Shust and Insurgents

I was overly optimistic in the last post.  There was no clearing up at all.  Instead, we have been blanketed by the shust for the past four days.  You can't even seen the little hill behind the presidential palace, which is less than a mile from here.  Even the buildings on the compound are hazy, and people are sneezing and coughing left and right.  Meanwhile, the insurgents keep trying, and are increasingly directing attacks against soft civilian targets.  In the worst attack, they killed several dozen at a clinic in Logar, the province just to the south of Kabul.  Last night, they tried to stage a Mumbai-style attack against a hotel in Kabul.  We have nine days to go.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/28/afghanistan-kabul-hotel-attack-taliban

Shust Storm

Yesterday morning was extraordinarily hot, close to 90 Fahrenheit by the time we were eating breakfast, and well over 100 for the day.  But what made the day especially weird was the shust storm that blew in just before sunset.  The air was almost granular in its thickness, and instead of breathing, it was as if you were swallowing it.  As always with the shust storms, buildings any distance away just blur into vague shapes; even trees are indistinct. This morning, just after dawn, it's still hazy, though it looks like it's cleared up some.

Two of Us

We have two weeks to go.  This picture of us sitting at a street-side cafe is not from Afghanistan. 

Wingman

I managed to lean forward once without completely falling out to take a photo of the second Huey, the one that was flying a couple of seconds ahead of us.

Huey Close-Ups

 As I mentioned, Hueys fly low, and I had nothing else to do.  I have no idea what the first thing is, some sort of semi-destroyed kiln maybe.   The second is over a junk yard; I tried to get a shot of what must have been over a thousand rusted-out car shells, but the helicopter kept bouncing.  Finally, a bunch of trucks at a container depot.

More on Walls

 Here was another thing I don't believe I've seen before.  In a handful of the rectangular plots people had set up tents.  I don't know if this was because it was their plot but they weren't able to build the house yet, so the family was living in a tent; or perhaps these were squatters or nomads.  Did I mention Afghanistan was extremely poor?

First You Build a Wall

This was about as high as got, after we cleared the mountains; the land dropped below us and we didn't immediately adjust altitude.  This is something you see nearly everywhere here with Afghan rural residences.  First, you build the wall.  You always see these painstakingly laid out rectangles where the family compound will eventually be.  People build the walls before they even have the building materials or the money for the house.  So you find these empty rectangles lined by mud walls all over the country.  In the case of this village, given the complete absence of any buildings and the fact that there was nothing anywhere near it, I don't think it's a new settlement; I think it's an abandoned one.  The river bed looks completely dried out and filled with stones, too, so agricultural failure may have driven the entire village to re-locate.

More Huey Photos

 Look, when you're on an hour-long helo ride and the roar of the rotors is only drowned out by the wind whipping past your ears, and you're in the middle of nowhere so even if there weren't counter-measures activated, you'd get no cell phone coverage so you couldn't check your emails, but you do have a camera, you might as well take a bunch of pictures.  I don't recall seeing rocks like those in the bottom photo.  Usually the landscape is a variation of gray or brown, though the iron-rich mountains are clearly red, and you can see streaks of green minerals in others.  But I don't know what would make them white like this. 

Views from the Huey

 As I mentioned earlier, Hueys don't fly that high.  I shot these from the helicopter with my mediocre camera, not the one with the high shutter speed.  Probably half the pictures were too blurry to really use.  Also, every time the Huey caught an air current, which happened pretty frequently, it would dip or rise up so that your seat and your butt parted ways, and you were hoping you buckled the belt more or less correctly.  For purposes of photographs, that meant that I jerked the camera and now  have a dozen photos of either my feet or upper part of the helicopter frame.

Jalalabad Houses

 These are probably fairly wealthy families.  The compounds are large, and they're located in an enviable site right next to the most precious commodity in Afghanistan, fresh water.  Also, you don't often see two-story residential buildings, and most of these are built out of more solid materials than the mud/adobe most commonly used.

Views from Over Jalalabad

Nangarhar Palace

 And here's another view of the palace/governor's compound, this by one of the side entrances.  Below is Governor Shirzai, standing in front of his self-portrait in an entirely unscripted and unplanned photo opportunity.

