast enough, recruiting all the guys in the world won't help, as they'll get tired of waiting for class space and go find another job. If attrition gets out of hand, we're throwing money away training people that aren't doing the job they were hired for, and putting unbelievable pressure on the recruiters to find more people to fill all the vacated positions. The cycle is brutal and unforgiving.

As an analyst, one of the things I get to work on is nailing down exactly what each of these goals should be. We may have money to build training space to house 100,000 people simultaneously, but do we need to spend all of it? Having 2,000 classroom spaces for new policeman isn't helpful if the recruiters are only going to be able to snag 200 new people. Bleeding 70% of the force each year (an actual attrition rate for the Afghan National Civil Order Police (ANCOP) at one point) isn't conducive to growing the Police to larger and larger numbers, but can we get away with 30%? Where does the break point occur between acceptable and unsustainable?

There's also just as much art as there is science when developing goal numbers. Maybe we can get away with 30% attrition, but instead set the goal at 20% to motivate the Afghans to do even better, while simultaneously sending a message to the American public and Congress that we're striving to do better. Setting the recruiting goal at a high mark during a challenging month might be silly from a mathematical perspective, but may motivate the recruiters to work harder than ever that month. These numbers become the marks by which we are held accountable, visible to anyone that picks up a newspaper or surfs the internet, and send a message about our level of effort and our confidence in our work. It's important that these goals be both meaningful and challenging.

And in reality, all of these are moving targets. The only fixed goals are the overall end-strengths of 171,600 for the Army and 134,000 for the Police. Everything else is variable, and changed fairly frequently. The best analogy I can think of is an Etch-a-Sketch controlled by two people. Imagine trying to draw a straight line from one corner to the other with two people, one controlling one knob, one controlling the other. As one person turns their knob, the other must adjust to compensate. Both knobs are being adjusted at the same time, and they have to be adjusted precisely, and in concert with the each other, to succeed in the task. For our problem in Afghanistan, this happens every day, little fine tunings to try and keep us on the glide path to that final end-strength goal. Training classes get extended as our training capacity increases, so that we can pack on even more education before sending fresh faces to the force. Recruiting is usually low at the same time attrition is high, resulting in adjustment of the recruiting goals for the following months. While the overall goal for attrition hasn't changed in almost a year (fixing that is a project I'm working on right now), efforts to reduce attrition, like better pay, guaranteed vacation, and better leadership, are usually implemented as a result of losing too many people in the months prior.

Knobs on the Etch-a-Sketch, all primed and ready to be tweaked to whatever value is necessary. The target is steady, we just have to communicate efficiently and coordinate our efforts. We're all working towards nailing that target dead on.

*****

Speaking of writing goals down, it's about time for me.

I came over here with plans to get in better shape, read my Bible more, and writing on my blog. So far I've done pretty well with all of those (though some of you may disagree about the blog frequency!), but I haven't set my goals in stone so that I can be held accountable. Well, here they are.

- Bench press 200 lbs 6 times (consecutively, no loop holes) before the end of my tour. Currently I can do 185 about twice. My office mates and I have been weight lifting 6 days a week, and they're pretty good about holding my feet to the fire, so I've got a good shot to make this one, I think.
- Finish reading and journaling through Psalms. I planned before I left to read one Psalm each night and write down my thoughts about what I read. So far, I've been in Afghanistan for more than two months and I'm not quite into the 30s yet. /wristslap. I've got more than 100 days left, so I can still make it if I double up for a little while. This one will be the hardest, as my normal quiet time (night) has a lot of distractions, like talking to family, surfing the internet, blogging....
- Make it to every day of Insanity. We're starting Day 1 of 60 on Saturday. I stand a better chance at this than I did P90X because it's at 0630 instead of 0530, and I am NOT a morning person.
- Blog once a week, on average, and keep gaps between posts to less than 10 days. If I've already missed this one, don't tell me, I don't want to know.

- Brief General Petraeus. This one is largely out of my hands, but I've already narrowly missed the opportunity twice, so I'm hopeful. If I keep producing quality analysis, I think I'll get there.

There. Now they're public. Time to get to work.

*****

One last thing: if anyone has specific requests for something they'd like me to take a picture of, let me know. I'm planning a picture-heavy blog post in the near-future, and want to incorporate your requests. It doesn't have to be a specific request. I can have fun interpreting something nebulous. As long as it doesn't violate security measures, or isn't next to impossible to obtain (don't ask me to take a picture of Petraeus eating or anything), I'll do my best. It'll be a fun little scavenger hunt for me, and hopefully satisfy some of your curiosity about Afghanistan.

Until next time. Out here.

General Impressions

2010-08-25T00:52:00.000+04:30

Over the past eight days I have had the pleasure...priviledge...obligation?...ok, ok, I drew the short straw (*sigh*)...of briefing several generals on multiple issues related to the Afghan National Police (ANP). Having never briefed anyone higher than the colonel level before, this was a new experience for me. Briefing to colonels can be tricky. Briefing to generals can be scary. Generals can make things happen, and as such, expect a high quality in the presentation and information they are briefed in order to make intelligent decisions. If you screw up, you're going to know about it.

For reference, all generals are not equal. There are four levels of general in the U.S. Army, each denoted by a different amount of stars, which is the rank insignia for a general officer. Brigadier General (BG) is the initial rank, and has one star. Major General (MG) is the second rank, and has two stars. Lieutenant General (LTG) is the third general officer rank, and has three stars. This is the rank of the commanding general of CSTC-A, LTG William Caldwell. The last rank is simply called General, and has four stars. This is the rank of the ISAF commander, General David Petreaus. (Technically there IS a five star rank, but it's a special rank awarded extremely infrequently. If General Petreaus manages to turn around the situation in Afghanistan, and lead us to unmistakable victory, he MAY be in line for a 5th star. May.)

The first briefing was for a pair of generals, actually, a two for one special. MG Ward, the Deputy Commander - Police (DCOM-P), is the primary audience for most of the things I produce, since I work so much on the police side of things. He's a Canadian, and a bit of an oddity for a general officer. While I've only been responsible for briefing him once, I've been in the room for several briefings where he was the primary audience, and I have never once heard him raise his voice. He speaks very deliberately and thoughtfully, and clearly has a purpose in his words before they are spoken. He also very much likes numbers. He encourages us to produce slides that most generals would throw you out of the room for. That ends up making our job a bit easier, since we can show numerical data without having to fear the general's eyes crossing.

The general I picked up for free in this buy-one get-one deal was MG Beare (pronounced Beer). Also a Canadian, he will be replacing MG Ward starting tomorrow. When I met him, he had only been at Camp Eggers for a day or two, and was still learning to crawl through the mire of ANP. It was obvious his head was still spinning as he tried to keep pace with the work load. After our meeting we talked for a minute or two, and he seemed like an extremely nice guy. He was familiar with Leavenworth, and had actually spent a little bit of time there, so we talked a bit about home, and the CSTC-A commander, who's last duty assignment had him stationed at Leavenworth.

While briefing two generals when only expecting one does cause the stress levels to raise a few notches, I was glad they were both present. The briefing I was giving that day is a monthly update, and will be something I have to do at least three more times. Since MG Ward is leaving, next time it will be the new guy all by himself. Having MG Ward be able to guide him through the briefing once will be an immense help later down the road. MG Beare's level of confusion will be much lower, and his expectations for what the briefing provides will be in line with reality. Having MG Beare at this particular briefing was even better, as we were discussing a couple sticky issues of the police, and I was glad he was made aware of these problems right from the start. There were several times during the brief that I normally would have pushed a little harder to make a point with MG Ward, who has formed his own opinions on things after a year on the job and didn't completely agree with the points we were making, but because I had MG Beare nodding along with me, I let it go. While MG Ward may still have been the acting DCOM-P, it was more important to get MG Beare on board, since he'll be the general I have to live with the rest of my tour.

The next general I interacted with was BG Smith. He's an American, and was requested by name for this assignment by LTG Caldwell. Only 10 months ago he was the assistant division commander for the 10th Mountain Division, fighting in eastern Afghanistan. He wasn't even home a year before being asked to come back for another tour, this time as the Assistant Commanding General for Police Development (ACG-PD). BG Smith is relatively new at Camp Eggers, arriving in the early part of July, but he's been around plenty long enough to know what's going on. He is also quite the thoughtful fellow, but more of a go-getter than either of the Canadians he worked/works for. I haven't gotten to interact with him a whole lot, but from what I've seen, I really, really like him.

Case in point: after briefing, most generals will task you with more work. Change this slide, do this analysis, answer this question. They have things that they depend on you to tell them, and this is the time they can give you guidance as to how they need you to go about finding those answers. Not BG Smith. After concluding my briefing, (the same brief I gave to MGs Ward and Beare), the first words out of BG Smith's mouth were "What can I do for you?" Indeed, there were several issues in the brief that needed to be addressed, and he was in a position to address them in his dealings with the government leaders in charge of the ANP. One issue concerned an Afghan commander at a training site who was not allowing Coalition personnel use of his buildings to house ANP recruits. BG Smith promised it would be fixed by the next day, as he would make it clear to the Minister of the Interior, the man in charge of the ANP for the entire country, that this behavior was unacceptable. Either the commander would allow access to the buildings, or he would be fired. Tomorrow. Our group was thrilled. Here was a leader that didn't back away from a fight and didn't need to put his decision through a group huddle before proceeding. His combatant commander background definitely comes through in his actions.

But that wasn't the coolest part of this briefing. Because we were detailing some serious issues with the ANP, he requested some of the slides from the briefing be translated into Dari so he and the Minister could have a candid discussion. It was BG Smith's intention to clearly layout the very issues on which we had just briefed him, and encourage the Minister to "put some energy" into solving them as quickly as possible. Those translated slides were delivered Monday. Sometime this week, analysis I worked on will be in the hands of the highest levels of Afghan leadership, with an American general advocating action to correct problems that I helped identify. That kind of influence can't even be approached at my job back in Kansas.

The last briefing wasn't actually to a general, but a civilian Senior Executive Service (SES) officer. An SES is the civilian equivalent of a general, in this case equivalent to a two star. Dr. Jack Kem is the Deputy Commander for NTM-A/CSTC-A, so even though he's a civilian, he's technically the second in command at Camp Eggers. He also has a direct line of influence to the CG, and can help to shape the battlefield when trying to get the CG to make a decision on your particular issue. He's a great guy to have in your corner. Dr. Kem also comes from Leavenworth, where he was a teacher at the Army's Command and General Staff College (CGSC). CGSC is where majors and lieutenant colonels who are slated to be battalion and brigade commanders go to get their master's degree. On top of that, Dr. Kem also has an ORSA background. This can be a help and a hindrance. On the helpful side, technical details that can't normally be briefed to leadership CAN be briefed to Dr. Kem, since he has a good understanding of the techniques used in producing our analysis. On the hindrance side, because of his level of knowledge, the level of rigor in your analysis often has to be greater than normal, adding time and headaches to an already difficult task. The extra work only makes the answers better, but the amount of work that has to be put in to get to that level makes the value of that extra detail debatable at times.

Of my three briefings, I considered this one to be the least useful. Dr. Kem only had 30 minutes to hear the brief, and his executive officer was making sure he stuck to schedule. As such, places I had hoped we would have serious discussion were skimmed past, lessening the value of the briefing. Dr. Kem also has a tendency to "chase rabbits", so to speak, elaborating extensively on topics that are only cursorily related to the briefing. My briefing was no exception, and so a tight window became maddeningly tighter. And to top it off, when all was said and done, he told us the reason he had directed us to do the analysis was no longer valid, and the analysis wasn't as important as he once believed. Translation: I don't care that I asked you to look at changing this thing, we're not changing it now and probably not ever. Arrrrrrgh. My analysis WILL help us to more accurately predict the future strength of the ANA and ANP in our mathematical models, but I had intended for the analysis to influence ANP policy as well. That piece got killed. Oh well. Another day at CSTC-A.

I also narrowly escaped a couple more briefings this week to bigger and more important men. I had been put on notice that I would be briefing the CG any day, but that never materialized. It does look like the CG will be a regular in our monthly briefings to the DCOM-P now, so I may have only been given a stay. We'll see. Also, my boss was given 4 hours notice tonight that he would be briefing General Petraeus tomorrow on police related statistics. My boss told me that if we'd been given a day or two days notice that he'd have made me do it instead.

I am Neo. Watch me dodge bullets. /whoosh

*****

A brief Happy Birthday to my mom who turned *cough cough* years old yesterday. And I may as well say Happy Anniversary now as well, as my mom and dad will have been married for 40 years this Saturday. Wish I could be there.

That's all for tonight. Out here.

Measurement Space

2010-08-16T22:52:00.000+04:30

Learning a new skill is not usually easy. Occasionally you find something you're naturally good at, that just comes to you, and you're good at it right away. Most often, you have to work at it, practicing until you learn the nuances. Lets pick something crafty, like knitting (one of my mom's favorite hobbies), for an example. The first time you try to knit a scarf, you probably start out staring at the ball of yarn and large wooden needles, wondering where to even begin. I know I would. With a little instruction though, you can quickly pick up the basic concept, and complete a simple project. Comparing your work to the scarf of a skilled knitter, you are sure to notice differences in the quality of the two pieces. Uneven rows, inconsistent stitch sizes, etc, but it's your first try, so who cares. It's made, and your neck is warm.

