It Just Goes to Show You… It’s Always Something!

It’s getting to be summer here in Kandahar – getting to be is defined as over 100 degrees most days but not yet over 115 yet.  The temperatures put increased strain on everything, but mostly on the electrical infrastructure, what there is of it.

A note on my limited expertise here – my first real job was as a mechanic’s assistant for a small construction company. As such, i learned a great deal about small and mid-sized diesel engines, generators, and air compressors.  Who knew that 30 years later, that experience would come back to help/haunt me.

On the police side, we’ve been wrestling with two overheating generators since before I went on a much-needed leave in June.  They were starting to overheat then, when the temps were just in the 90’s during the day.  By the time I got back in late June, they were going down every afternoon for 4-6 hours. Finally, we figured out that the radiators had become clogged with a mixture of oil and dust – oil droplets from a leaking crankshaft seal on one and from spilled oil beneath the other had combined with the omnipresent dust to almost completely clog the radiators.  This, combined with the fact that the generators are sitting in direct sunlight let to them overheating anytime the temperature went over 100 degrees – which was every afternoon.  We had to totally disassemble the cooling systems and remove the radiator assemblies and send them downtown to clean them (no pressure washers available here).

Within two days of fixing that, the main circuit breaker tripped and wouldn’t reset. Investigation showed that it was a 160 amp breaker. We knew from the readouts on the generator that they were pulling more than 160 amps from time to time – and this proved it for sure.  So we requested that it be replaced with a 200 amp breaker.  From what we can tell, the electrician installed it backwards. It lasted one day then destroyed itself in a spectacular fashion, almost taking the rest of the circuit box with it.  When we went to replace it, the new electrician refused to put another of the same brand in – saying “That is cheap Chinese shit”. We sprung for a Siemens breaker (7 times as much) that easily weighed twice as much as the Chinese one.  As we were installing it, we noticed that it was counterintuitive – we are used to installing switches with “on” at the top and “off” at the bottom – but in this case, the breaker had to be mounted the other way – in tiny letters molded into the housing it had “load” on one side and “line” on the other.  Load being the use side and line being the supply side.  We turned it around and so far so good.

The very next day, we started to have serious problems on the US-side of the base.  We have been “blessed” with two bona-fide US certified contractor electricians.  So far, almost everything they have touched has been degraded. First, these experts told the commander that we really didn’t need the roof over the generators as the generators don’t need shade.  In the words of Bill Cosby’s Noah… Riiiiight!  The very next day we overheated a generator – FOR THE FIRST TIME!  Since then, it’s been a series of power outages as they attempt to “fix'” things that were working fine. Today they managed to short out the main switch box – twice, both times resulting in fires, melted cables, and no power during the heat of the day. They, of course, blame it all on the shoddy work done by the Afghans, but we had no problems of this type until they started playing with things.

At the going rate, it’s going to be a long hot summer.

Inspirations

Well, it’s been a pretty good week here for me this week. For whatever reason, the stars all were in my corner, in both tangible and intangible ways – which is pretty cool to look back on.

Do you ever hear or see or learn something that just overwhelms you with the “rightness” of whatever it is? The song that just grabs your heart and squeezes, or the dance performance that takes your breath away or the "click" when something suddenly makes sense? I had a couple of those experiences this week.

First, I read “Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. WOW. If you haven’t read this book, please, read it. Then donate to his efforts. It is not often that a book can bring me to tears of pure joy and happiness – that overwhelming “rightness” of being. This is a man who is truly fulfilling his destiny – and is helping thousands of others to fulfill theirs. Having been exposed to similar conditions here in Southern Afghanistan to what he describes in Pakistan and Northern Afghanistan, I know the truth that he speaks. It is so simple, yet so profound – education is the answer.