Governor Shirzai

The governor of Nangarhar is Gul Agha Shirzai.  You can read about him in books that talk about the fall of Kandahar when the Taliban fled in late 2001; he was leading one of the forces.  His role was controversial, and that's all I say here about that.  Anyway, his compound is probably the most impressive governor's compound in the country.  It's the site of an old palace of the king.  It has extraordinary gardens, and a reflecting pool just outside his office.  His office, now that you mention it, is enormous, with ornately carved fine wood chairs, plush carpets - and some paintings, including this one.  The scene is in front of the governor's palace.  The people are gathered for a shura, and it is certainly coincidental that all are in positions of supplication and admiration.  Of the two men hugging, the one who is facing you is - surprise! - Governor Shirzai.  I have some impolitic colleagues who have compared him - physically only, mind you, nothing worse - to Jabba the Hut, but that is mainly because the word "Jalalabad" just naturally brings to mind images of Jabba.  It's a phonetic thing only.

The Hueys

Hueys are the small armed helicopters that escort the passenger choppers like the Mi-8s.  They seat two in the cockpit, up to three across in the seat row, and one in each rear gunner's seat.  They have no doors, so it's pretty much all hanging out there.  They also fly fairly low.  The one landing here, on the soccer field next to the governor's compound, was my Huey.  The one in the sky in the second photo is the Mi-8.

Bankside

 Jalalabad has rivers running through and around it.  As I mentioned earlier, I took one of the gunship escort helicopters back to Kabul.  That meant I had a really good view, especially because I got to sit in the gunner's seat.  That view came in part because there are no doors or windows, and one thin nylon belt, thinner than your car seatbelt, is pretty much all you've got holding you in.  Doesn't even have shoulder harness.  But as we flew out of Jalalabad - it's tough to estimate altitude, but it wasn't very high - I got a very good view of the ground sights.  If you squint at the right of the first photo, you'll see a bunch of kids swimming in the river.  We also passed people doing laundry and people doing - well, their business.  That's the great thing about nature - it's one big outdoor bathroom.

The Big City

 Jalalabad is also called J-bad by those of us too lazy or tongue-challenged to say the whole word.  It is a pretty big city, and by Afghan standards, very green and relatively wealthy.  Right across the border from Peshawar, it is a major trade center and revenue generator for the Afghan government.  It's also very flat, since it's in an alluvial plain as the river winds down toward Pakistan and eventually, the Indian Ocean.

Behsud Street Market

 There wasn't much to buy, but the tuk-tuks and the trucks were colorful.  The Afghan police wouldn't let the kids get too close.  We were walking around with the governor of Nangarhar.  At one point one of his aides ran up to him and handed him a thick wad of afghani bills, which he proceeded to hand out to people as he passed.  Apparently, this is a habit of his.

How You Gonna Keep Them Down on the Farm?

 The next time I enter the US, I have to answer "yes" to the question about whether you've been on a farm, because we went to this agricultural demo project just outside Jalalabad city.  The tomatoes in the second photo weren't doing so well, despite what every scent nerve in my nostrils was telling me was copious use of fertilizer. At the street market next to this site, they were selling enormous ripe red tomatoes, plus green squashes bigger than basketballs.  They also sold live chickens, and while I didn't buy any - transport back to Kabul would have been difficult, though the stall merchant offered to show me how to kill it with my bare hands - every scent nerve in my nostrils told me the chickens might have had something to do with the fertilizer supply.  The okra, in the top picture, was doing better; the stalks were four to six feet high, which isn't bad, even if it's several feet of what you can see the marijuana plants reach down south.

A Disappearing Act

Look carefully and spot the difference between Photos 1 and 2.  Have you spotted it? Yes, insurgents successfully take out one of our helicopters with a red-smoke trailing missile.
OK, not really.  That was the smoke flare to help guide the helicopters in.  But we did lose one of the helicopters like this, a Russian Mi-8, to mechanical difficulties.  Not the one I was in, though.  We flew around in circles for 20 minutes waiting for the smaller escort helicopters to go down and pick up the passengers before we were able to proceed to the next district.  It did mean that I got to ride one of the escorts back to Kabul - photos from that later.

Welcoming Party

 As we landed in Shinwar, adoring throngs crowded around the helicopters to welcome us.  Or not.  The kids were mildly interested in the helicopter, but not enough to either throw rocks at us, which has happened to me in Kandahar, or run up for candy, because (1) they now know the soldiers no longer give out candy, or (2) our dental health awareness campaign is making great strides.  Actually, the reason they cut off the candy distribution was because there incidents of kids getting too close to the vehicles and getting run over.
  The closest living being to our landing site were the cows.  They weren't exactly hostile, but the numerous cow patties scattered precisely where we had to walk made pretty clear what they thought of us.

Bien Shura

 This was a fairly brief shura in Mohmand Dara district in Nangarhar, a few miles from the Pakistani border.  The man with the traditional Pashtun hat sitting to the district police chief's left had a lot to say, and it took him a long time to say it.  Also, it was about 95 degrees (36 or so Celcius) and humid - Jalalabad is the malaria region of Afghanistan.