With repetition, you get better. You can tell you're getting better by comparing your newest product to your previous ones. The stitches are tighter and more consistent across the the length of your scarf. The knots at each end don't unravel after a couple of minutes. You can measure your progress. You can move on to bigger and better things, and even if you haven't been taught how to make a blanket, or a pair of socks, you have enough knowledge about knitting in general to be able to figure it out on your own with some trial and error, and likely ripping out several rows of stitches.

Now, let’s take your instructor away. Ball of yarn. Needles. No books, no teacher, but have at it. The quality of your final product would be quite a bit lower, yes? I'd venture to guess most people wouldn't finish, and some probably wouldn't even bother to start. For those that soldiered on and made something, there's a good chance it wouldn't look much like a scarf. On your next go around, you may or may not get better. For certain, progressing is harder, as the only thing you have to compare against is yourself. You can tell that you're getting better, but you really don't have an idea how good your scarves are relative to what a skilled knitter would make. It may be that you're the best natural-born scarf maker in the whole world, but without someone that knows something about knitting there to evaluate your work, you don't have a clue.

Let's add one more wrinkle. Instead of being told to make a scarf, you're told to make a qaraqul. Huh? What's that, you ask? Well, it’s a hat, like the one that Afghan President Karzai wears. No, I can't give you any more details, I gotta go, look up a picture on Google. Oh, by the way, I don't have any needles and yarn to give you either, you'll have to find your own. But, I'll be back soon, and I expect the best darn qaraqul in the whole world on your first try. Got it? My head is feeling drafty, and I don't want to catch a cold.

Hmmmmm. Where to begin? I know what I'm supposed to do: knit a qaraqul. But I have no idea how. If I don't know what this thing looks like, how do I measure how well I'm doing? If there's no standard to follow, and no established metric by which to measure your work, the chances of successfully making a world-class qaraqul is virtually nil. How will I know if I've succeeded before its time for my work to be evaluated?

This last example is the essence of the problem of handing over responsibility for security in Afghanistan to the Afghan security forces. Just like my knitting analogy, we know what we have to do: build a professional security force that can be responsible for taking care of the country. We started with zero materials to do the job. We had to go find the people we needed to be soldiers, policemen and policymakers. We had to build the government infrastructure in order to have the leadership necessary to manage these forces. We had to equip and train the force. But the entire time we've been over here doing all these things, we haven't had a clue what this thing is actually supposed to look like. We can look at a snapshot of a similar product that was put together in Iraq, but the two forces aren't going to be identical. We are very much knitting a qaraqual without a pattern. While trying to meet a deadline. While dodging hand grenades being thrown at our collective head.

Our solution to this problem has been analogous to knitting the hat while it's on the person's head (and learning how to duck. As silly as that sounds, having the customer there to provide real time feedback on what you're doing right and what you're doing wrong is invaluable when you don't know what the final product is supposed to be. The guy can tell you, "That spot is too itchy," or "I feel a draft coming from 7 o'clock." In our situation, however, the Afghans provide very little feedback on their own. Instead, we have to ask them the right questions. If we tell them what we want to know, they can collect data for us in order to provide an answer. Watching that data over the course of time can tell us if we're improving or deteriorating in a given area. Without the feedback of the Afghan people and the Afghan government, we would have very little with which to measure our progress on building towards this nebulous concept of Afghan security.

But while we can get information, without knowing what our end product is really going to look like, we have very little idea of what information is important. How do we know what questions to ask if we don't know what we don't know? How do we measure our progress without knowing what to measure? Some of the things we've chosen may surprise you.

There are the fairly obvious things. If we're building a force to secure a country, we want to know how big the country is, and, more importantly, how many people it has. Using the measure of size, we can determine how big we need to make the security forces. It's the same as hat size. Before the guy runs out the door after ordering his qaraqual, you need to know how big his head is. We also have deadlines issued to us by Congress and the Afghanistan government, so we know approximately how fast we need to build the force. Unfortunately, there are further complications. People we hire and train to be soldiers and police officers don't always stay in their jobs. Far too frequently, people quit. In order to meet our growth targets by our deadlines, we have to know how many people we're losing, and combat these losses aggressively. This is called attrition. Think of it as your playful kitten pouncing on your needles and string while you're working and unraveling the last 20 minutes of progress.

All of these things are important, and they're also easy to measure, because we can measure them directly. I talked a little bit about direct versus indirect measures in my last entry. If you want to know how long something is, you pull out a yard stick and you read off the numbers. We want to know how many people we have, so we count them. The measurement taken is in the same units that you are interested in.

For the above examples, we can send someone out to the Army and police units to count people (or have the units count their own personnel, which is what actually happens). If we count these people each month, and we count the people we're recruiting and training at the same time, then we can add the amount of new people to the amount of people we counted last month, and compare to the amount of people we counted this month. The difference between the two numbers (last month's total to this month's total) is our monthly attrition. I talked about this quite a bit this post. This type of measurement is a calculated measurement. You use direct measures of contributing factors and calculate the quantity you're interested in. As a kid I was taught to find the height of a tall object by measuring myself, measuring my shadow, measuring the object's shadow, and use a proportion to calculate the object's height. Same thing. In our case here in Afghanistan, the accuracy of these measurements is unknown, and highly suspect, but we can collect something we think is in the ballpark.

Unfortunately, not all things we need to measure can be measured directly. For example: corruption. It is highly necessary to know how much corruption we are dealing with in the Army, police and Afghan government. Corruption directly affects the average citizen in Afghanistan. Corrupt police extort money from people at security checkpoints. Corrupt Army soldiers detain family members of people that won't pay them a bribe. Corrupt government officials divert money from building roads, schools, or power plants to their own pockets. Corruption was a way of life in the Taliban government present before 2001, and is still firmly entrenched in the country. In order to set up a professional, competent security force, corruption has to be minimized, if not eliminated. In order to eliminate it, we have to know how much of it exists, and where it exists.

If we can't do this, the people will not trust in the institutions we've built, and thus will not use them. Instead they'll turn to the Taliban. Imagine suing your rich neighbor over some dispute, and you had a choice of taking him to court where his golf buddy was the judge, or having your hillbilly cousin threaten/beat him with a baseball bat until he paid you. In America, the choice is obvious, as the latter option will end badly for both you and your cousin. In Afghanistan, the latter choice is a viable option, and in the presence of government corruption, probably the best choice. We have to make the government and the security forces into institutions the people can trust in order for them to be effective.

So, how do we measure corruption? In our knitting example, you can think of corruption as the ball of yarn after that darn cat got a hold of it. Tangled, knotted, easier just to cut it out with scissors than try and fix it. In that context it’s also easy to measure. In Afghanistan, not so much. It’s not like we can take a poll of all the government officials and Army commanders and ask them, "Hey, I was wondering, have you taken any bribes lately? I kinda need to know. How 'bout innocent bystanders, locked any up this week?" In the absence of direct measures, like a yardstick or a count of heads, we must rely on indirect measures.

So, what is an indirect measure? Well, it's a direct measure (no, I said that right, keep reading) on
something that is related to what we really want to measure. Usually you need to take several indirect
measurements in order to get the same picture a single direct measurement would give you, but there are exceptions. For example, one indirect measure people use all the time is deciding when to fill up their gas tank based on the reading on their car's mileage counter. You know how many miles you can get on a full tank of gas, and when you start to get near that number, you know you need gas in your car. Measuring gas consumption with mileage is not very precise, and it can be wrong if you've been doing a lot of city driving, or you left your car running in the parking lot so your teenager could keep the air conditioning running while you shopped at Wal-Mart. But it does get you close.

For things that can't be measured directly, you must use indirect measures, there isn’t any other choice. In our knitting example, the quality of your hat isn't something you can measure with a stick. But, by directly measuring several other factors, such as the texture of the thread, the tightness and evenness of the stitches, the amount of warmth it provides, you can come up with a picture of the quality of the hat. In Afghanistan, corruption is one of those cases where we must use indirect measures.

So what kind of indirect measures do we use to get a handle on corruption? There are several. The ratio of money spent by the government on projects and such to the amount of money budgeted to the government is one. Money that can’t be accounted for has likely gone to lining someone’s pocket. Surveys of drivers leaving police checkpoints is another. One measure we've been actively trying to reduce is how many police officers get a change of assignment between training and deployment. A few months ago, it was very common for an officer in the police to bribe an official to get an assignment away from the fighting or nearer to his family. The number of re-assignments has decreased dramatically since that time, a direct result from a change in how we issue officer assignments. It used to be the assignments were given out in private, a slip of paper delivered to the person to let them know where they were going. The only people that knew where that officer was supposed to go was the officer and the personnel office. Now when they give out assignments, they hold a press conference in front of the media and read off each person’s name and where they’re being assigned. If their assignment changes after the fact, then all of their family and friends will know they were running away from the fight and shirking their responsibility. The public shame this would cause has been a sufficient deterrent to this practice.

Another area where we use indirect measures often is security. It’s not possible to measure directly how secure the country is. There are no units of security. Instead, we use several indirect measures. Polling data is a very import measure. Who better to tell us how secure the country is than the people we’re trying to provide security for? Measures of traffic is another, since people won't use the roads if they don't consider them safe. The amount of reports of insurgent activity that are made by Afghan citizens is an important one, as it gives an idea of how many people consider the government legitimate, and also shows how many people feel safe reporting against the Taliban.

My favorite indirect measure of security is food prices. Food has to be trucked to the store in order for people to buy it. The price of food reflects how much money it costs to transport the goods. If security in Afghanistan is good, then transporting goods won’t cost as much at the market, since the supplier doesn’t need to replace or repair vehicles damaged by attacks or IEDs, or pay drivers hazard pay, or provide security for the convoy. Better security means lower overhead for the supplier means cheaper prices for the people. Tracking prices on specific items over time can give us a picture of how security is changing in Afghanistan. It’s not an intuitive measure at all, but it works.

Measuring all of these things feeds into the biggest measure of all: success. Tracking these indicators over time is the only way we can determine how well we are performing our job in Afghanistan. The big challenge comes when we try and determine “what will success look like?” This is very much like trying to measure “quality” when knitting. Quality is a relative term, and without being able to make a side-by-side comparison, extremely subjective. We certainly don’t have a side-by-side comparison to make in Afghanistan, though our experience in Iraq points us in the right direction. Success, unfortunately, is very much a “I’ll-know-it-when-I-see-it” type of thing. We have goals for each of the measures we track, but we don’t know for certain whether those goals are sufficient. At best, measuring success is an educated guessing game played by people much smarter and more important than I. But I try and do my part by informing these leaders on specific measures of interest as accurately as possible. Hopefully, with enough people and hard work, the picture of success will become much clearer in the coming months.

*****

The Invasion of the Generals in my life is almost over, but as with many things, the night is darkest before the dawn. Today was my first briefing I was responsible for delivering at a general officer level, and I got double the fun, two two-star generals for the price of one. That's right, I got to brief the deputy commander for police, plus his replacement that will be taking over full time in the next few weeks. And they found my briefing so stimulating (read: there are a lot of problems that need to be addressed, and I was the one to tell them about them), that I now have a date to brief the three-star general in command of NTM-A/CSTC-A, LTG Caldwell. I don't have a date and time yet, but it will be this week. Oh goodie. Ah well. It's good exposure for me, and good experience. Briefing my Senior Executive Service (SES) officer (the civilian equivalent of a general) back at TRAC won't be so imposing now, at least. I just hope that he doesn't decide I need to go brief General Petraeus. That's the only step left after General Caldwell. Ugh. I'll keep you posted.

And now I'm off to bed. Nighty night. Out here.

Time keeps on slippin'...

2010-08-12T23:04:00.000+04:30

What a week.

When General Petraeus took command at the beginning of July, he stated that he would have a 30 day "settle-in" period during which he would get up to speed on what was happening on the ground. This is the mark of a good commander. Changing things willy-nilly without learning about the process you're tinkering with is a bad idea. With no context of how things work, and no idea of how well they work, making changes is folly, at best. You may be breaking the most efficient part of your organization without knowing it.

For example, a relatively new O-6 Colonel just moved in as the head of an organization a couple buildings over from us. One of his first questions was "what are the duty hours here?" Typical of the rest of the command, the office he now commands worked 8 AM to 8 PM everyday with a half day on Friday and two hours off Sunday morning. His immediate response: "Well that's gonna change now that I'm here." They now work full days on Friday and are expected to be in the office until 10 PM. This change was made within a few hours of him arriving at Camp Eggers. He had no knowledge of the situation in the office, no idea of the quality or quantity of the work his staff was able to complete with the hours they were working at the time. But he thought those hours sounded like people were being lazy, so he changed them. Now his soldiers hate him, they come to work tired as they aren't getting as much sleep as they used to, and they aren't getting any more work accomplished than they were before. These are the kinds of things that can happen without learning about your command and it's processes before making changes.