One of the basics I learned in a Physics class somewhere was “Nature abhors a vacuum.” This applies to education. The one thing common to all humanity is the innate desire to learn and grow, to become something more than we already are. If there is no formal process or curriculum for education, superstition, folklore, and myth will fill the resulting vacuum. This vacuum in predominantly Muslim countries has led to the rise of the Wahhabi Madrassas system, “schools” funded by a very narrow minded sect of Islam that teach nothing but victimhood and hatred, using select passages from the Holy Koran to justify and reinforce their teachings. Often, these Madrassas are little more than pre-paramilitary schools, designed to do nothing but create potential martyrs for Islam – and a very narrow slice of Islam, at that. As Mortenson and Relin explain in Three Cups of Tea, these Madrassas don’t teach reading, writing, and arithmetic, nor do they teach geography, chemistry, biology, or physics. They teach the “Lesser Jihad” through rote memorization of the Holy Koran, in Arabic, a language that most of the students never really learn to speak as a language, just becoming able to recite suras from the Holy Koran. (The “Lesser Jihad” is the challenge of bringing Islam to the uninitiated – most often seen as war on non-believers. The “Greater Jihad” is the battle within to become a better Muslim by following the Holy Koran and the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed, PBUH )

The saddest part is that the Wahabbi financiers, generallywealthy Saudi and Gulf State individuals, seemingly practicing ‘zakat’, or the giving of charity - one of the five pillars of Islam,get it better than we generally do. They are pouring their money into building these Madrassas because there is no competition for the young minds and bodies, no other education system to counter them – until Greg Mortenson comes along, at least. The end of movie Charlie Wilson’s War said it all – we had been pouring in almost a billion dollars in military aid to the Afghan Mujihedeen per year, then the Soviets quit and withdrew. The next year, Representative Charlie Wilson tried to get a million dollars appropriated for reconstruction aid, some of which would have gone to schools, and was flatly turned down. We had “won”, doncha know. And in winning the battle, we began to lose what eventually became the war we are now fighting. I have to wonder if we had pursued reconstruction and education efforts in Afghanistan and the border areas of Pakistan through the 1990s, whether Osama bin Ladin would have found such ripe ground here when he was expelled from the Sudan in 1996. Three Cups of Tea should be the basis for how we help Failed States (and Nearly Failed States).

The second inspiration this week was much smaller in scale, but almost as moving. It was watching the performance of a 47 year old unmarried, unemployed woman named Susan Boyle on “Britain’s Got Talent”. Here is a middle-aged woman who has the courage to go out and sing on this potentially cruel program. She is not attractive in the conventional sense that is so important on television. You could see the audience and the judges preparing for a big laugh at this woman’s expense. She announces the song she will sing ("I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Miserables- an inspirational song in itself) and you can see the judges rolling their eyes, girding themselves for what, from all appearances, must be a terrible performance. And then something absolutely magical happens. Something that happens often in movies, but so seldom in real life... the music starts, and she begins to SING! And I mean SING, with every ounce of her being – and it is wonderful, powerful – I mean she NAILS IT! The gasp from the audience is audible. The raw emotional impact literally brought audience members to their feet. Even Simon Cowell, notorious for his biting wit, is completely blown away, his expressions and body language while she sings show that he is moved as well. Check it out for yourself… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY . Thank you George for sending it to me - and thanks to Mark for forwarding it to make sure I saw it.

So there they are, my two inspirations for the week. They are completely different in form and function, but share the common thread of the triumph of the human spirit. I am still shaking my head in wonder at both of them, but I am extremely happy for the experience of them both, for they both touched me profoundly - I am a better person than I was before this week.

The Answer (as opposed to "The Secret")

I figured it out. It came to me while reading a memoir of our nation’s recent Iraqi adventure – a rather depressing read, by the way. This epiphany is so wonderfully simple, yet so awe inspiring in its applicability to every one of the current “issues” our country and we as a people face in the world. I can tell you “The Answer” for what is wrong in the world today. Are you ready for it? Can you handle the truth?

It’s this: Lack of Personal Responsibility and Accountability. It sounds crazy, doesn’t it? I mean, really, we’re all responsible people, right? We have our families, we have our bills, most of us are making the mortgage payment and putting food on the table – we are responsible grownups. But we are not. We have given up so much control of our lives to other people and other things that we don’t take the time to really know what we are doing. And, at a certain point, at some certain dollar value with lots of zeroes, Personal Responsibility and Accountability ceases to be a factor at all anymore.

