Dispatches from FOBistan: Detour through Parwan

BAGRAM AIR BASE, AFGHANISTAN — I’m learning that one of the things you need to always be willing to do in Afghanistan is wait. It sucked to wait in Kuwait (I know, right?). But here, it’s of a different sort: it’s not necessarily bureaucracy that gums things up. But first things first.

Paul Currion mused about whether or not I’d realize the American Afghanistan is being run by an underclass as well. I can most certainly say it is—and it is remarkable what a simple “salaam” with your right hand over your heart can accomplish. I’m afraid I can’t talk too much about what I’ve discussed with them, but I will say I was amazed to learn one of the older men wiping off my table for KBR at the DFAC works days as a police investigator. But KBR feeds his family. Unbelievable.

Afghans are not stupid. They know that money talks, and Americans always put their money where their mouth is. Our money right now goes toward an 18,000 person base, and the vast majority of its inhabitants never leave. Even those working to secure their country, like that police investigator, find it easier to feed their families by wiping off our tables at dinner time than by actually investigating crime.

On a broader note, I am amazed at how temporary this place is. Bagram as a base has been around for decades, and has been under American control for seven years. Despite that, most buildings are cheap plywood buildings called B-Huts, or converted shipping containers often called CONNEXes. Some of my friends are living a mile away from the main section of the base, in tents. Part of this seems due to the previous administration’s “Afghanistan philosophy”: this is a short war, with few soldiers. Why bother building a lot of facilities? Frankly, it is demoralizing… especially when the Air Force has new, well air-conditioned and heated, permanent barracks right there.

But that is a tangent. I had an interesting day yesterday.

We were scheduled to go out with the Kapisa/Parwan PRT, in a convoy out to FOB Morales-Frazier. It is a French-run FOB, and by all accounts has the best pizza in Afghanistan. My colleagues and I were hitching a ride along with the PRT, which was making what’s known as a Humanitarian Assistance Drop, or HA drop—basically dropping off food aid and clothes and blankets for the other PRT elements to hand out when they go outside the wire. It was a day trip for them, though my colleagues and I were going to stay at the FOB for a few days.

Fate, alas, intervened. We didn’t make it there. We took a different route home, through northern Parwan district, down through Charikar, and back into Bagram. There is much more that happened I can’t talk about. Maybe some day, when I’ve moved on to other work, or when my current work allows me the liberty to discuss it. Below I’ve posted some photos from the past week. Even though I’ve only been here for six days, I already want to come back under circumstances that allow me more time to see this place. What an amazing, overwhelming country.

The tail section of the C-17 that took me to Kyrgyzstan before taking me to Afghanistan.

Bagram at sunrise.

Our destination was significantly closer to those mountains. This is looking across the street from the Kapisa/Parwan PRT, by the way.

Convoy through Bagram. I was in the tail Humvee.

Around Kabul, volleyball is surprisingly popular.

Villagers staring at our line of humvees, Western Kapisa.

Some kids giggling at us, Western Kapisa.

Northern Parwan is teh pretty.

Hillside village, Parwan.

ANP checkpont, just north of Charikar, Parwan.

A pile of rusting tanks, just east of Charikar, Parwan.

That’s it for now. I’ll try to hitch a ride into Kapisa some other way.