Thankfully, General Petraeus knows this. He gave himself those 30 days to learn what was going on before he started making policy changes. Unfortunately for me, those 30 days are now over, and the good General is starting to ask for more pointed data to inform decisions. And when a four-star general asks for something, people run around like their hair is on fire until they get it. The requests have been hot and heavy for the past seven days or so, with no sign of a slow down.

And in an unfortunate, cosmic coincidence, the three-star general in command of NTM-A/CSTC-A (where I work) just got back from three weeks of R&R and needs to get be brought up to speed on what he missed. And because it's the beginning of a new month, the two-star general that my organization reports to most often wants to be briefed on last month's personnel data and issues to recruiting and training. That's nine stars worth of generals asking questions. NINE. Those questions require data in order to answer accurately. Guess who gets to provide a lot of that data? That's right. Me. In the past week I've turned in slides for four different briefs and one info paper, and have slides for five more briefings in the next five days, one of which I will be responsible for delivering. And the hits just keep on coming.

All of this work doesn't come without a toll. Just like the last few weeks of a school semester when everything is due at once, you surge your effort over a short period of time and end up exhausted by the end. That is definitely what I am: exhausted. I've been having to sleep late (0730) and skip my workouts in the morning to try and get as much rest as I can. I haven't been able to stay up to type on my blog since I've been getting to back to my room after 10 PM every night (only doing it tonight since I get to sleep in tomorrow. Half-day Friday, yay!) I haven't been able to call my family in the morning back home because I'm too busy trying to finish products for deadlines or am wrapped up in meetings. I can't wait for a slow down. The frenzy should take a chill pill around Wednesday next week. In theory. Hopefully. Probably. Please?

*****

Besides being the start of our "weekend", today is special in another way. As of today, I have been away from my family for exactly two months, and have completed one-third of my deployment. All things considered, the time has absolutely flown by (though I'm sure that's not the case on my wife's end, being abandoned to care for three children and all). I'm hopeful the remaining time will go as quickly.

I try not to watch my time here too closely. Today was a special occasion, since I crossed a milestone, but counting the months, weeks, days, hours or seconds isn't something I do often. Yes, seconds. When I reached 33.33% of my deployment at 3:53 PM today, I had accumulated 5,414,038 seconds in my deployment and had 10,829,161 seconds remaining. Thank you, Excel. Watching these direct measures is too painful normally, as I am reminded exactly how long I have left, which makes the time stretch even longer. Watched pot never boils and all that. Instead, I like to keep track of time through more indirect means.

I'll give a small primer here on direct and indirect measures as preparation for my next blog post. A direct measure returns an answer in the same units that you're interested in measuring. That sounded confusing, so I'll clarify with an example. If you want to know how tall you are in inches, you find a yard stick, hold it next to your body, and read the amount of inches that corresponds with your height. You were able to measure your height directly, without any intermediary steps. By contrast, an indirect measure returns in answer in some other units that you can relate to the measurement you're really after. For instance, using your car's odometer to determine when you need to fill up your gas tank when your gas meter proves unreliable. Knowing how many miles you've driven doesn't tell you directly how full your gas tank is, but your mileage since your last fill-up is related to how much gas you have left. Math people might even say the two factors are correlated. One factor does not directly indicate the other, but they have a relationship that allows you to gain a fairly good estimate of one factor if you know the other.

So, in order to avoid crushing disappointment and despair by looking at a calendar every day and longing for my flight home, I use indirect measurements of the time I've spent away from home. My first measurement was when my boots broke-in. It took quite a while of 24/7 use before my left boot stopped rubbing a sore on the top of my foot, and my right boot stopped squeaking when I walked. But when those things stopped and the leather started flopping over to one side at night when I set them by my bed, I knew they were broken in, and I wasn't "new" to theatre anymore.

My next indirect metric was office turn-over. My predecessor was one of the first to arrive in the group of soldiers that was here when I arrived, meaning he would also be one of the first to leave. As such, I got to say goodbye to each of the others. As each one left, we got closer to having a completely new group of people. When everyone in the office was newer than I was, I knew I was past another milestone, and that much closer to my own departure date, where this time I would be one of the first to leave.

Upcoming "chalk marks" that I'm tracking are my daughters' first day of school, my parent's anniversary, my boss' return from his mid-tour R&R, the ripening of the grapes and pomegranates present on Camp and, far down the road, my replacement's arrival at CRC and in theatre. The trick to these to to not tie them to dates. Tying them to dates defeats the purpose, since my brain will spite me and, over my strongest objections, do the subtraction to figure out how many days I have left anyway.

The last set of metrics I track are on-going, ones that slowly change with how long I've been here. My malaria pill bottle gets one pill emptier everyday, and over time I can tell I'm getting closer to the end of the pills, and thus, my time in Afghanistan. The number of Monday morning "ORSA Breakfast" meetings that I've attended keeps getting bigger, while my time gets shorter. Each "fatburger" I've consumed (one per Sunday lunch) is another tick mark towards home. The number of hail and farewell meetings I've attended increments ever closer to my own farewell meeting. I'm sure there are all sorts of others I could come up with if I tried. The trick is to get creative with them, so that I never have to look at the clock or the calendar.

Tomorrow is the start of third number two. And I press on. All for now. Out here.

Convoy

2010-08-02T23:45:00.000+04:30

An example of one of the armored SUVs used to drive around in Afghanistan. Fairly standard looking, except for the tailgate behind the tailgate (look closely), the antennae, and the protruding, armored grille on the front-end.

If you are my wife, or someone that is going to tattle on me to my wife, you can stop reading now. Close the blog, step away from your computer, and forget about this post. Come back in a few days and there will be a new one for you to read.

Go on. I'll give a few minutes before I continue.

By reading further than this line you are implying that you are not my wife, nor are you going to get me in trouble by telling her what I am about to reveal. If I get grilled about this tomorrow, I will know one of you squealed, and I will find you. Capice?

I got to drive in my first convoy today.

When I got to Kabul back in June, I landed at the airport a few miles from Camp Eggers. Obviously we couldn't walk to our final destination, so we had a convoy of armored SUVs (Suburbans and Excursions) come and pick us up. Each directorate at CSTC-A has a few vehicles for this purpose, as well as delivering people to various destinations around the city as the mission requires. Today's convoy was a little of both. We were dropping off two soldiers for a flight down to the south, and picking up one more arriving for a year-long tour.

It is unofficially required to go to driver school here. The leadership wants everyone to be qualified to drive should the need arise, but the accountability for the training isn't enforced. For those that do go through the training, there are two parts: classroom and practical exercise. Upon completion of both sections, you get a drivers license certifying you as qualified to drive in Afghanistan. I attended the classroom piece of the training not long after I arrived on Camp. This portion included briefings on driving tactics (aggressive, not defensive driving), paperwork required to get clearance for a convoy, requirements for personnel, weapons and vehicles, familiarization with the roads around town, how to operate the jamming systems, what to do if you're in an accident, what to do if you're attacked, etc, etc. In total, it was an hour and a half of fairly dry presentation of important information that I struggled to stay awake through in order to absorb.

For the practical test, I was required to arrange a time to go driving with someone that was already qualified and in my directorate. Usually you just drive down the street to ISAF or the embassy. More than a month after my classroom driving training, I still hadn't had time to do this. This fact came up in conversation a few evenings ago, after one of the guys who drives all the time for our directorate participated in his 100th convoy in just under 6 months in country. He told me that he'd try and work me in to one of the convoys in the near future so I could finish my qualification. As it happened, that day was today.

Any time you go outside the confines of security around, you're supposed to be in a group of at least two vehicles. (Not following this rule ended up being a fatal mistake for two sailors recently.) Additionally, there are rules about how many rifles you have with you in the convoy. I'm not certain of the classification of these rules, so I'll be unspecific. Let's just say that a bunch of guys with pistols can't pile in a van and drive wherever they please. Of course each person is required to wear their body armor and kevlar helmet, but you are also required to have gloves and ballistic eye protection. I foolishly turned down these items when I went through CRC, so I had to go buy some today at the PX (post exchange, the military version of Wal-Mart). Note to self: don't ever turn down safety equipment, even if a recently returned, previously deployed civilian tells you you won't need them. As was pointed out a few posts ago, when it comes to deployments to Afghanistan, your experience may vary. Take the stuff anyway. Thankfully, I didn't have to spend that much money in the first place, and actually was able to get a $20 discount on the goggles because they were mislabeled. They'll be good safety glasses for back home, or if I ever get into paintball again.

At noon we met outside the office and suited up. 35 pounds of body armor, helmet, gloves, goggles, combat first aid kit, ID card, weapon...well, not for me unfortunately. This was the first time I found myself wishing I had a pistol. On camp it would only get in the way, but when venturing out in the wild it has a purpose. Alas. I did have the others in the group show me where the quick release was located so I could pull the gun away from their body armor if needed, as well as where the safety and bolt were on the M-16s we brought along. Just in case. No sense in not being prepared.

On the way to the airport, I was the "TC". This acronym technically means Tank Commander, but in normal convoy ops has come to mean "shotgun". I was responsible for radio communications with the other vehicle, alerting the driver, a 20 yr old, female, private first class with 200 convoys worth of experience, to potential road hazards like careless drivers or preoccupied pedestrians, and watching for potential threats. Vehicles with sagging suspensions are the number one thing to look for threat-wise. A sagging suspension means there's a lot of weight in the car, which could indicate a possible vehicle borne IED, or VBIED (pronounced vee-bid).

Once we were outside the gate, I found it hard to concentrate on my duties. This was the first time in 6 weeks I had been outside the wire. The people, the traffic, the buildings, the mountains. I was trying to absorb them all at once while also trying to help out my driver. Several times I had to force myself to stop gawking at the scenery and pay attention to the road. I was extremely glad I wasn't driving yet.

We arrived at the airport a little early, so we went and had lunch at the DFAC near the terminal building. This was the location of my first meal in country, just a few minutes after touching down in Afghanistan. As I was eating lunch today, I was remembering my first impressions of the place. My astonishment at the number of flies buzzing my food. My unease at being served pork bacon by a Muslim. My anxiousness at having to wait for a convoy much like the one I was participating in today. Six weeks wiser, none of these things were a surprise to me anymore. I guess I've been here a while. (That means its time to go home, right? Right?)

Once our new passenger's plane arrived, we helped her load up her stuff. There were a couple more soldiers on the same plane headed to Eggers, so we grabbed them to come with us, too. I didn't tell my two passengers that this would be my first convoy driving experience. I figured they would realize this fact eventually, and didn't want to draw attention to it, lest I make them nervous.

My TC for this leg of the trip was an Army Major that works in the same office as I do, the same one I had the conversation with to spark this experience into motion. He gave me a few pointers on how to handle the vehicle, how to navigate turns so as to block traffic from coming between myself and the lead vehicle, and on what the proper distance was between the two trucks. In his words, two car lengths was too much as "at least three donkey carts could fit in there." Yes, donkey carts. They exist on the roads of Kabul in far higher numbers than you would expect.

Learning to drive this beast was an experience. It took me back to my high school days, when I learned how to drive on my mother's conversion van. The weight of the vehicle was tangible in my foot on the pedals. It really shouldn't have surprised me. The glass on these vehicles is at least three-quarters of an inch thick, maybe more. When I rolled down the window to talk to one of my convoy-mates, it took seven seconds to lower the window to the height of my nose. And each and every section of the body of the vehicle had ballistic plating behind it capable of stopping most small-arms projectiles. My realization that the vehicle was going to drive heavy was very much a Captain Obvious moment, but I was still surprised. There seemed to be about a half second delay on acceleration and braking. The lag took some getting used to.

This picture was taken after a car accident involving U.S. contractors killed one Afghan civilian and injured three others. Those who witnessed the accident rioted in retaliation to the civilian death. The vehicle belonged to ISAF HQ just down the street, and is very similar to what I was driving. Notice the rocks and the pipe in the hands of the men in the foreground. Now notice that not a single window is smashed through, and the body panels are still intact. Solid stuff. Thankfully, I brought back my vehicle in pristine condition. Not even a scratch.

Just before our vehicles left the airport, we passed by some unincorporated land which housed several dozen people in hand-built mud and clay huts. We were passing behind these buildings, looking into the backyards criss-crossed by low clay walls and dotted with vegetable gardens. In one of these fields, two boys, one maybe 10, the other probably 5 or 6, were flying a kite. There is much significance in this action. During the rule of the Taliban, kites were strictly forbidden as they were viewed to be an "un-Islamic" activity. If you were caught participating in this banned form of play, the Taliban would beat you and destroy the kite. Now, it's likely these children were born after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. But the fact that they do not have to fear enjoying a windy day, and that their parents are supporting their activity, is a welcome and positive sign. As we drove past, I murmured encouragement to the two boys: "Fly on, little man."

Once off the airport, it was absolute chaos. Kabul has no traffic laws. At all. The people also are not shy about walking across to road, or down it's middle, or sitting on it's shoulder singing, playing, basket weaving. You think I'm joking. If only. My saving grace was my lead vehicle, a buxom blonde Mario Andretti at the wheel, driving with authority, dragging me through seemingly impassable traffic by sheer bulk and force of will. The traffic circles were four-deep with cars, jockeying for position like riders on a horse track. Holes too small for some NFL running backs to fit through were my road. I hugged the lead's bumper so tightly she could have been towing us. My wife would definitely have disapproved.

