Kandahar Air Field, KAF, is the main operating base for the Coalition Forces in Southern Afghanistan. It is co-located with Kandahar International Airport, an architecturally fascinating structure in its own right, built by the United States in the 1960's when we and the Soviets were vying for Afghan favor. We built this airport and a huge irrigation project near Lashkar Gah in the southwest. The Soviets built a tunnel through the Salang Pass, north of Kabul. The irrigation project was of limited success as the soils were found to contain too many residual salts and the tunnel was the site of a major disaster for the Soviets when, during their war here, a major fire ensued with a convoy inside the tunnel causing many fatalities. Kandahar Airfield's claim to fame was as the "Last Stand of the Taliban" against US and Northern Alliance allied forces in the opening days of Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001. Now, it is a huge complex of well over 20,000 personnel, from most countries participating in the ongoing conflict. It is the location of the headquarters for the International Security Assistance Force, ISAF, and the headquarters for Regional Command-South, the geographic command for the area as well as for COMKAF, the headquarters for running what amounts to a small city, in its own right.
KAF is a sprawling mix of barracks, tent cities, logistics yards, headquarters buildings, storage facilities, maintenance shops, aviation support units (it is, after all, an air field!), dining facilities, restaurants, coffee shops, and shopping centers. Yes, restaurants, coffee shops, and shopping centers - oh, and a movie theater and a hockey rink (well, floor hockey, but it is regulation size!). The "Boardwalk" is the social center of KAF, a huge square, well, boardwalk, ringed with shops and restaurants, ranging from American fast food (Burger King, Pizza Hut and Subway) to soon to open Italian and Thai sit-down restaurants. There are two coffee shops - a Tim Hortons- kind of a Canadian Starbucks, only better coffee (I always have thought Starbucks coffee itself tasted burnt) and with free wi-fi (great coffee and donuts too) and a "Green Bean" - not as nice, but does have better chai (tea) in my personal opinion (at least the one in Kabul did, the one in Kandahar hasn't been open when I've been there). There are also numerous shops selling souveniers from Central Asia, jewelry and semi-precious stones, tailor shops for suits and coats, embroidery shops, and electronics/dvd shops. This is in addition to the British, Dutch and American post exchange stores. Life is not bad if you live at KAF - and the shops and restaurants appear to be virtual licences to print money for their proprietors.
The denizens of KAFstan (literally, land of the KAFs) take all this in stride. There are posters to instruct you what do do in case of rocket attack (the base is big enough to be an irresistable target for the rocketry enthusiasts among the Taliban - luckily it is also big enough that odds of major damage or serious casualites are pretty slim). There is even a sign in the Tim Horton's informing patrons that "Tim Horton's will close upon the sounding of the Rocket Alert and will reopen 15 minutes after the All Clear." Pretty surreal on first glance.
What makes it truly KAFka-esque (sorry, can't resist), is that fully half of the people at KAF exist solely to facilitate the lives and duties of the other half. There are large areas where the service workers live - all those folks who run the stores, cook the food in the mess halls, pump the porta-potties (although most of the "permanent" buildings have indoor plumbing) and service all of the generators and heaters and air conditioners and what not that keeps this city functioning.
Then there are the headquarters themselves. I've served in headquarters units at various levels from the tactical combat level to the theater level. Never have I seen more bureaucracy than here. All in all, KAFstan is a monument to the seven deadly sins - Sloth immediately comes to mind, with staff offices not bothering to coordinate actions between themselves, despite being only a few hundred feet apart and then expecting field (non-KAFs) units to sort it out on their own (we once had three different SOPs for a specific action being circulated by three different staff offices,they were mutually contradictory). Pride, for KAFstani fecal matter stinketh not - even if there are three flavors of it circulating about - the problem is clearly that of the non-KAFs for bringing it up. Gluttony, for thou shalt not interfere with their access to Tim Horton's or the mess halls. Greed in wanting to keep all that glitters for themselves, sharing only under duress with the dirty, unwashed masses (non-KAFs). Simple things like no taking sodas or any food items from the mess hall, for thou will then be denying profits from those who would sell sodas or food items to those who did not arrive in time. There is Wrath, for hell hath no fury like a KAF who hath been scorned, especially when it was there job to ensure that three different versions of a SOP did not go out to the non-KAFs, thus provoking their scorn. Envy in that the KAFs wax nostalgic about how "lucky" the non-KAFs are to be getting all of the combat decorations (and most of the Purple Hearts!) while they toil away diligently for service medals. Finally, there is Lust - for which I can only report as has been reported to me - there's lots of it.
The true comparison to "The Castle" comes when dealing with our Afghan allies. Never have so many been scorned by so few. The restrictions that have been placed are absolutely insulting. Coalition must have Afghan National Police present in all convoys. This makes sense, for if there is any type of incident, it's good to have 1. Afghan Police witness the incident and 2. Afghan Police to calm down the locals who may have gotten caught in the cross fire/blast radius. What doesn't make sense is that they are basically "persona non grata"on KAF - they must be escorted by coalition personnel wherever they go and aren't allowed to use many of the facilites (nor do they have the money to pay the prices charged!) Many units just leave their ANPs to park outside the "secure zone". These ANP officers roll with our convoys in unarmored 4-door Ford Ranger pickup trucks while we are in up-armored HMMWVs and Armored Mine Resistant vehicles. That takes guts, and yet we treat them like the enemy at worst and as suspect/barely competent allies at best. When an Afghan General travels, he chooses bodyguards that are personally loyal to him - usually family members. They too are usually left outside the gate if there is no assigned Coalition escort. Space does not permit me to list all of the slights and insults that KAF's rules serve out to our Afghan partners - those that we are here solely to help - remember?
The fate of a senior Afghan officer trying to go to a meeting (that he's been invited to) on KAF is something like that of "K" the land-surveyor in "The Castle" - always on the outside, stripped of dignity, and then having the wealth and opulence and power of the West dangled before their eyes. What an example we set. I'll have more to add about examples in another post. For now, I'm glad that I don't live at KAF!
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