Let’s start small. I had(!), as probably most of you do, most of my retirement savings in “Safe Long Term Investments” – IRA’s, Mutual Funds, 401K’s. But I really can’t tell you how any one of those financial vehicles differs from the other. My mutual funds send me a prospectus or synopsis or some kind of a report every six months and I can say I’ve actually looked at it – once or twice a decade or so, mostly to see where the "highly paid fund manager" (highly paid is defined as someone who makes more than twice as much as I do) thinks he should invest my and a bunch of “other people’s” money (remember that phrase – it’s key).

Do any of you really understand how these Accounts and Funds work? What exactly does a Fund or Account Manager do every day to earn that high pay? I know I have the picture in my head of an earnest individual (balding, rumpled suit, rolled up sleeves, green eye shade) who is tracking every one of the stocks in their funds every single day, looking at projections, reading profit and loss statements, wetting their finger and holding it up to see which way the financial winds are blowing, or something like that. Perhaps that is what they do, sometimes, but I bet they spend a lot of their time in meetings with other fund managers listening to Branch or Division Chiefs tell them that they are not making enough money for the firm itself. That they are paying out too much in commissions because they are trading stocks too often or paying out too many dividends to us investors, because – and this is part of the secret – it’s not really “our” money anymore – we have given it to “Them” to manage for us, because we cannot do it as well as they can. We have transferred our personal responsibility for our money and investments to “Them” and our money has become “Their Money”. But it’s not really “Their Money” like it was their “Their (Personal) Money”, it’s “Their (Other People’s) Money.” Either that or these places are something like LA Law or Ally McBeal reruns and everyone is chasing everyone else around to have an affair with… but I digress.

Once “They” (pronouns are going to kill me here) have the money, it is “Theirs”, the company’s. And the first rule for companies in business is to make money. So they use Their (Other People’s) Money to make more money, keep some of that and give some back to us, the investor/"other people". This serves two purposes, one, it makes us "other people" feel like we have been responsible with our money for it is increasing in value and it also increases the amount of money that “They” can then use to make more money because most of us just let the money accrue in the accounts. The money they keep for themselves pays those highly paid managers (and even more highly paid Branch and Division Chiefs) their paychecks and bonuses and puts fuel in the Gulfstream jets and all of that.

The problem with Their (Other People’s) Money is that they treat it like what it is – other people’s money. Ever wonder why used rental cars sell for so much less than “regular” used cars – it’s because people have driven them like they are rental cars – they are “other people’s" cars. In my last job I traveled quite a bit and the company would provide a rental car most places. Usually the cheapest thing with four wheels and an engine but it was better than the riding the bus in a strange town. And usually I would find that there was no need for a gas pedal – a simple switch to go from coast to full power was all I really needed most of the time – well, that and maybe a brake pedal. Short of trying not to wreck the car, there was no need to really take care of it, as it was basically an “other people’s" car” – not "my" car. And worse, if I did wreck it, there was insurance that would cover it, so I wouldn’t be out any of “My Money”.

So now the picture is clear – these people were using what once was “Our Money” that we transferred to them to become “Their (Other People’s) Money” like it was a bunch of rental cars. They knew that we wouldn’t pay close attention to what they were doing, and that if they wrecked it, the government would step in and insure them so they would not be out any of Their (Personal) Money.

There it is, the financial crisis in a nutshell, and we let them do it through our ignorance, trusting, and, in no small part, greed. But it’s worse than that. We are doing this with entire countries.

Since this epiphany came to me while reading about Iraq, let’s talk about Iraq. Our former President, aka "The Decider", decides to change the regime in Iraq, and does so. At that point he should have became personally responsible and accountable for what happened next. As every good executive does, he delegated authority to a highly paid manager, Paul Bremer, and sent him over to run the place. Unfortunately, this manager did not feel any sense of personal responsibility and accountability because even though it was his country to run, it was “His (Other People’s) Country” – and he drove it like a rental car, doing things that he would not have done if he felt that he would be personally held responsible for the consequences. So, he fires all of the Baath Party members that were the civil service of Iraq and disbands the Army – putting most of what we would have called the upper middle class out of work, all at once. Chaos follows, but this man has an insurance policy – the US Department of Defense. They will “pay off” and make his stupid decisions seem less stupid over time – to the tune of 4,000 plus US lives (and a bunch of Iraqi lives as well).