My biggest takeaway from this experience: I'm not certain drivers in Afghanistan are aware they have side-view mirrors. It's even possible they've never discovered that their heads are able to turn to the left and right, giving them greater visibility of their surroundings and allowing them to see the GINORMOUS ARMORED SUV BARRELING THROUGH THE SPACE THEY ARE ABOUT TO OCCUPY AND OH MY GOD HE'S CLOSE MAYBE IF I HONK MY HORN REALLY REALLY LOUD I'LL SCARE HIM AND HE WON'T RUN ME OVER. Seriously. Oblivious has new meaning for me after today.

The trip back to Eggers was only a few miles in distance, so it was over in not long at all. I survived, and no Afghans were harmed in the making, so I considered the drive a success. Having someone with so much experience telling me where to go, what to do, and calling out the hazards really made the experience pretty painless. There are obviously several things I could improve on, but that will come with time and practice. What? You're not surprised I'm going to do this again, are you? They always need drivers, and that was too much fun not to make a habit of it. The people we dropped off this afternoon are coming back into town in a few days, and we may drive to a small base on the outskirts of Kabul on Friday to eat Italian and French food. I plan to participate in at least one of those. I will keep you updated on my progress as a crazy convoy driver.

That's all for tonight. Out here.

Achievement Unlocked: Player Housing!

2010-07-29T22:29:00.000+04:30

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

2010-07-26T00:20:00.000+04:30

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!

2010-07-19T22:49:00.000+04:30

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...

2010-07-13T21:11:00.005+04:30

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

2010-07-10T22:34:00.002+04:30

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

2010-07-06T21:26:00.000+04:30

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

2010-07-03T21:46:00.005+04:30

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.

Hope

2010-06-29T21:32:00.009+04:30

The definition of insanity is trying to upload 3 MB pictures over a 32 kb/s satellite connection. After compression, these little cuties took about 30 seconds to load, rather than 30 minutes. Hopefully that ends my picture problem.

Listening to the media today, you'd think that Afghanistan was already lost. Little good about the country is chosen for release, dooming the general public to endless reports of dead soldiers, retreating allies, and angry op eds about how we squandered years in Iraq instead of focusing on the "important" war. Or maybe a gem like this one. (You may have to sign up for a free account to read it. Apologies.)

Since I've been here, I've found some reasons to hope.

First is the change in leadership. General McChrystal is out and General Petreaus is in. Don't misinterpret my meaning. McChrystal was and is a good leader, and I have little doubt that we would have succeeded in time in Afghanistan. Key phrase: "in time". Eventually. Certainly not by July 2011 when the President wants us to start drawing down troops. We would have gotten there, but it was likely going to take a few years.

Petraeus isn't a cure-all for the problems here, but already there has been a change in focus from Nov 2011 (the end of the Afghan fiscal year) to July 2011 (when the troops are supposed to start leaving) The strategy is staying the same, but the energy level has increased dramatically since word came down of the new leadership. Everyone here knows he was responsible for fixing the quagmire we had in Iraq, and nothing less is expected here in Afghanistan.

All this, and he isn't even on the ground yet.

With the shifted focus and increased energy and effort of the personnel here, I expect things to move along more quickly than they would have before. This is partly because our deadline is being moved up, so it's necessary to try and meet our goals sooner, but it's also in part because people genuinely want to please Petraeus. If he asks for the moon, people are going to find some way to get it to him. That's the mark of a great leader, and it's what we've got now in Afghanistan. Not simply good. Great.

*****

One of the largest problems in Afghanistan is illiteracy. Only a small portion of the population can read at any level, and even fewer at a level high enough to contribute to the Coalition efforts to establish a working central government in this country. This is the main reason why it has been so difficult to grow and train the Afghan Army and Police. There just aren't enough literate people willing to be officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs, senior enlisted personnel) to lead the main-line force. Without this leadership, the force cannot operate at the level required to care for the country's security.

As much as we can try and teach the adults to read, where the change will come from will be the next generation, today's children. Whatever we establish today will be carried on by them in the future, so it is imperative that we make education a priority in the country.

My predecessor, Andrew, along with a couple other guys in our office, have been handing out books to the kids on the street outside Camp Eggers for several months. The books cost around a dollar each, and are printed locally in both Pashto and Dari, the two languages spoken here in Kabul. To pay for the books, they take donations. They send home braclets that the street kids sell, re-sell them to people in the states, and use the proceeds. On occasion they've funded the book distribution out of their own pockets. They understand the importance of getting these kids an education, in any form. Lack of education and job opportunities is a big reason people turn to the Taliban. (The Taliban was also a big cause for lack of education in today's adults to begin with, as they shut down schools in Afghanistan for a number of years) When you have no other marketable skills, if picking up a rifle and shooting at Americans feeds your family, you do it.

The focus of the book distribution effort has been on the less fortunate kids we come across in our brief travels. Last week, that focus took a quick aside, as we ventured just down the street to a local school. If you walk out of the northern gate of Camp Eggers, the school is impossible to miss, by sight or by sound. It's directly on the other side of the northern wall of camp, and four stories tall. At all hours of the day, you can hear kids laughing and playing on the playground outside. Having delivered books to the street kids several times already, and having another group of children so close, the decision was made to pay them a visit.

Armed with 50 books for the kids and bags of school supplies for the classrooms, we walked over early Sunday morning (Friday is the Muslim holy day, and Saturday is the other weekend day). We had contacted the principal to make sure we were expected and welcome, but had little idea of what else to expect.

When we arrived we were taken into a room about the size of a small gymnasium full of tables and chairs. Shortly the kids were lead in to see us. There were far more kids than we had books for at the school, so each of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade classes sent five kids. (How those kids were selected, I don't know.) Very politely, and very quietly, they approached five at a time to accept their gift.

Outside Eggers, there are all sorts of kids that have things they want to sell you. The overwhelming favorite is braclets, but also head scarves, lighters, and random other junk they've been given by foreigners (one kid had a key for a Ferrari). All of them are dirty and under-fed. I have no idea if they go to school. They pounce on you as soon as you leave the gate and don't stop hounding for money until you buy something or get to a security check point.

A first grade girl reading her new book.

The kids at this school were completely different. They were clean and well mannered. They were dressed nicely in their school uniforms. The boys always lead the way, with the girls at the rear*. They never pushed or shoved each other to get to the front of the line. Even the smallest of them could read some of the words in their new books. All of them thanked us in English.

*There was one girl that started at the rear of her group, but while the four boys in front of her shyly stepped up to meet us, she did an end-around and came directly to each and every one of us for a handshake and a hello. She looked us in the eye and smiled brightly, clearly thrilled to be meeting new people. She seemed quite the leader. I hope her bold spirit stays intact as she matures in a society dominated by men.

School principal on left, teacher in center, translator on right.

Through our Air Force translator, the principal told us that there is a proverb in Afghanistan that says all neighbors should help each other. She said it was good that we came, as in all the time Camp Eggers has existed, we were the first people who had lived there that had visited the school. Five years of being next door neighbors, and no one had ever bothered to cross the wall, even to say hello. I was floored. I'm sure the perception was that these kids were the upper crust of society and had no need for a visit from the volunteers, but the staff at the school had taken it as a slight, interpreted our lack of hospitality as a apathy towards their school and their society. Indeed, it was good that we had come.

Later, over tea with the principle and her assistant, we were told that there were 3,500 students at the school - 3500!! - from 1st through 12th grade. Knowing that there are schools like this in Afghanistan, where education is valued more than the extra money a child could bring home by selling trinkets on the street, was a refreshing blast of possibility, the promise of a better future for this shell of a country. It is my hope that before our troops leave and turn the reins back over to the Afghan people, we are able to create more places like this one.

This little guy saw me taking pictures and twisting the zoom ring on my lens. He held up the white plastic ring to his eye and started spinning it, pretending he was taking a picture of me.

On the way back home, we noticed they had a soccer field. Immediately plans were made to come back with more books and soccer balls so we could play with the kids. As much as this is about the kids, we get a lot of satisfaction from it too, a trip to play soccer a little more so than usual =).

All for now. Out here.

Eggers

2010-06-25T21:21:00.010+04:30

Air conditioner alley, the main drag on my way to work every morning.

Eggers (EGG-errrr-s...zah) is a busy place. I've been sprinting to catch up with the pace of work here, and am still lagging behind. The work schedule is 8 to 8, officially, and subtract out lunch a dinner, but often work starts earlier and runs later. So far I'm averaging an 11 hour day, and that's with a half day the day I arrived and on our "day off" (don't come to work til 1300) on Friday. As such, I haven't been awake enough at night to update my blog. Some of you have mentioned this to me =). While I'm very happy you all are enjoying the blog, I think I might have spoiled you guys writing every day at CRC. That kind of pace is not going to be sustainable here. My plan is to update every 3-4 days, sometimes shorter when I have a lot to write about, sometimes longer when I'm getting slammed at the office. But be sure to let me know if I get too sporadic with my posts. I know I can count on you.

Camp Eggers is my new home away from home. It was built circa 2005 (I don't know the exact date) and named after a special forces soldier that was killed by an IED here in Afghanistan. Eggers is inside what is known as the "Green Zone". It's similar to the Green Zone in Baghdad, Iraq, but not nearly as large, nor as secure. The Green Zone also includes International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) HQ (home to Commander ISAF, formerly General McChrystal), the US Embassy, the Afghan Ministry of Defense, the Presidential Palace, and a compound known as New Kabul Compound (NKC). All together, it's probably only a few square kilometers right in the heart of Kabul.

Around the Green Zone is the Inner Zone, which is larger, but less secure. You'll regularly encounter Coalition forces or Afghan National Police (ANP) checkpoints in these areas. The rest of Kabul is the Outer Zone. You don't go to the Outer Zone unless you're required to. The potential for attacks isn't really higher (in fact, it's probably lower since little of importance resides out there), but you're a lot farther away from help if something goes wrong. The airport and a couple of smaller bases are really the only things out here worth mentioning.

*****

Eggers is a haphazard place. This area used to be a very upscale neighborhood, and it shows. There are nicely decorated sidewalks and strong, natural stone retaining walls. There are tiled porches on some of the permanent structures, and a lot of two-story buildings. The Coalition supposedly paid top dollar for the land here, and promptly came in and ruined it. Offices and living quarters were dropped in what were formerly backyards, side alleys and streets, taking up almost all the open space. Without much acreage, the only choice has been to build upwards, resulting in very few single story structures, and lots of "urban canyon" feel. Walking around for the first couple days felt like I was a mouse searching for cheese at the end of a maze.

Most of the structures we've added are shipping containers (like the ones you'd ship cars inside from Japan to America, big things) that have been improvised for office space and housing. Doors and windows are cut in the sides, and rooms built on the interior. Office size varies, depending how big and how important the organization is. For the living quarters, the rooms aren't large at all, MAYBE eight feet by twelve feet, with two or three people per room, but they are air conditioned, and they aren't leaking on your head while you're asleep or anything.

New construction at Camp Eggers. Notice the bamboo ladder. The side supports are solid pieces of wood, and that's at least 30 feet in the air.

If only I was living in one of those.

You see, Eggers is growing. Quickly. In fact, it's growing SO quickly, that the amount of people on Eggers is greater than the amount of living space. This means all the new people get to wait for old people to leave before they can get a bed. Where do we get to stay in the meantime? In a tent. Yes, my friends, I am still living out of a bag. Woe is me.

For a tent, it really isn't that bad. It's large enough to fit a dozen bunk beds, though not all the bunks are filled. It is air conditioned, and combined with the Kabul weather, it actually gets a bit chilly at night time. During the day it's sweltering, but I am VERY rarely there during the day, given my work schedule. The WORST part about it is that it's actually across the street.

When I in-processed here, the guy I'm replacing, Andrew, told me "The only word you don't want to hear is 'Alamo'." Well, guess what? Alamo Tent is where I am. (I told him afterward I wished he hadn't told me that, since I wouldn't have known the difference if he hadn't.) Alamo is the only tent, the only housing of any kind, that doesn't sit on Camp Eggers proper. In order to get there, I have to walk out through all the security checks and cross a public road. The road is heavily patrolled, and has lots of security on it 24/7 (in the 60 feet that are between my tent and the road, there are two gates and five guards armed with AK-47s), but the local populace does have access. Every morning there are cars full of people and bicycles and motorcycles carrying people to work. Since these people have access, so do the insurgents interested in hurting me if they get crafty enough. Not long ago there was an attempted kidnapping on a contractor in a "military" uniform along this road. The distance I have to walk along this road is only about 50 yards, but it has been suggested that I follow the buddy system when walking that way just to be safe.

I was told there was a 3-4 week wait time on housing, with a good possibility that I would have to wait longer. I am encouraged by the fact that since I moved in, at least three people have moved out. My tent isn't the only tent, so I'm sure there are a lot more people ahead of me, but it's nice to see progress and to know that the days of a solid roof over my head are actually getting closer.

