16 July 2009
Ghor Province, Afghanistan

On a per capita basis, Afghanistan is becoming more dangerous for British and American troops than Iraq ever was. For those who fought in places like Anbar, Basra, Baghdad, Diyala and Nineveh, that’s saying a whole lot. On a per capita basis, there are strong indications that Afghanistan will prove more deadly than Iraq during 2006-2007. One can only imagine how many days and nights Secretary Robert Gates and his advisors must have agonized over troop levels here. On the one hand, we have a fraction of the troops we need, but on the other, increasing troop levels increases hostility toward us. Secretary Gates has made it clear to me that his biggest concern is that we will lose the goodwill of the people and they will turn against us. This happens to be my own biggest concern. The agony is in knowing we need more medicine and the medicine can be highly toxic here. Many people have complained that the new restrictions on air strikes will hurt us, but from my boots, General McChrystal (the new boss here) has fulfilled the intent of his boss, and that the decision, though tough, was wise; if we lose the widespread assent of the Afghan people, it’s all over but for the bleeding.

Today our chances are not good, but there remains a real chance to succeed. Those chances improve dramatically when we take a no-kidding inventory of the situation and refine our goals to align with reality.

While war ravages neighboring narco-provinces, sluggish progress is being made in others. Here in Ghor Province, the Japanese, Lithuanians, and a host of other nations have teamed up in this remote area of Afghanistan.

Please click the image above for a larger view.

So one morning the Lithuanians loaded up a patrol and headed out West, in the direction of Herat, and took along four Japanese who are involved in the oversight of spending $2 billion of Japanese money in Afghanistan. Both the Japanese and the Lithuanians exude a sense of purpose; everybody seems to wish they were elsewhere but the mission is important.

We started from the Chaghcharan Provincial “Re”construction Team (PRT); the first step in revealing truth with no mercy about Afghanistan is to call things what they are. There is not a single “Reconstruction” team in Afghanistan. The place was never constructed. Just why the faulty name “reconstruction” was picked is unclear, though it would be fair to guess that political expedience is the culprit. Peoples of developed nations might be more likely to “re” build something they are made to believe they destroyed. The governments can call these PRTs, but henceforth this writer will call them Provincial Construction Teams, or PCTs.

So we loaded up the trucks and headed out West from the PCT. Some readers might recall the last dispatch, wherein we accidentally found Lizard Hole (Karbasha) Village up in the mountains while searching for Kuchi nomads. Today we were heading to Sangow Bar Village. The satellite imagery shows no paved roads because the closest, the “ring road,” is about 175 miles away if you are flying, and much farther if you are on a camel or driving. And so it might seem that we are in the middle of nowhere because by most developed standards we are. If visitors from other galaxies land in this largely Stone-Age place, they can expect to be greeted by small-arms fire and RPGs. Though various star-watching peoples are known to have lived here for many thousands of years (including Buddhists, Jews, and invaders of all sorts), there were not a lot of road builders.

Provincial 'Reconstruction' Teams (PRTs) will henceforth be called Provincial Construction Teams or PCTs, on this website. (Please click the image above for a larger view.)

It’s worth a moment of silent reflection to look at the image above and ponder this: though the area appears extremely desolate and remote, there is hardly a fold or wrinkle in the land where you can walk or drive that you will not run across someone. There are areas where few people venture, such as the “Desert of Death” down south, but it seems that as a rule Afghans diffuse into the available volume as if they have a partial pressure. Independence is a key personality trait; if they had a meter of road for every meter of wall they build, the major communities likely all would be connected. Out in the boonies, just when you think you are at the end of the world and nobody could possibly be there, you find a shepherd, or some bearded guy cutting grass with a daas (a long crescent-shaped knife) for his livestock. The people pick over this arid land like ants. Afghan life in the hinterlands is like an eternal camping trip. By their calendar, the year is 1387, but it seems like it could be thousands of years earlier. Young American soldiers who served in Iraq learned about our own country. Often, soldiers would say things like, “Why can’t the Iraqis just get along? They keep themselves down, dragging fights around forever. They fight over stupidness!” Nobody had to fill in the blanks. The reflection was healthy for us.