How about here in Afghanistan? Same thing. It is “NATO’s (Other People’s) Country” – nobody really gives a flying flip about outcomes beyond their tour of duty, and if they do, they soon become disabused of such silly notions (like when I was young and would actually take a rental car through the car wash before taking it back – I didn’t want to be thought less of for bringing back a dirty car). I’ve already written about the “not my job” and “I’m too short to worry about that” attitudes – “short” being a term used to describe coming up on the end of a tour of duty. The problem is that that attitude starts about the second or third day here for some people. And the Afghans are kind of like us with our mutual funds – they have handed the country over to us – the highly paid country managers – to make it better for them. Now they don’t have to take any personal responsibility either – it’s someone else’s worry. So if the generator runs out of oil because nobody checked it – Inshallah, ask NATO for another one. If half of my unit’s weapons disappear over time, no worries, ask NATO for new ones. We are their insurance policy, just like the Government is for the big banks.

Of course, the problem is, eventually it comes back to be “Our/My Money”, just as my diminished retirement accounts are now “My (much less) Money” and the Bailout/Stimulus (I’ve lost track of what is part of what anymore) is “Our Government’s (much less) Money, Iraq has already become “Our (lots and lots of) Money” and Afghanistan is fast becoming “Our (lots and lots more) Money”.

Colin Powell, it is apocryphally told, espoused the “Pottery Barn Rule” – If You Break It – You Buy It (Pottery Barn, for the record, disavows this as a “rule”). He knew that we were going to break Iraq, and we have bought it many times over since. We have broken Afghanistan (didn’t take much), and are buying it now, after putting it on layaway for a few years. We have broken our financial system, and now are trying to buy it back. But here’s the rub – Paul Bremer took no responsibility for his decisions and has not been held accountable for the consequences; none of the “highly paid managers” – to include Corporate CEO’s – of the American Financial Industry are taking any personal responsibility nor are they being held personally accountable (I don't count Madoff - he's just a crook), and the same applies to the leaders of the American Automobile Industry. Evidently, the buck does not stop with them. It’s passed to us. Harry Truman would be appalled.

Here’s the kicker – my friends with small businesses, restaurants, and such – they are forced to take responsibility and are held personally, financially liable. Why aren’t we holding our corporations and our government to the same standard as they hold us to? I once heard that if you owe the bank a thousand dollars, they own you and get to make the rules, but if you owe the bank a million dollars (probably billion now), you own them and get to make the rules – I guess that’s really true.

The Answer sucks, doesn’t it.

Return to Blogville

It's been almost two months since I last wrote and the muse has finally returned. The first month was spent with my family on leave and closing the door on my military career. The second has been spent getting my feet back on the ground here in Afghanistan.

Leave was simultaneously a huge morale booster, a profound disappointment, and a huge emotional sense of relief.

Spending time with my family was wonderful in every way. Prolonged separation gives one a sense of perspective on what is normally taken for granted. I found that things that annoyed me prior to starting this job no longer did so or did to a much lesser degree. All in all I loved every minute of it - I can only hope that when my boys are older, they will look back on my visits and smile at the good memories. I know that I will.

The profound disappointment came with the end of my military career. After 22 years as a commissioned officer, I requested to be retired from the Army National Guard, effective 30 June 2009. The leadership of the Idaho Guard was no longer willing to make the required accommodations for my work here in Afghanistan. My disappointment was really for how shallow and short-sighted the IDNG has become a an institution since 2005. There is no strategic vision there beyond preserving the status quo. Any advancements made are "on the margin" - or other people's ideas that are basically "low hanging fruit". That lack of energy, lack of a mark on the wall that defines what the Idaho National Guard could be in the future also explains the huge sense of relief I felt when I handed the Adjutant General the signed request to retire. It felt like a thousand pounds had been lifted off of my back. The negative energy at Gowen Field is palpable - the exact opposite of what I wrote about feeling in Washington DC on Inauguration Day. I hope that changes soon, for the sake of the still-decent people that work there.