*****

Eggers is a diverse place. The flag plaza is a veritable forest of country banners from NATO and our other Coalition partners. I've worked frequently with British and Canadian forces already. The Mongolians man our force protection patrols. The French are here working with police trainers. The perimeter security is manned by a local security contracting company, employing the local Afghan population. There's at least a couple dozen other nations participating. Even with the multi-national population, the base has a distinctly American feel. Currency here is dollars, and the food is just like home. Last night was steak night at one of the DFACs, today for lunch was philly cheese steak on the short order grill, tonight was Mongolian barbecue (yummy). The majority of personnel are American, and almost everyone speaks English (not the locals - they only know enough to get by). This contributes to a very friendly overall atmosphere. People greet you as they walk by and usually have a smile for you as well.

This is in stark contrast to ISAF HQ, just down the street. The multi-national force is the same, but there are far more non-American personnel. Food isn't served unless it has curry in it (I'm only barely kidding here, they curry everything, even eggs and grits at breakfast), currency is euros, and people are generally rude and impolite. Having spent sometime at ISAF, I'm glad I landed here.

*****

Before I get too far removed from it, a quick wrap up of CRC, by the numbers:

403: people processed in my CRC class.

249: people on the flight from Ft. Benning to Kuwait. The rest had their own transportation.

8: days, or parts of days, spent at Ft. Benning.

7: World Cup games watched between formations.

85: approximate weight in pounds of the equipment I was issued at CIF.

16: colonels (O-6, full bird) deploying in my group. 16 is a lot.

11,000: times I wished I was home, approximately.

1.5: inches thick of the paperwork I had to process and file.

25: dollars spent for a week of internet access, so I could Skype with my family and write this blog.

That's all for now. Out here.

Boots on the ground

2010-06-22T16:36:00.004+04:30

My first view of Afghanistan from the airport in Kabul.

Boots on ground (BOG) time is a big deal with the troops. BOG time is how much time you've been in a combat theatre. As the wars have escalated, so has BOG time, while it's counterpart, dwell time, the time spent state-side, as decreased. BOG time can only go so high before they send you home, meaning as soon as you step into theatre your counter starts.

My counter started 19 June.

"Theatre" includes any combat zone, as well as the "gateway" territories. (This is for my purposes, at least. There were some people deploying to Eygpt and Bosnia at my CRC class. Since those aren't combat zones, I don't know how they're deployment time is counted.) Currently, that would include Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, with gateway zones being Kuwait or Kyrgyzstan. So as of landing in Kuwait at 1600 local time (8 hours different from central time in the states), I was officially a deployed analyst. My orders say I will be here 181 days, though I have another piece of paper that says 179. In actuality it will probably be a few less than that, in order to ensure I leave theatre before my orders run out. If I go over my orders period there will be a nightmarish batch of paper work, and no one wants to mess with that. For those of you trying to count in your heads, I'll save you the time: 19 June + 181 days is 16 December. Baring the Army screwing something up, which is still a real possibility, I will be home for Christmas. Yay!

I arrived in Kuwait after a couple hours of lay over in Leipzig, Germany, and about four hours of flight time. I was hoping to catch a good view of Kuwait city from the air, but it was so hazy that I couldn't see much of anything until we were only a couple thousand feet off the ground. Once on the ground, I found out the haziness was just as bad looking up. All of the sand in the air turned the normal light blue into a dirty, gritty gray color.

The Kuwaiti desert. Beautiful, isn't it? Riiiiiiiiiiiight.

And the heat. Gasp! It was 109 degrees farenheit when we landed, and that was one of the cooler days of the last few weeks. The high just a day earlier had been 122. There was a strong wind that helped to stall choking to death on the blazing blanket of air, but retreat indoors as quickly as possible was the only reliable solution to combating the heat.

The first snafu of our trip happened right after we got on the ground. The Army officer in charge (OIC) of the flight was the designated keeper for the soldier's rifle bolts. If you aren't familiar with firearms, the bolt on a rifle is the moving part that strikes the powder behind the bullet and makes the whole thing go boom. If you remove it, the weapon fails to function. All bolts had been confiscated and placed in a tool box that sat next to the OIC. When we left the airport, we were driven by bus to a staging area where we could get some water while waiting for our bags to be offloaded to a couple of semi trucks. When we got ready to leave the bus area, the OIC realized the box of bolts was missing.

Ruh roh.

Thinking he may have set them down in one of the trucks loaded with bags, he proceeded to force 20 poor saps to unload ~800 40 lb duffel bags in 109 degree heat to correct his mistake. Only after both trucks had been completely unloaded did it occur to him to call the airport and see if he had left the box on the airplane. Of course, he had. All told, we sat on the buses for four hours before driving 45 minutes to Ali Al Saleem, Kuwait, home of Task Force Gateway, the people responsible for moving us to our final destinations. Arrival time was around 2100 local time.

After a few briefings on procedures and schedule, we unloaded the semi trucks (much faster with 249 people set up in a chain gang) and were turned loose. The basic idea from this point on, regardless of destination, is to register yourself with the aviation folks, then turn up exactly when and where they tell you to see if your name has come up yet. Seats on flights are given on a first come, first serve basis, with the exception of high ranking officers and enlisted who get to go first. You could be number 500 on the list and have to wait a week to get a flight, or you could be number 5 and have to wait a few hours. It depends on how soon you get signed in and how many flights for your destination are slated. If your name gets called and you aren't there to accept the slot, you go to the bottom of the list. I found a very quick and efficient way to work through this process: I cheated.

For the thousands of people a week coming through this camp, there are only two, yes TWO, personnel registering people for flights at any given time. I didn't even pick up my bags, I went straight to the counter and signed up. I had also e-mailed ahead and told them I was coming, which was equivalent to showing up two days early. When my paper got stamped, the lady crossed out 19 June and put 17 June. Cheat code verified. Score.

The end effect of this was that I got out of Kuwait in 14 hours, very near a record for a worker bee like me. The first flight I had a chance to be on the manifest for, I was. Out of 38 seats, I was number 22. This was fantastic, as I had spent the night sleeping in a chair, followed by an "air conditioned" tent on a cot left over from the first Gulf War. The less time spent in Kuwait the better.

This is where my travel experience really got interesting. From this point on, I was flying on military aircraft, since we were in theatre and all. We were also required to wear our body armor for the trips, just in case someone took a shot at the plane. We were bused to the airfield to load a C-17. Near the planes were concrete bunkers meant to hide fighter jets in the event of bombing. The looked like they had done their job at some point, as the tops of the buildings had moving-truck sized hunks of concrete missing, yet were still being used to house equipment. We walked into the plane through the loading ramp on the back of the aircraft and strapped in. Most of us sat in normal airline seats (sans tray tables) in the middle of the plane, but others sat on the sides in the seats soldier's would use during parachute ops. Accommodations were cozy to say the least, exacerbated by the fact that we're all wearing 40 lbs of body armor.

Queue second trip snafu. As we sit inside this nice, metal plane, with the 118 degree desert air pouring in the open back door, sweating to death in body armor, the crew chief told us that the air condition wouldn't be working until we started the engines in another 30-45 minutes. Until then, we would just have to suffer. However, we could remove our body armor.

Sigh. Small mercies.

The flight itself wasn't bad, though it was strange to not have windows on the aircraft. That was probably a good thing when it came to the landing. Because there is always an outside chance that some Taliban is sitting outside the airstrip with an anti-aircraft missile, planes land at full speed while jinking (pilot speak for dodging, making oneself hard to hit) up and down, left and right. When the wheels hit the ground, it was hard to tell whether we had landed or crashed. When I stepped outside, the Bagram Air Force Base flight line was a greeting crew to our arrival. Welcome to Afghanistan.

The waiting game for airplane space at Bagram wasn't as suspenseful as in Kuwait. For one, there were fewer people flying to Kabul than there were to Bagram, so there was a better chance to get a seat. I also caught hold of the coattails of a couple of colonels, so I knew very shortly after landing what time I'd be leaving. Unfortunately, after landing at 2100 (9 PM), roll call for my flight was at 0400. Not enough time to check out a bed, really. Another night sleeping in an airline terminal, this time on the concrete floor.

Throughout the evening, numerous aircraft could be heard outside on the tarmac and airstrip. Helicopters, cargo planes, a few fighter jets. I was close enough to watch the airfield, but not much could be seen because it was so dark. Unlike a civilian airport where lights are an important accident avoidance measure, military airfields run blacked-out so as to avoid putting out a sign that says "Taliban, please shoot mortars here". The only light coming from the flight line was the occasional glow of twin afterburners on a fighter jet as it lifted off. For an aviation geek, the experience was pretty awesome.

When we got bused out to the flight line around 0600, I could finally see the machines making all the racket. Medivac Blackhawks, other C-17s, EA-6B Prowler aircraft designed to jam or intercept electronic communications, and several C-130s. Across the runway were the fast movers, F-15s lined up one after another, canopies gleaming in the sun. I was sad we didn't get to drive by those up close like the rest. We pulled up to a C-130 from the Minnesota Air National Guard and loaded up for the last flight of the journey.

This flight was something of a joke. Bagram and Kabul are eight minutes from each other by air. Eight. Minutes. We sat on the tarmac doing pre-flight checks and taxiing to the runway approximately five times longer than the flight times. The only reason they do this is because convoys over the mountains between the two cities are infrequent, due to the high level of insurgent activity in the area. Only a few weeks ago, a force of twenty insurgents armed with rifles and suicide vests attacked the front gate of Bagram AFB. It was massively unsuccessful, but it shows that they are indeed out there, and the road to Kabul is far less than secure. By air is the much safer route.

From the Kabul airport to Camp Eggers, my final destination, was by car. When we called for transport, we thought we'd be riding in MRAPS, huge, hulking, 10-20 ton vehicles designed to eat explosions, but instead we got up-armored SUVs. Our first escort that showed up only had enough room for one person, so we had to wait for a second. The leader of that first vehicle was an interesting find. An Air Force captain trained to fly F-22s, a $140 million aircraft, driving VIPs in Afghanistan. I'm not sure what this indicates: we have so many people here that we can't find work for them all, we have to few people here and have to force people to do jobs outside their expertise, or F-22s are really THAT useless in the current fight. I'm leaning towards the third one.

The drive across town was short, mercifully. For those confused by the time zones, I was on hour 58 of travel, and now 9.5 hours (yes, POINT FIVE - Afghanistan is backwards) ahead of my home time zone. I was fried, and ready to be done. I was alert enough to observe the city and all its mysteries. Small children everywhere, including walking out in the street unattended, carts pulled by donkey on the same road as semi trucks, traffic circles with four layers of cars, with drivers completely oblivious to the rules of the road. The poverty of it all was striking, and the chaos. Nothing was clean - nothing - and with all the people and things so close to the road, it would be almost impossible to ascertain whether that pile of stuff was a bomb of someone's dropped laundry. I was glad I wasn't driving, and doubly glad I wouldn't need to be out here often.

And that was that. Travel over, trip complete. I'll cover my impressions of Camp Eggers and my work experience in the coming days. I've rambled on long enough here.

*****

Other interesting travel experiences:

- Flying on an airplane full of people carrying pistols and assault rifles. Yet for some reason, we weren't allowed to carry on fingernail clippers.

- Learning the truth of the adage "soldier's can sleep anywhere". Its not a joke. Sitting up, bent fully in half at the waist, curled into a ball in the bottom of a chair WHILE WEARING BODY ARMOR. It didn't matter. If these guys had a spare minute, they were out.

- Eating bacon cooked by a Muslim.

- Being accosted by security for having my camera out at the Kabul Airport. Thankfully they didn't see me actually taking pictures. I guess they had reason to be antsy though, as 20 minutes later a three-star French general walked through the area to load a helicopter.

- Sweating WHILE showering in Kuwait.

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

CRC Day Seven: Leaving on a jet plane

2010-06-19T10:58:00.002+04:30

I write this from Leipzig, Germany. This is our second stop in the trip to Afghanistan, the first being Bangor, Maine. I should be in Kuwait in the next 6-7 hours. There's a TV in the corner playing German pop music videos. The gift shop as a large World Cup display with tons of German national team gear.

The last day of CRC went very smoothly. I was able to get my malaria medications without trouble, and the flight crew are very practiced at getting people onto their planes and on their way. We lifted off from Georgia around 1500 yesterday. The building we were waiting in, Freedom Hall, was one giant room around the size of a football field, with large easy chairs to relax in and projection screen TVs hanging from the ceiling. It was a great venue to watch World Cup soccer in, especially since the US was playing. For the record, that goal they disallowed was a terrible call, but it did seem like he made the call before the ball went into the net, so he didn't know he was disallowing a goal when he blew the whistle. That doesn't excuse the error in judgment, but at least he wasn't actively trying to screw us.

The airline we're flying is a charter company called World Airlines. So far on two flights, with a total of a little less than nine hours in the air, they've shown us three movies, and fed us meals twice. Pretty good service. The movies were Avatar (not bad, but seen it many times), GI Joe (absolutely terrible), and I have no idea what the third was. I saw it on the screen, but I was trying to sleep then, so I didn't really care.

Internet in Bangor was supposed to be free wi-fi, but ended up being broken. Here in Germany I had to pay 3.95 euros for an hour. That works out to something like 6 bucks, but I wanted to try and talk to my wife over Skype for a bit. Of course, it's 2 AM back home, and she's not getting the texts I'm sending her via Google Voice, so that may or may not happen. At least I get to update this thing.