Along the dusty road to Sangow Bar Village, we passed by shepherds whose livestock shaves the land of nearly every nibble of green.

We rolled into the village of Sangow Bar and were greeted with quiet acceptance. Ghor Province is touted as being poppy-free, and indeed it’s nothing like the rolling hills of Urozgan, the fields of Kandahar, or the mega-producers in Helmand, where I’ve seen miles of poppy growing along the roads and just near bases. This tiny patch, about the size of a walk-in closet, was for personal use.

The sluice gate near the center of the image controls water to the generator downhill.

The village of Sangow Bar was dark. It had no electricity until 2006 when Lithuanians invested about $40,000 to build this micro-hydro generator with the idea of watching the village to see if true improvement was made. Today, Sangow Bar has plenty of electricity and the people have lights and satellite television, yet despite that opportunity, nobody seems to watch Oprah. The old saying, “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it watch Oprah,” is an unfortunate reality in many parts of Afghanistan.

Sangow Bar: Little Red Hen incarnate. (Please click the image above for a larger view.)

Today, Sangow Bar has surplus electricity, so a Japanese asked why the power lines did not cross the river to the dwellings on the other side. The village headman said the people on the other side of the Hari River had refused to help build the micro-hydro, so today they get no juice. The Lithuanians have determined that the project was a success, and the project appeared to be a success to the Japanese and to me.

With this success in mind, the Lithuanians together with Iceland decided to build thirty more hydro-generation stations. Now, if we look at this in context of the broader picture, thirty, three hundred, or even three thousand might seem like an irrelevant number. But it’s not.

During my eight trips to Nepal, and my training with Ghurkas in Borneo who had served in Afghanistan, the Ghurkas have educated me in “Gobar Gas,” and they wonder why Afghans do not use Gobar Gas. Gobar Gas is a simple, cheap, and very ecologically friendly way to collect methane from human and animal waste, and that methane is then used for heating, lighting, and cooking. The system improves sanitation, and the by-products make great fertilizer. And so one Ghurka soldier who had served in Afghanistan insisted that I learn the five virtues of Gobar Gas, and that I be able to name them offhand.

Gobar Gas systems cost only a couple hundred bucks each, and any villager can operate and repair the system. Today I see Gobar Gas all over Nepal, but the older Ghurka soldiers will say that when they were kids, Gobar Gas was practically nonexistent in Nepal. But some far-thinking Westerners came in and installed some systems here and there, and the Nepalese people saw the incredible value, then ran with it. If you go trekking into the villages in Nepal, you might ask villagers to see their Gobar Gas system, and before you know it you’ll have the grand tour because they are quite proud of these excellent little contraptions. And it started with seeds.

And so the Lithuanians and their thirty generators will likely spark more than a few light bulbs. We and our allies cannot construct Afghanistan, but we certainly can nudge this caravan in a better direction.

Americans implored the Japanese to get more serious about Afghanistan, but it was the Lithuanians who actually petitioned the Japanese to come out here to Ghor Province. The match is working well; the Lithuanians provide support, such as security and some investment, but when it comes to capital, the Japanese have the big guns.

Hisako Ishizaki is a First Secretary from the Japanese Embassy. She has worked, studied and traveled around the world, including in Mindanao in the Philippines, where I just left. While Hisako stayed involved in the discussions about the hydro-plant, she wasted no time in sitting down and teaching this child to write a few characters.

The feet tell the story.

Pencil from Japan.

Ambassador in UN Affairs, Shigeyuki Hiroki, is the key man when it comes to the investment of the $2 billion Japan has so far pledged. Mr. Hiroki told me that $1.8 billion is already invested, and that the final $200 million is not the end of the road here for Japan. Ambassador Hiroki told me that Japan would be involved for 10, 20 or 30 years. Mr. Hiroki has been one of the most realistic officials I’ve spoken with from any country, though the Lithuanian Commander of the Provincial Construction Team, Colonel Alvydas Siuparis, also is under no illusions. Nor are Secretary Gates or General Petraeus under any illusions and they speak frankly. It would seem that our greatest asset today is the small but strong and growing nucleus of people who understand the magnitude of the problems, but still believe in the endeavor.