All in all, I'm glad to be back in Afghanistan, but disappointed in some of the short-sighted decisions that are being made here - hmmm, I'm seeing a trend here... impatience with lack of strategic vision... that's one of the services I provide through my company - Astrolabe LLC. Strategic Vision - redefining where a company can be, based on its strengths and an honest appraisal of where it is at today. Unfortunately, here in Afghanistan as a contractor, I get exactly no vote, whatsoever. All I can do is point out the relative costs and benefits, as I see them, to the military chain of command then abide by whatever decision is made, short sighted or not. C'est la vie, c'est la guerre. KAFka Castle, watch out, I may be moving your way!

Inauguration Day - Washington DC

By pure luck, my leave travels put me in Dulles International Airport, outside of Washington DC on Inauguration Day. I knew that there would be a lot of positive energy in DC today, but I was totally unprepared for just how overwhelming it is.

Like most of America, I'm watching the images from the Capitol Mall on television, but I swear, I can feel the energy here. It's like an overwelming urge to cry for happiness. Even people who didn't vote for him seem to feel the sentiment - some try to poo poo it as ignorant sentiment or marginalize it by calling him "the Messiah", but that tells me that they still feel it.

I've become very sensitive to "energy" in the past few years, as my awareness of what I consider to be the real universe has grown. Negative energy is like a drain - a suction, it drags me down, leaving me weary, both mentally and physically. Positive energy is a euphoric - it just fills me up with joy that just wants to bubble out.

There is something special about someone who can fill the Capitol Mall with people when the temperature with wind chill is hovering around 10 degrees. I don't think it is all people who believe, as some of my more right wing acquaintences have stated, "that Obama will be making their car and house payments for them." He, BTW, is not a generally positive energy person - he exudes negativity and fear, and he's not alone. I think fear has become almost an epidemic since 9.11 - we should be afraid, very afraid of the unknown and trust those who know better and would look out for us, you know them - the government, the banks, the mortgage companies, etc. We saw how well they did. Then here comes a guy who asks us not just to believe in him, but to believe in ourselves as well - and that positive energy starts to seep through.

I wish Obama all the best - the best advice, the best judgement, the best conditions, and the best tools to run this country for the next 4 years. I think he has surprised a lot of people with his cabinet picks and am willing to bet that his administration will not be as ideologically "to the left" as many have feared. But I think that that just shows both his realism and pragmatism - it's more about making change than talking about change. I think that Clinton tried for too much too quick - tried to shift the country from 12 years of a Republican/conservative executive branch policies too soon, losing both respect and influence in the process. I expect some quick changes - reversal of the abortion gag rules, clarification and statement prohibiting torture, possibly even an executive order on "don't ask, don't tell" - all firmly within his perview as President and head of the Executive Branch. I expect quick action/debate on the economic crisis, but it won't be a one sided thing - it will be based on a bipartisan coalition - trying to make the best choices for the short term without sacrificing the long term. But I'm rambling...

Anyway, it is a joyous day here in DC - I wish all of you could be here to share the energy with me - it is intoxicating!

Afghanistan - A Place Where If It Can Go Wrong, It Will! By Design!

It's been a fun week - using "fun" in its most ironic sense.  One of the skills I've developed over more than 20 years of intelligence work and 43 years of life experience is a strong sense of what could happen - which, if I give it some thought and weigh the various probabilities, i can give a pretty fair assessment of what will happen. I'm not talking Nostradamus stuff here, just the basics, maybe a step beyond the "you get a BB gun, you'll shoot your eye out" level in "A Christmas Story."