After we land in Kuwait we've got a ~2 hour bus ride to the air base. We should be on the ground in late afternoon to early evening, so I'm hoping to get some good pictures. Will update from Kuwait when I have the opportunity.

Until next time. Out here.

CRC Day Six: Eagle Power

2010-06-18T03:11:00.003+04:30

My day has been just lovely.

The rank right before General in the Army (and the Marines and Air Force) is Colonel (abbreviated COL). This is the sixth officer rank in the military, so it is often designated O-6. Often it is also called a "full bird colonel", to distinguish it from the O-5 rank, lieutenant colonel, and because the rank insignia for a COL is an eagle with spread wings. By the time a military officer has reached this rank, they have considerable pull and influence. Today, one happened to use this influence to save my bacon.

My first and only formation of the day was at 1645. (I'm sorry, my mind has made a permanent switch to military time, I'm afraid. If you aren't used to thinking that way, its not hard to figure out. If the hour is 12 or less, than its not any different than AM/PM time. If the hour is greater than 12, subtract 12 and that's the time in PM. I apologize for any blown synapses.) We were to be picking up the prescription inserts for our gas masks (it's not possible to wear glasses while wearing the mask because it is so tight), malaria pills, and getting briefed on the procedures for the flight tomorrow. Flight manifest? Check. Mask inserts? Check. Malaria pills? Umm...uh oh.

I was supposed to fill out a form at my medical appointment. A form I was never given by the doctor that examined me. Somehow this didn't get noticed by the CRC staff, and I didn't know to ask about them, thinking that since my orders had "Afghanistan" all over them, malaria pills would be automatic. I went to talk to the cadre about this and they were clueless. After several phone calls, their answer was it was my fault. If I didn't get pills, it must have been because I skipped something or didn't turn in the form. I had until 1830 today (75 minutes) to find a doctor off-post, make an appointment, get a ride, obtain a prescription for the meds I needed, go to the pharmacy, pick up the pills, ride back to CRC, and show them my meds. Failing this, I would be held over until the flight a week from tomorrow.

I. Don't. Think. So.

Unfortunately, they didn't care much about the opinion of a civilian, nor the fact that I had never even seen the form they were talking about. They cared that I didn't have a box checked on my form that said "ready to deploy?". They were willing to supply me transport to wherever I needed to go, but had no other help to offer. Supposedly.

And that's when the camouflaged man with the eagle on his chest swooped in for the rescue. You see, he had the same problem I did, and he was none too happy about it. And the chances of CRC telling a COL "sorry sir, wait til next week" was zilch. When I told him I had the same problem, he told me to come along. We caught a ride back to CRC headquarters where I watched him skewer a staff sergeant, fillet a specialist, and get them to schedule an appointment with a base doctor tomorrow morning at 0700, with a visit to the pharmacy at 0800. With good traffic, we should be back before we start loading the buses to go to the airplane at 0900. If we're not, they're going to bus us there separately to rejoin the rest of our group.

I find it poetic that the guy that came to save me had wings. Eagle's, not angel's, but still wings.

So I still get to fly tomorrow. Thank God. 9 hours to Ireland/Germany, 3 hour lay over, 8 hours to Kuwait, 2 hour bus ride to Ali Al Asleem...it will be a long day. Regardless, it will be much better than another week spent here.

*****

I spent my morning packing my bags and marking them with bright orange duct tape so I could pick them out from the sea of other generic green duffel bags that will be packed on the plane. I watched some soccer and went to lunch. It was a very nice morning.

In the early afternoon, I checked the website for my World of Warcraft (WoW) guild. WoW is a game I've played for a long time, and my guild is the group of people I play with while I'm online. We use the website to schedule events inside the game and socialize. Today I saw someone asking if my account had been stolen.

What?

You see, WoW is SO popular, that people are willing to pay real money to get in-game items and currency. However, the people that sell these items and currency do not come by them honestly. Instead, they steal people's user names and passwords with a virus-like program, log in to their accounts, send all the stuff they want to their own characters, and disappear. Often times these individuals work for "companies" in China whose entire business model consists of fencing stolen virtual goods. It's quite the black market.

So when I went to check if my account had been stolen, I found that, indeed, it had. Big, big bummer. Since there is a record of all the transactions that take place in the game, it is possible for your stolen stuff to be restored, it just takes a while. I called customer support to get my account fixed, waited on hold for an hour, was told that the last computer to log on to my account had an in China, and that I needed to change all my passwords right away, as there's no telling what other information they may have in their possession. They're going to fix all the damage, but it will take a few weeks. I'm extremely glad this happened today and not tomorrow or Saturday while I'm on an airplane out of the country. I just wish it wouldn't have happened at all.

Flight day tomorrow. I should have internet access in the hangar while I wait for the plane. If I don't, I'll try again at the airport in Europe. After that, the next time I speak to you all I'll be on the clock, with the days ticking down to my journey home.

Talk to you later. Out here.

CRC Day Five: If you didn't drop it, don't pick it up

2010-06-17T05:08:00.002+04:30

Oy vai.

I decided to start breaking in my boots today. From all accounts, these type of boots take a few weeks to stretch out and take the roughness out of the canvas. I'm expecting blisters. I just probably should have waited until tomorrow.

At 0615 this morning, we had our formation to head up the hill to the big tent for IED and first aid training. Because of the hour, and the unexpected cloud cover, the heat wasn't an issue, so they had us walk instead of ride the buses. It was only about half a mile, but my feet hated me after wards.

In Vietnam, 90% of all combat deaths occurred before the casualty arrived at a medical facility, with 60% of those deaths resulting from loss of blood. Teaching us how to stop the bleeding in a variety of cases was the primary goal of the first aid training we received. Obviously a medic is going to be needed eventually, but the more blood the first responder can keep in the body immediately, the better chance the casualty has to survive later.

We started off with learning how to evaluate a casualty, insert a nasopharyngeal tube to assist in breathing, dress a wound, apply a tourniquet, and move a victim aided and unaided. Basic first aid for the most part, except for the tube. And though the training is addressed towards combat injuries, it can be applied to injuries of any sort.

Next was lunch. We had a choice of buying burgers and brats from an organization selling lunch for charity, or eating MREs. I chose the brats. I was fortunate in that my section was the first released for lunch. Even as one of the first people in line, the grill was already backed up, and talking to the cook while I waited for my food, he said he was told he'd only be cooking for 75-100 people. Apparently CRC thought the other 300 were going to be eating MREs. As I said before, I was fortunate.

After lunch came the gross part. It really wasn't that bad, but those with weak stomachs were glad they had already eaten.

First was training on how to treat a sucking chest wound. Gunshot or shrapnel wounds to the chest often penetrate the membrane around the lung letting in air. Because the air pressure in your lungs is less than the air pressure outside your body, the air forces itself inside your body and collapses the lung, making breathing difficult. The sound of the air going into your chest makes a sucking or hissing sound, thus the name of the wound. Remember how I said 60% of the deaths in Vietnam were from bleeding to death? Another 33% of deaths were caused by air in the chest collapsing a lung and squishing your heart and good lung to the side of your ribcage. It has a fancy name, but I don't remember it. As such, this type of wound was covered pretty thoroughly as well. To treat someone in this condition, you've got to seal the wound (entry and exit) with a piece of plastic and a bandage. The plastic can be any old thing. The side of an MRE bag was suggested since they will be prevalent. Then you drive a 14 gauge, 3" needle into their chest cavity to relieve the pressure. This allows the lung to re-inflate. This training was accompanied by pictures, practice on a dummy, and hands-on time with the biggest needle I'd ever seen.

Next was open abdominal wounds. We were told how to wrap organs that may be outside the body and bandage the wounded area. Essentially you just wrap the person in the largest bandaid you find and hope the medivac gets there quickly. Again, this was complete with practical exercise on the dummy and...pictures. Lovely. I learned just enough to know that I'd rather be shot in the chest than in the stomach. It's easier to fix as long as you don't get hit in the heart.

Last in this section was learning to how to tie dressings onto head wounds, and how to identify if the casualty has a brain injury. Essentially, if there are any cracks in the skull or palate, or spinal fluid leaking out of their ears, then they have a brain injury. Huh. Imagine that. Tie a bandage on it and call a helicopter. Done.

The last section of the day was IED and unexploded ordnance (UXO) training. Some of this training involved out instructor setting off pyrotechnics suddenly and unexpectedly. Exhilarating. Main lessons learned from these classes: 1) A IED can look like anything and everything, so no one has a clue what to look for in the field. 2) Red rocks, fence posts, metal roofing materials, etc. means stay away, there's a minefield over there. 3) If you didn't drop it, don't pick it up, no matter what.

The last one was the most important. Our instructor said he had a buddy in the engineer corps that had worked with explosives for 16 years who picked up a fist-sized IED with a pair of pliers, held it in front of his face, turned it over to inspect it, and tripped the anti-tamper mechanism installed on the detonator. He was killed instantly. Another tale he told us was of insurgents filling ballpoint pens with plastic explosive and rigging them to explode when the clicker was pressed. Then they tossed them over the walls of friendly bases. Someone wandering along the wall sees what looks to be a perfectly good pen, picks it up, clicks it to see if it works or not. Boom. No more hand, if you're lucky. And it doesn't even have to be as sinister as that. Afghanistan is a country with an estimated 10 million active landmines, most left over from the soviet occupation. Some of these landmines are the size of a candy bar. What might look like something that fell off a Humvee might be something that can kill you.

And that was the end of it, 12 hours after we began. The longest day by far. I told you my feet hated me. Upon inspection I don't yet have blisters, but it's only a matter of time.

*****

I forgot to mention a pretty neat experience I had yesterday in my previous post. Riding back from the CIF, I got to listen to a colonel (COL) and a lieutenant colonel (LTC) talk about their command experiences and the different things that they had experienced in their careers. The LTC also was an operations research analyst for a few years, which was an interesting wrinkle in his Army experience. H is getting ready to take command of a battalion this fall. A battalion is roughly 800 mean. Commanding one is a big deal. The COL was a former brigade commander. A brigade is about 4000 men. Commanding one of those is a bigger deal. Being a sponge while the COL mentored the LTC was a really pretty awesome.

I also got to talk with my cousin tonight. He's a specialist in a brigade support battalion headed to Kandahar, Afghanistan in July and called to see what I was up to and where I'd be headed. It was a good conversation. We're going to be in very different parts of the country, so we probably aren't going to be running into each other, but it'll be nice to know that some part of my family is only a couple hours away.

Tomorrow is the home stretch. Laundry, final packing, receive malaria pills and gas mask inserts and I'll be finished, ready to fly on Friday. After I fly out, my access to internet becomes a matter of question, as will my free time, so I don't know how frequently I'll be able to write here. I hope to post something 2-3 times per week, once I get settled, but that might be optimistic while I'm traveling.

See you tomorrow. Out here.

CRC Day Four: Yowza

2010-06-16T04:27:00.005+04:30

$4193.70 worth of gear issued me for my trip to Afghanistan. And I thought women over-packed.

It is finally raining here. When I arrived Friday night, at midnight it was 85 degrees with 90% humidity, and it's only gotten worse. The last two days the heat index was 110 with very little wind, making the outside air stuffy like a sealed up attic. In short, it's been downright miserable. But tonight, our first rain shower rolled through. The storm brought a slight temperature drop and a breeze. It was quite a relief.

The slate for today had us finishing up the last of our stack of paperwork (I think - I hope), and getting issued all of our gear from the Central Issuing Facility (CIF). Formation was at 0640, and we loaded the buses again to go to an office building in another section of post. The CRC compound is pretty isolated on Ft. Benning, way out near the firing ranges and tank trails, so anytime we have to go somewhere, it involves about a 20 minute ride. Given the hour, we drove past quite a few units out doing morning physical training (PT). The post I work on, Ft. Leavenworth, isn't home to any military units, so it's always cool for me to see what a "real" Army post is like.

At our stop, we were put through several different stations to get our final paperwork addressed. All of the soldiers and DOD civilians, about 200 people, were going through the process at the same time. Thankfully for the civilians, we had fewer briefings and less paperwork to do, so we were able to start rotating through the stations before the soldiers. This ended up saving us about 2 hours worth of lines. Considering the whole process still took 3 hours, I was very happy with this arrangement.

So what did I get for my 3 hours of bureaucratic navigation? A new ID card, a secure debit card I can use overseas, filled out personal information that will allow friendly forces to verify my identity should I be captured or MIA, emergency contact data completed, and a check mark on a form that said I already had a Will. Stimulating. I'm pretty happy with how my ID picture turned out, though. Sadly the card expires in January, so I only get to keep it for a few months instead of the customary three years. Phooey.

Next came the fun part, as we took a trip to Sam's Club for GIs. I wish I could have taken pictures, but cameras were strongly discouraged inside the facility, and I didn't want to push my luck. CIF was a giant warehouse with racks of gear stretching to the ceiling, and giant bins of gear in the middle. We rotated through 9 different "departments", starting with duffel bags and ending with socks and boots, though soldiers ended with picking up their weapons (9MM for officers and highly ranked enlisted, M16s for everyone else).

