Brief Notes

I am due to visit Herat in the northwest, the most Persian of Afghanistan's cities, sometime next week, with luck.  Two other trips I thought I might take this week, one to the north and one to Marjah, the site of recent Marine battles, are unlikely, as is the trip to the coolly-named Nimruz province.  Nuristan is also looking dubious for a visit anytime soon, which is sad, since Nuristan, I read, "the province of light," was not long ago called "Kafiristan," the province of unbelievers.  The "light" refers to the forcible conversion to Islam a century or so ago.  Another time, perhaps. 

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina just visited Kabul.  Senator Graham is apparently a colonel in the South Carolina Air Reserve.  And he wears his fatigues when he visits.  Yep, sat right through an hour-plus long meeting in his uniform.  I don't think I've ever seen a member of Congress do that before.  I am also due to visit a Kabul shopping center in the next few days.  Jody knows the rule - only one mall visit per calendar year.  So this will be it until 2011, though I think the Dubai mall should have counted against the quota.

Also, I learn that schedules and meeting agendas referring to "P4" mean Petraeus, the four-star general.  Everything is reduced to an acronym here, at least everything referring to the US military.  If we could actually wage the counter-insurgency as well as we write about waging the counter-insurgency, we would long ago have won.

Disjointed Notes

Here are things that don't go with photos, which means I can post this entry more quickly.  It is Ramadan now - I think it started Tuesday night, but since no one knows until the moon is sighted, and sometimes it's cloudy, it's hard to say.  What is clear is that most of the local employees are NOT around.

On Sunday I went to Bagram for a conference of a dozen or so Afghan governors from the eastern part of the country.  I am told that it is the eighth busiest airport in the world, though I am skeptical.  I took no pictures because it's an airbase, and if you've seen one military base, you've seen most.  Plus I didn't want to get shot.  I will note that the USO recreation lounge there is called the Pat Tillman Memorial Lounge.  It takes three hours to drive from Kabul to Bagram.  It took about five minutes to fly.

What I will eventually get photos of are the kites.  I'd seen several before, but the past couple of days there have been lots.  Today at the airport, standing around on the tarmac waiting for our ride, I saw five kites flying in the neighborhood near the gate.  Two of the kites were dueling, many hundreds of feet in the sky.  They were still swirling and dancing about each other when we drove off.

I have now been at work for 39 of the past 48 hours.  I'm going to bed.  Tomorrow is Friday, our day off.  I have one meeting at 1000, another at 1230, and then a conference from 1700 to 2000.  Days off here suck.  I should do laundry, but Plan B is to keep wearing the same clothes until the people in my office volunteer to do it for me.

Nicer Views

It is not always dusty, especially if you get high enough, and the views from the plane when the air is clear are striking.  These photos don't do it justice, which is due principally to the fact that I'm a crappy photographer.

Dust

It is very dry and dusty here.  See Exhibits A, B, C, and refer to the previous post on the height of the mountains.  You will note that the layer of dusty smog is well over the mountains themselves.  Now you know why I needed the saline drops.

Helmand Terrain

These are some photos from the Beechcraft.  They would have been about midway between Kabul and Helmand.  Throughout the middle of Afghanistan runs a broad and very high and very barren range of mountains, from northeast to southwest, petering out a bit before the desert area that is the west of Afghanistan and the east of Iran.  Basically, this is the Hindu Kush stretching southwestward from the Himalayas and then gradually lowering and disappearing as they run west.  At their height they reach 22,000 feet.  Kabul itself is 6,000 feet, though the mountains around it reach 14-16,000 ft.  The ones pictured here are probably around 10-12,000 ft high.

Ospreys

We took a fixed wing plane from Kabul to Helmand base, called Bastion (on the Royal Marines side) and Leatherneck (US Marines).  It was a Beech 1900, which apparently refers to the year it was built and the wood it is crafted from and/or the chewing gum that holds it together.  The seats didn't even recline, which was probably a good idea since we were wearing 40 pounds or so of body armor.  But to get to the British PRT in Lashkar Gah, you have to either drive in a military convoy or take to the air.  We went in an Osprey.  I had never been in one before.  It's a tilt-rotary plane, which means it takes off like a helicopter, with the blades horizontal, but once it has some altitude, the rotors tilt forward until they are like a propeller airplane's.  It's kind of a roller coastery ride, especially when the rotors are changing their axis.  In the second photo you can see the way you get on - the tail opens up into a ramp.  During flight the ramp comes partly up, but there is always a tailgunner ready there.  When the Osprey starts to descend - and especially as we flew over a city in a region with fairly high insurgent activity - the gunner was at the ready with the 50 caliber, sweeping left and right looking for something he needed to shoot.
Also, as you can infer from the pictures, it's pretty dry down there.  I came back home and made extensive use of the nasal saline and eye drops.  But then again, my sex life is none of your damn business.

British PRT

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Today I flew down to Helmand, one of the "kinetic" provinces. We saw nothing dangerous or violent where we were, though lots of people were moving around on operations. Part of the visit was to the British-led PRT in Lashkar Gar. Several items of interest: amid the unit flags flapping over tents - the Royal Scots, Royal Marines, the "Black Rats," etc, was the skull and crossbones. That was probably the human resources office. We ate lunch at the British canteen (insert obligatory English food jokes here). It was fine, actually.

But then came dessert - "Yorkie," and hence two of the three photos. I don't often take photos of the food, especially when I'm sitting with people I'm supposed to impress as a serious, work-minded individual. But you find yourself in this situation, you make an exception. This is probably the most misogynistic candy bar since Mr. Goodbar had that disturbing Diane Keaton movie made about it. Yes, "Yorkie" is apparently not edible by girls, at least those carrying purses and prancing about hand on hip as depicted.

Epilogue: I brought it home, but we were outside in the 100+ degree desert for several hours, and now it's melted, though still contained within the manly Yorkie wrapper. If I can re-build it, much like the Six Million Dollar Man, I will mail it to one lucky family member.