So, there I was, back in October, brand new to this Forward Operating Base (a grandiose name if there ever was one), walking around when I noticed that the power cables running from the generator to the housing area were just barely buried under the crushed rock that is the ground here. We're not talking gravel, we're talking fist size rocks that have been spread 4 - 6 inches deep over most of the FOB.  These cables were not protected by any type of conduit, or even taped - just insulated cable that had been run from generator to power distribution boxes, then the rocks poured over them.  We drive heavy (20 ton) vehicles over these rocks/cables. Now, I'm not a certified electrician, and I have not stayed in a Holiday Inn Express since leaving the United States, but that struck me as asking for trouble. I brought it up to the "FOB Mayor" - the guy you go to when a toilet clogs or there's no hot water and pointed it out to him. His response was all too typical "That's what the contract called for."  When I clarified that the rocks would tear the insulation, thereby letting water in when the winter/rainy season came, he gave the second response that I really hate to hear: "I'll be gone by then - someone else's problem."  Well, it's rained for the past 3 days/nights - not steady, but sometimes very heavy.  Yesterday morning the wi-fi was down on the FOB - why?  Because water had gotten into the power cables that serviced the room that had the wi-fi hub.  It took all day to get an Afghan electrician out to run new cables to rewire the four rooms that were shorted.  Oh, guess where the new cables run?  Now they are on top of the rocks (it wasn't in the contract to bury them).

The second of my "Cassandra" experiences (for those of you not familiar with Cassandra, she spurned Apollo's advances and he cursed her with being able to fortell the future, but no one would believe her - she slid into insanity shortly afterwards) was in one of our two latrines (bathrooms to you non-military types). I noticed that in one of them, you occasionally did not get hot water, you got nothing but steam.  That is usually not a good thing.  When I looked at the hot water heater, it's temperature gauge showed between 60 and 70 degrees celsius - that's 160 degrees F!  This is the same hot water heater that melted the guts in the toilets.  I continually have brought up this issue, to no avail. There was talk of moving it to the laundry room to replace the non functioning water heater there, but it never made it to the top of the priority list.  Well, it is now. It blew up this afternoon. Literally. Filled the room with scalding steam. Luckily, no one was close enough to it to be more than scared and were able to get outside before the boiling water got too deep.

I relay both of these experiences because they show an attitude of ours that will result in our defeat if left unchecked.  The attitude of "it's someone else's problem" is a poison to the work we are, ostensibly, trying to do here.  That, combined with our complete dependence on the contracting mechanisms to get anything done is positively ludicrous.  I found out that I have "upset" the local handyman because I do things myself to improve my situation (I put linoleum down on my floor, built my own shelves, installed two washing machines and a dryer in the laundry room, etc.) rather than pay him to do it or arrange to have him paid to do it out of official funds (it costs three to four times as much if it's being paid for with "official funds"; go fig.  With the materials, i could have rewired those billets rooms - and I probably would not have charged 2500 dollars to do it - but we are the military - we're supposed to be self-sufficient for that kind of thing, aren't we? I'm reminded of the book"The Sand Pebbles" (and subsequent movie with Steve McQueen and a young Candace Bergen.) A main theme of the movie is "breaking peoples' rice bowls."  Well, if we want change in Afghanistan, we're going to have to break a few rice bowls (pilau bowls?)  We are pussyfooting around, trying to fight a politically correct counterinsurgency. There is no such thing.  The US Forces try not to offend the NATO/Coalition forces and vice versa. Somewhat ironically, no one has a problem disrespecting/offending the Afghan forces, as I've related in previous entries.  The end result is nothing of lasting significance gets done.  I'm wondering if anything of lasting significance is "in the contract" implied by our presence - only time will tell, I fear.  

You want to end the Afghan conflict quickly? Once the troop surge is in place, inform everyone, US and Coalition, that nobody rotates out or goes home on leave until the Taliban are defeated, the people have electricity and access to water, and a functioning government is in place. That way it can't be "someone else's problem" and no one will want to wait around for the contract to be let. Within 6 months this country would be turned around on the right track.

A "KAF"ka-esque Experience

Having once been forced to read Franz Kafka's "The Castle", I find it somewhat humorous that the closest existing monolith to bureaucracy that I have ever found is known commonly by pronouncing its acronym as a word, KAF. It isn't exactly irony - more of a fascinating coincidence, of epic proportions.

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!