In the useful category, I received hot and moderate weather boots, desert camouflage uniforms, t-shirts, hat, winter coat, poncho liner (it's thick enough and large enough to use as a make-shift mattress), my body armor and a kevlar helmet. The body armor is pretty interesting. In total, the Interceptor Body Armor (IBA) is fourteen pieces: vest, front and back chest plates, neck collar, throat protector, underarm shields, shoulder plates, side armor plates, and the side armor plate holders. It weighs 33 lbs. It took me more than an hour to put all the pieces together and get it properly adjusted. Once it all fit together though, I was impressed by how seamless the whole thing was.

I'm really not looking forward to wearing this thing though. Since I'm going to be flying into Afghanistan on a military flight, I'll be required to wear the armor and my helmet on the flight. I'll also have to be humping my duffel bags and backpack, which I'm not even sure is going to be possible. All the protection comes at the cost of mobility, as the IBA is very restrictive. I'm honestly not sure how soldiers are able to fight in this stuff. I'll also have to put on just the vest whenever the security on the base deems the environment dangerous enough. Other than that, it will just sit in my closet.

In the category of completely useless equipment received, I got extreme cold weather boots (that's my third pair of boots if you're counting, all of which I get to keep when I come home), the poncho, and a gas mask. I took the boots cuz they're free boots. I plan to mail them home before I leave. The poncho was a package deal with the poncho liner, so it balances out. The gas mask was required. The chances I'm ever going to wear this thing are extremely slim.

Oh c'mon. It was too cool looking to not put on at least once. But it shouldn't need to come out of its bag again. I promise.

In category of useless equipment refused, there was a canteen/cup combo (I'll have a water bottle), sleeping bag, sleeping mat, and associated sacks (I'll have a cot), cold and wet weather pants (I'm not camping in the woods), shooting gloves (not shooting), safety goggles (again, not shooting), knee and elbow pads for firing from kneeling and prone positions (yet again, not shooting), and an entrenching tool. I hadn't planned to refuse any gear initially, because the items aren't listed by name but by the Line Item Number, or LIN, on the equipment list. Since I didn't know what LIN corresponded with what item, I had just accepted my fate of hauling a bunch of junk I didn't need. Lucky for me, someone I work with returned from Afghanistan the day before I left, and was able to tell me what was what and help me draft a memo of refusal for my colonel to sign. This saved me an entire duffel bag worth of crap. Very, very happy.

Here's what all the stuff looks like after I packed carefully and assembled my body armor. The larger bag weighs about 50 lbs, the smaller about 40 (33 of that the body armor).

My personal gear MIGHT fit in the space of the second bag plus my backpack, meaning I'd only have three pieces of luggage instead of the usual four. I'll have to wait until Thursday to see if this is possible, but I'm optimistic.

*****

As I type this, there's an uproar in the recreation room. A large crowd of people had gathered to watch Game 6 of the NBA Finals, but ABC isn't coming through on the cable here. Every other channel works perfectly fine, while ABC is just a blank screen. Instead we're watching the ESPN ticker for score updates every few minutes. These soldiers are not happy campers.

During our nightly phone call/video conference, Little One got a curious look on her face. Pointing to the other people in the camera's view she asked, "How come there are other people there? I thought you were the only one going?" Her sweet little child understanding of everything is so darn cute.

First formation tomorrow is a 0615. We're scheduled for classroom work all day, doing things like IED identification and first aid training. At the least it will be more interesting than standing in lines all day, but these classes are also supposed to last for 11 hours. Ewww.

See you again tomorrow. Out here.

CRC Day Three: Small world, but no smallpox

2010-06-15T03:45:00.005+04:30

Today was medical day for my group. After breakfast, we were supposed to meet for the drive to the health clinic where our medical records would be checked to make sure we had all the proper vaccinations, blood work, hearing tests, eye tests, and physical exam completed. Anything not completed before coming to CRC would be completed on site (for military and DOD civilians at least, contractors get fed to the wolves here.)

After the time for our formation got pushed back, twice, I was lounging around talking with some military guys about where we were deploying to when I found a Lieutenant Colonel going to the same place I am in Kabul. After some more conversation about our home installations and where we were from, we discovered that we had grown up about 10 miles from each other (though at different times) and that his brother was the computer teacher and IT guy at my high school. We ended up eating dinner together and talking about people we both knew and where we're headed for deployment. It was a refreshing shot of home when I'm feeling quite far away.

The second highlight of my day was avoiding getting the small pox vaccine. Small pox has been eradicated "in the wild", so to speak, but the vaccine is still given to military personnel just in case some enemy of ours decides to manufacture it in a lab and use it as a biological weapon. But the vaccine is nasty. Its not given with a traditional needle. It requires, and I quote from the cheat sheet on the wall of the nurses' cubical, "15 jabs", per dose. After the first dose, your skin at the injection site bubbles into a red, itchy blister, and fills with pus. After a few weeks the blister dries, scabs and falls off, leaving a permanent scar. New doses are required every 6 months to 3 years, depending on how many total doses you've had. Each dose has the potential to cause the same reaction. Yuuuuuck!

If you're a soldier deploying, you don't have a choice, you're getting the scabby stuff. Civilians only get the vaccine if they are declared "mission essential" or "emergency essential". Emergency essential means you're medical personnel of some sort. Mission essential means you're more important than I am. I am classified as "key personnel". Thankfully, I was informed of this distinction before coming to CRC, as my designation isn't listed anywhere on my orders. Several of the DOD civilians in my group that are going overseas to run shopettes and kitchens ended up getting the vaccine simply because they didn't know they could refuse it. The medical staff is too busy and too programmed to bother asking if you really need the shots. They stick first and usually don't ask at all. So thank God for good preparation.

I did get shots for tetanus, seasonal flu, and hepatitis A and B, and now my arm hurts. The whole medical process also took long enough that our group missed getting to eat by about 2.5 hours. They did have Meals Ready to Eat, or MREs for us, but having eaten one of those before, I decided I wasn't hungry enough to stoop to that level.

Tomorrow is legal prep and equipment draw. First formation for civilians is at 6:40 AM. The poor contractors get to form up at 5:45. Lucky them.

*****

Today was Daughter Prime's birthday. As a surprise for her , I made my first Skype video call home this morning. My daughter had been very excited about the idea of getting to see me while we talked, and had been disappointed that it hadn't happened yet. I talked to just her this morning before she went to her soccer camp, and then talked to all three of my girls this afternoon. It was nice to be able to see their faces and not just hear their voices. I know I'll have internet access in Afghanistan, but I'm not certain of how fast it's going to be. I really hope its good enough to allow communication home.

Early morning tomorrow for me. Out here.

CRC Day Two: Empty Space

2010-06-14T01:25:00.006+04:30

The road between the sets of barracks on the CRC compound. We are frequently told to stay off the tan, sandy-substance, seen here, called "grass", lest we kill it. Must be a Georgia thing.

I think a monkey got a hold of the meeting schedule here.

First formation was at 7 AM this morning. We were to be fitted for our body armor and uniforms. I assumed that all 400 of us would be showing up at the same time, same place, and the early hour was needed in order to make sure we'd all be processed before the next formation. I assumed a somewhat complex set of measurements would be taken, or at least our shirt, pants, and helmet sizes would be recorded. I was wrong.

Instead, all the Department of Defense (DoD) Civilians reported at 7, all 23 of us. (That's right, 23 civilians, total, out of 400 slots. The rest seem to be about evenly split between military and contractors.) The military don't need uniforms and body armor from CRC, as they have it already. The contractors were to report at another time. The "fitting" consisted of a specialist handing us different sizes of body armor and informing him whether or not our belly buttons were covered by the vest. We were then to jot down the proper size on a form he pushed at us, staple a copy of our orders to the form (of course - 14 copies, remember?) and hand them to the secretary. Finished. The entire group took 20 minutes, maybe. I was happy for being done quickly, but annoyed that I had to wake up early for such a brief activity. Maybe it was a fluke, or just always planned this early because they never knew how many people they would have in each group. Whatever. I went and watched two more World Cup games and took a short nap.

Cue second bout of insanity. Meals are served in the Dining Facility (DFAC, pronounced dee-fak) three times a day. Breakfast and dinner are both served for four hours. Lunch is only served for two, from 11 AM to 1 PM. 400 people need to eat in these two hours, so this is by far the busiest point of the day. The staff has seemed very efficient in the two days I've been here so far, but this kind of crush understandably stresses the crew. Lines build up very quickly, both at the serving line and at the dish drop-off, as everyone is trying to get in their meal during the two hour window, and seats are at a premium.

So why, WHY, would you choose to schedule the second formation of the day at 12:30? Now we only have an hour and a half, amplifying all the problems that already existed. Starting to feel less like a fluke. To make it worse, the briefings they bused us to from this second formation took 2.5 hours for about half of the deployers, 3.5 hours for those that hadn't done their POW training. Would it not have been better to schedule this meeting for the morning, give the full two hours for lunch, then do the uniform/body armor fitting in the afternoon? Yes? Can I get a nod from the monkey with the sharpie in his hand?

I think I'm more annoyed by this than I should be. As an Operations Research Systems Analyst (ORSA), optimizing things is part of my job. The last project I worked on modeled an optimal flight schedule for unmanned aircraft. If this place hired TRAC for a week, the CRC schedule could be worked to get people deployed in about two days instead of seven. Grrrr.

So here I sit at 3:30 PM, finished for the day, killing time until dinner and trying not to think too much about home. I had been told not to bring any books as I wouldn't have time to read. This might be true in Afghanistan, but not at CRC, and I am extremely glad I didn't listen to that advice. My laptop, iPod and DS are good entertainment, but all have batteries that need to be charged. There is also an unfortunate tendency for valuables to walk-off around here, so every gadget that needs to be charged also needs to be babysat, even if its in your room. As I type this, all of my electronics are getting their first juice since Friday morning before I left home. By contrast, my trusty paperbacks need no electricity, nor are they tempting targets for theft. So far I've finished one and am halfway through another. I have another five with me. I thought that would be enough to cover me for the week plus travel time, but given all the free time I have here, I'm not as certain any more. I may have to start rationing.

I'll close tonight with a picture for my girls. Daughter Prime and Little One are crazy about bugs, so I know they'll enjoy this. Wallflower is terrified of bugs, just like her mother, even running in tear-streaming terror from a fly on occasion, afraid of being "stung" by it. I hope she'll make an exception for this particular bug because, well, it's pink. Behold, the Rosy Maple Moth. Rawr.

See you next time. Out here.

Welcome to CRC!

2010-06-13T01:49:00.010+04:30

Disclaimer: Some of this may get boring. In addition to documenting my experience, I also want to document the process of getting from Kansas City to Afghanistan, and back, so that those following behind me may be enlightened and have an easier trip because of it. In order to do this, I will likely capture details which you, the reader, care nothing about. My apologies.

Well, I'm here. The horrific trauma of saying goodbye to my family at the airport is over, and the aftermath wasn't as gruesome as I thought it would be. Daughter Prime took it the hardest. She remembers very clearly me being gone for 3.5 months when I first got this job, and realizes that this absence will be longer and harder. Her birthday is also on Monday, just 3 days after I left, making her experience all the more difficult. My Wallflower took it the best, or at least put on the bravest face. Her personality is such that when her mask starts to crack, a cataclysmic emotional event is going to follow soon after. I'm hoping this happens later, rather than sooner, as she will be difficult to piece back together. Little One is too, well, little, to understand what's really going on. My wife reported to me that upon arriving back at our house and seeing my car in the driveway, she asked if I was home already. Sigh. Things like that make me cry. I'm hoping that using the video chat feature of Skype will make the separation easier, but this is still going to be one of the most difficult things I've ever done.

Enough about that depressing subject. On to what's keeping me busy.

My trip was, unfortunately, eventful. We weren't quite to cruising altitude from Kansas City to Atlanta when the older gentleman in front of me vomited explosively all over himself and the seat in front of him. The flight from Atlanta to Columbus was delayed an hour due to maintenance. Then the bus from the airport to Ft. Benning ran late because several people on my flight also headed to CRC had one or more bags lost. The airline even lost one poor soldier's rifle that she had checked. Not a good situation.

After all the delays, and one side stop, the bus finally got to the CRC compound around 11:30 PM. A line of nearly an hour to sign in for rooms, beds, and sheets pushed my bed time until nearly 1 AM by the time it was said and done. A very talkative contractor standing behind me in the line used our wait time to scare the crap out of me with stories about himself and other people he knew getting turned away by this course for multiple weeks, leaving their leave date in limbo. I ended up tossing and turning all night long, looking at the clock too many times to count. Heavily emphasized piece of advice: when traveling to CRC, leave as early as you can bear on Friday.

But in the end, I'm here, I have all my stuff, and I got a slot in the class (woo hoo!). During check-in, we were directed to show up for sign in at 9 AM this morning, and to bring all of our paperwork with us. Naturally, that meant people started lining up at 7 AM in an effort to be first.