Birthday Celebration

Yesterday was Jody's birthday.  Somehow I suspect that we will do things a bit differently for her birthday in future years.  But this time, we went down to the DFAC for our food, sat at one of the outside tables and had a long evening meal.  Unfortunately, the DFAC was having one of its bad days, and the chicken curry was cold, not very flavorful and riddled with small bone pieces.  But we took a bottle of wine, and the evening was pleasantly warm, if very windy.  After we sat out there a couple of hours and heard two iterations of the call to prayer, we came back in.  We got one duck and cover siren a bit before we went to bed, and then another this morning just before dawn, at around 4:30 or so. This photo, I'm afraid, is not from last night's dinner, but from a morning stroll in France the day we were flying back to Kabul.  It's exactly what we look like during duck and cover sirens, except in this case we're sitting upright instead of crawling underneath the couch.

A Memorable Brand

A few years ago, one of the crazes in the US government's public outreach efforts, especially overseas, was on the importance of "branding."  Just like Coca-Cola, the USG was somehow going to make its policy palatable through clever advertising.  This photo has nothing to do with that.  But I couldn't really think of anything else to say about the name of this toilet paper, and yet it seemed inappropriate to just post the photo with no comment.

You Might Want to Rephrase That

I was at a briefing today when one of the mid-level military officers, a LTC or colonel or something, was explaining what he had done in his military career before his current assignment.  He was of course extremely important - I've never met someone who wasn't extraordinarily important, according to that person's own version - and he played a critical role in determining US actions globally.  So he actually said that his role was to "bring down those governments that aren't in compliance with US foreign policy."  We were flabbergasted.  I never realized other governments were obligated to "comply" with US foreign policy, and I am pretty sure that we come up with much better reasons to overthrow governments than their "non-compliance."  I don't remember much of the rest of the briefing - he really didn't have much to say - but I thought this part was important.

Winding Down

We have 19 days left in country.  Around the post and in my office, already people are beginning to leave and their replacements come in, as the summer transfer season begins.  Over the next 60 days, about 90% of my office will rotate out.  People are giving away plants and unused, probably never to be used, canned food and dried pasta; either drinking up their remaining alcohol or giving it away at last evening parties; and focusing on the next phase of their lives. 

That is not the only thing winding down, if news reports are to be believed.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/06/18/2273381/karzai-confirms-us-taliban-talks.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/world/asia/19afghanistan.html

The fight against the insurgencies shows no sign of drawing nearer to a close.  Certainly the insurgents show no sign of decreased capacity to cause damage; just yesterday they attacked a Kabul police station, with nine or so killed.  But of course, this is not the season of the year for the violence to wind down; that will come in late fall.  For now, the opium has been harvested and it's full-fledged fighting season, and that will continue at least through October.

Chile Volcano

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2000166/Chile-volcano-seen-SPACE-spits-sky.html?ITO=1490

 Besides the photos themselves, which are amazing, this caught my attention because we've been down to the lake and volcano region of southern Chile several times.

More Shust

Phenomenally crappy weather today.  It was foul-smelling dust hanging suspended in the air in thick particles nearly all the day, with a weird wind that didn't blow the stuff away  - it just swirled it around you.  Then, fat rain drops that didn't disperse the shust in the air - they just carried it downward with a plop onto your head or clothes.  Then the rain stopped, and the shust particles remained, so thick that most of the people you passed were coughing and hacking and wheezing.  This is not supposed to be the air of early summer here.

Back Home

The final morning in Nice before we head to the airport and fly back.  We are back now, and it makes you stop and think when "home" means Kabul.  But only for 30 more days, or as they say here, 29 and a wake up.  No photos of the Kabul airport, where we arrived nearly an hour early and sat around the empty terminal waiting for a ride.  After the sixth or seventh time, it starts to lose its charm.  A quick shower and shave, and it's off to work.  But the weekend - Friday - is coming up.

Untitled

Yeah, I don't know what the hell is going on here, and I can't think of what to say that adds to the photo itself.

Acculturalization

 Though we have been in France only a few days, already I feel the subtle tug of some sort of cultural gravitational pull.  I feel at home here.  I can't shake the nagging suspicion that somehow, in perhaps indiscernible and imperceptible ways, the time here is having an effect on my personality.

Poster for Future Use in Panama

This public service poster was on the side of a newspaper kiosk in the Justice Square, where we happened to be having a coffee and a crepe.  I guess southern France is in a malaria zone.  Since we're still taking the daily malaria pills, I guess we're safe for now.  I have to get a book on French slang.  Obviously, the "soyez sec" works literally, in the sense of drying up mosquitoes' places to lay eggs, but there's got to be a fun play on words there that I'm missing.