I should explain about the CRC process for a minute. In order to attend this class, which is required for deployment overseas for all military, civilians and contractors not deploying as part of a larger unit, you're supposed to make a reservation. Reservations are hard to get. Only 400 people are allowed into each class each week, and a whole lot more want/need to take it. Now, in theory, this reservation guarantees you a slot. In practice, the school overbooks each and every class, and many more people show up unannounced hoping to make the stand-by list. Thus, waiting in line for a CRC slot felt much more like trying to buy floor seats for a Miley Cyrus concert than it felt like the first step towards Afghanistan. The picture at the top of this entry is what the huddled masses looked like this morning.

I want to point out that these are only the people that were standing in line precisely at 9 AM on Saturday. Technically check-in for the class is supposed to take place all day long, but the demand is such that if you aren't here PRECISELY WHEN IT STARTS, you're probably out of luck. All the people with reservations that thought they could fly in on Saturday are now waiting until next week to try again.

After sign-in, there was a brief respite before being walloped with briefings and paperwork. The FAQ on CRC's website says to bring 14 copies of your orders, and they aren't joking in the slightest. Almost every piece of paper they push at you ends up being accompanied by a copy of your orders. The redundancy results in carrying around something akin to this:

Mercifully, after the 8th (literally) briefing about CRC procedures, safety, paperwork guidance, and the mandatory daily shower (I kid you not), I was finished for the day. I used my free afternoon to watch a delightfully entertaining US vs England World Cup match, and type up this post. Next is dinner, (mandatory) shower, family phone time, and early to bed. The lack of sleep is beginning to make my eyes droop.

Tomorrow looks to be fairly tame as well. First formation is at 7 AM to get sized for uniforms and body armor, then some other briefings on who-knows-what, before another free afternoon. I'll be back then with the wrap-up of Day 2.

Until then. Out here.

Travel Day

2010-06-11T16:52:00.004+04:30

Well, this is it. My flight leaves in ~7 hours. The last thing I have to pack is the computer I'm typing on. My family is still asleep, so I'm trying to get this in before they wake up, so that I'm not losing time with them while I'm typing.

My itinerary looks like this: today I leave Kansas City to fly to Atlanta, GA, and then take a puddle jumper to Columbus, GA. From there I catch a bus to Ft. Benning, for a week at the CONUS Replacement Center (CONUS means Continental United States). I'll be there for a week doing training, checking over all of my paperwork, and drawing equipment. Next Friday, I'll (hopefully) catch a plane from Ft. Benning to either Ireland or Germany, and then onto Kuwait. After that, the time table gets chucked out the window.

From Kuwait, I need to fly on to Bagram Airforce Base, about an hour north of Kabul, my ultimate destination. In order to get to Bagram, I have to sign up for space on a tactical aircraft, either a C-17 or a C-130, depending what's on the runway when they call my name. However, since I'm a civilian, and an unimportant one at that, I'm low man on the totem pole for a slot. Role call for each plane is approximately every 8 hours. If I'm at role call and they call my name, great, I get to leave. If I'm there and they don't call my name, they'll tell me when to be there next. If I'm not there and they call my name, I get to start over again. Moral of the story: be there for every single one.

Of course, that's easier said than done. While in Kuwait, I can choose to sleep in the terminal, in what has been described to me as "big, nasty, black chairs" or get a bed. The beds are in transient tents, which thankfully are air conditioned, but still a tent. They are also about half a mile away from the terminal, and I'll be carrying about 150 lbs of gear. Oh, did I mention that Kuwait is a giant desert, and that it will be 130 degrees Fahrenheit outside? Yeah...fantastic.

The short version of Kuwait is that I could be there anywhere from 9 hours (my predecessor's time spent) to a week waiting for a flight, getting sleep only between the role calls for the plane.

Once I get get out of Kuwait to Bagram, I get to start a similar process, but with more travel options and more frequent flights. Hopefully this process will be a little less hairy, as by now I'm sure my brain will be short circuiting from lack of sleep and frustration with military/government procedures. If anything, I'll know I'm only one short flight, or a two hour convoy trip from my final destination, Camp Eggers, Kabul, Afghanistan.

*****

I had told my girls that I would take each of them out on a "Daddy Date" before I left, so that they could each have one on one time with me. My Wall Flower knew exactly what she wanted to do: "Penguin Park and Pizza Hut!" Little One quickly adopted that as her own plan, though she went for a little more sophistication in the choice of cuisine: "McDonalds!" Of course Wall Flower couldn't do something that someone else was going to do, so after some arguing with her sister, she changed her mind to a different local park, which was enough to end the conflict. Thankfully, that was the end of the copy cat syndrome.

Daughter Prime took a little more time to decide, introspective as she is. First she took a simple approach, deciding to just stay home and watch Star Wars with me. Her final decision was to go see a movie in theatres (How to Train Your Dragon) and play a video game on the computer with me (World of Warcraft - she's level 21).

I had feared that as my week of vacation before I left went on that each thing we did would actually FEEL like the last time, and that the week would feel more like a funeral than a goodbye. But it didn't turn out that way. All the girls were grateful for the individual attention, and though they've acknowledged that I'm going to be gone soon, they've been handling it remarkably well.

The last thing I made sure to do with them before I left was to make bed time the last couple of nights special. They have all sorts of little things they like me to do with them, and usually I make them only pick one or two, else bedtime become a Broadway production. But the last few nights, I did every thing they asked me to do. Bedtime stories and snuggles and lullabies and all sorts of other things. After they were asleep, I checked in on them before I went to bed myself. Sleeping soundly (one of them even snoring), I hoped that they would handle my deployment as well as they were handling my departure. I kissed their foreheads, joined my wife in bed, and tried to enjoy my last evening at home.

I think this is going to be harder than I thought.

The Skinny

2010-06-08T10:06:00.004+04:30

I get a lot of quizzical looks when I answer the question "What do you do for a living?"

I work for the Army, but I'm not a soldier. No, I'm not a contractor either. I'm a government civilian. No, I'm not making this up.

It only gets worse when I try and explain my job. I rarely say I work in Operations Research, because hardly anyone knows what it is. I don't blame them. I didn't know what it was until I applied for a job in the field. Usually I just end up saying that I do "math stuff". The people who hate math are happy to nod, smile, and move on.

For those still curious, I elaborate. I work for the Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) Analysis Center, aka TRAC, at Ft. Leavenworth, KS. My job consists of statistics, optimization math, and wargame simulations, or what we call combat modeling. We apply these techniques, and many, many others, to all sorts of problems the Army decides it needs investigated. Currently TRAC is studying what vehicle will be commissioned to replace the Humvee, the number and type of UAVs the Army needs to operate optimally, and the cost-effectiveness of a new type of ground attack missile. We aren't the experts on any of these systems. Rather we go find the experts, coordinate meeting with them to pick their brains, analyze the data we receive from these meetings, and report our findings to decision makers at all levels of Army leadership, up to and including the Office of the Secretary of Defense and Chief of Staff of the Army.

That sounds grandiose. In reality, it's usually pretty tame, though interesting work.

That's what I do for my day job. When I get asked about what I'll be doing in Afghanistan, I answer that I'll be doing the same work, just for different people. The truth is, I really don't have any idea.

I know who I'll be working for: the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan, or CSTC-A (pronounced See-Stick-Ah - the military has funny sounding acronyms for everything.) It is the sister organization of NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan, NTM-A. CSTC-A concerns itself with the training and equiping of the Afghan National Army (ANA) and the various flavors of the Afghan National Police (ANP). In the past, people in my soon-to-be position have studied things such as the optimal police training class size, minimum literacy level required for new recruits, and the best way to mobilize and equip new ANA units. Often the questions are being asked are not hard to answer, but finding the data needed to get GOOD answers is extremely difficult.

While I know the work I'll be doing will be the same flavor, the immediacy of the work and the pace of operations are such that I won't know exactly what I'm working on until I get there. Everything is needed yesterday. What I am assigned today my be examined tomorrow for 10 minutes by my boss before being briefed to a two star general. Projects are short and plenty, with very little downtime.

The quick pace and immediate impact of the work is a large part of why I volunteered for this assignment. The work I do for TRAC is interesting, but often the impact of these studies won't be felt for 5-7 years. The projects I'll be assigned at CSTC-A will often have results that are felt within weeks, if not days. This will be the dirtiest my hands can get in my current profession.

There are other reasons for volunteering as well. The quick pace of the work leads to long hours, often 80+ per week. In my six month rotation, I will gain a year of experience. That does good things for the career, and looks good on a resume. Long hours while in a combat zone and away from my family also translates into LOTS of money. And while that wasn't the reason I decided to sign up, it certainly was a factor in my wife and kids allowing me to go. I also wanted to get a better feel for the soldier. My prime customer in all the work I do is someone I get to spend very little time with. For the next six months, I will be surrounded by soldiers, able to soak up the culture and mindset of the military in a way not possible in Leavenworth. I'll also be dealing with being separated from my family, an all-too-common occurrence for our uniformed forces in the current conflicts. It is my hope that being in this environment will help make me a better analyst through an improved understanding of our armed forces.

So there it is, the what and the why of my deployment. I'll be back soon with words on the process and the timeline.

Thanks for reading. Out here.

You're going WHERE?

2010-06-02T02:16:00.007+04:30

It was a Tuesday. Outside it was mid March in the Midwest, cool and sunny. Inside I cracked open a bottle of Pepsi in an attempt to wash way the still-there remnants of Monday-morning rust. It looked to be the start of another typical day in the land of government desk jobs.

My bosses' voice lofted over the wall, bracketing my attention. "K.C. I need to talk to you. In my office."

Hmmm. This was unusual. "OK, Mike." I removed my ID card from my computer, locking my screen against possible security violations, and took a long walk down the short hallway to the white-doored office. I wondered to myself, "What could he want that he needed to see me in his office for? Did I screw something up?" I knocked on the door frame and stepped inside.

"Go ahead and close the door, then take a seat."

A claxxon sounded in my ears. Any hope I had for this being a simple conversation was quickly vanishing. I followed his instructions and braced for impact.

"It seems that the guy we had slotted to deploy to Afghanistan from Ft. Lee has backed out. Something about not being able to find a dog sitter for a couple weeks of his proposed tour." I gave Mike a quizzical look at this. He rolled his eyes, nodded his head, and continued. "Leadership wants to know if you're still interested in going to Afghanistan this summer, and they need to know soon. The tour will be from July to January. That something you're still wanting to do?"

I gulped, completely taken off guard, and tried to stifle the huge grin breaking out across my face. Little more than a week ago I had been told that all the deployment opportunities had been filled for the next 18 months. I took a minute to re-orient myself to the world that was now upside down. "Ummm...yeah, I'm still interested," I croaked. "How soon do you need to know by?"

"Tomorrow," Mike said. "Go talk it over with your wife and let me know what you decide." I nodded assent and he turned to his computer, signaling an end to the exchange.

Right. My wife. She had agreed to let me volunteer, but I wasn't certain she would let me go through with it. I still get reminded time to time of how I made her a single mom during my 14 weeks of initial training for this job. I rose from the chair and left the office, wondering to myself how to broach the subject.

*****

That night my daughter had a soccer game. As we sat on the sideline watching 4 year olds play herd ball, my wife, Amanda, and I discussed the pros and cons. The money and experience would be great. The time away from the family would not. I'd be missing two birthday's for my kids, my mom's 60th birthday, my parent's 40th wedding anniversary, the first day of kindergarten, the first day of pre-school, Thanksgiving and Christmas, my own wedding anniversary, and possibly New Year's.

I asked Amanda, "Do you think you can do it? I don't want to go if you don't think you can make it." There was a long pause. Then slowly, eyes wet, she nodded.

After the game, we took the soccer player and her sisters out to eat. We ran into an old teacher of mine at the door who was also waiting for a table. He seemed like he wanted to sit with us so we could talk more, but we didn't invite him as I didn't want an audience when I made my kids cry. I hoped I didn't come off as rude.

After the pizza came, I told my girls that I'd be leaving in a few months, and wouldn't be back until next year. "Will it be like when you went to Virginia?", my Little One asked. I nodded, and added "But I'll be further away this time, and be gone for longer."

"How much longer", they asked? More than double. 6 months. And then they started to cry.

I had prepared myself for this, as it was inevitable, but it still wasn't easy. I comforted them, told them that it would still be a while before I leave, and that we have lots of time to have fun before then. I promised we'd get to go to the park and a baseball game, and several other activities the kids were concerned about. Still they cried. That's when I pulled out the secret weapon of all parents: bribery.

"You know girls, I'll probably make enough extra money that when we get back we can go to Disney World." The tears took a break, sniffles filling the space. "Really?" asked my oldest, Daughter Prime. I nodded. She considered this for a second, and started to smile. Exhibiting her ornery side, she asked, "Can you leave tomorrow?" I could only shake my head and laugh.

*****

So began my journey to Afghanistan. My hope for this blog is to capture the process of deployment and a picture of the war from a civilian perspective, to develop a good source of information for civilians that will be deploying in my footsteps, and to give my family and friends a way to keep up with me while I live on the far side of the world. Hopefully I can update a few times per week from now until the end of my deployment period in December, though I'll be posting more frequently in the near-term, as I'm playing catch up for the last few months. If there's anything you want me to talk about, let me know in the comments and I'll try and cover it for you. Topics coming up in the next few posts include more info about myself, who I work for, what I'll be doing, and the process of getting there.

Until next time. Out here.