That said, the Japanese time frame is more realistic than I hear coming from most American, British, or other officials.

Hisako prepares to cross the sluice, followed by Counselor Hiroyuki Orikasa and First Secretary Jiro Kanzawa, while the Lithuanians, whose names I am not permitted to publish (photos are permitted), stay vigilant. Luckily, the only danger here seems to be the sluice.

The Japanese who have landed out here have enormous collective global experience. Hisako, for instance, speaks Dari fluently after having lived in Iran. She studied in Costa Rica, the Philippines, and has traveled extensively from Tajikistan to the United States. This is true of the entire Japanese team, including Chihiro Imai who has worked and traveled extensively in the most bizarre corners of Africa and South America, visiting about twenty-five countries. Hisako and Chihiro have both been to India, and both women laughed when I said that I go to war to take a vacation from India.

Unfortunately, the deteriorating security situation is causing the Japanese to dramatically cut their staff in Afghanistan. It would seem that U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates agrees that Japan is cutting back right when we need them most, though he has publicly praised the Japanese commitment and urged them to stay involved. It is important that the Japanese stay heavily involved and not decrease but redouble their efforts.

Window through time: Purples, greens, and reds seemed popular with the girls.

A wrestler is born.

Echoes of Alexander.

No food shortage in Sangow Bar.

A weathered sign for Afghanaid in the background. Water wells are popping up all over the place. The Lithuanians say about sixteen NGOs work in Chaghcharan and have made their own significant contributions.

Little girl who followed the Japanese and Lithuanians.

Unfortunately, these kids had already been taught the benefits of begging and this analogy extends directly to their parents. In Afghanistan, like Iraq, when we invest resources into installing a diesel generator for a neighborhood, the people will complain that we don’t supply the fuel. When the Indians paid for local broadcasting equipment in Chaghcharan, the station manager complained that the Indians didn’t make a new office, and there is often a tone that we need something or “give us or we will misbehave.”

“Trick or Treat” was a common theme in Iraq and is so here, too. Many children in Chaghcharan beg, but unlike the kids in this village of Sangow Bar, kids in Chaghcharan often throw stones at the vehicles if the soldiers refuse to play Santa Claus. Many of the Lithuanian vehicles have spider-webbed windows and windshields.

There was a time when some Iraqis began to revel in the attention, and they seemed to lose context that one day the war would end—for us anyway—and that attention would evaporate. One sees the same in Afghanistan. Prosperous nations are trying to psychoanalyze Afghan behavior, and some Afghans revel in this newfound influence, but what many apparently do not understand is that this storm is apt to end as quickly as it began. For this very reason, many Iraqis are filled with nervous anxiety that the Americans are packing out. Influence at local levels in Iraq had diminished precipitously by 2008, and it’s only a matter of time until local mayors and governors in Iraq have no open line to American upper echelons. Business will be conducted at national level. Gone are the days when the mayors of small cities like Tal Afar could get the attention of Generals and even the President of the United States. The world is big, and there are tens of thousands of “Tal Afars” out there. The curtain opened and now it’s closed in most of Iraq.

Interestingly, Iraqi contractors are following the money and popping up in Afghanistan.

Other Afghans are more circumspect, seeing themselves in larger context, realizing that aid can be a fickle blessing and is not an obligation, and that we all know we owe nothing to Afghanistan. We are not paying off a debt and there are other ways for us to protect our self-interests. Many NATO partners, and other partners with big pockets, are here for larger political considerations that have little to do with Afghanistan per se.

Dr. Yaqubi, Director of Ghor Provincial Hospital, has a clearer perspective of the situation, and in fact returned earlier this year from a conference in India. Dr. Yaqubi said his hospital goes six months out of every year with no running water, and when he does have water, it’s unfiltered and unpurified. The cleaning men fetch water from the Hari River during six months of the year, but in the summer they have a reservoir, and get water from the nearby girls’ school, whose own director is upset that the hospital uses their water. (A bright spot in Chaghcharan is that the locals want girls to go to school, and many children are learning English.) During the wet times, the hospital floods, causing the septic system to overflow.

The hospital has ten General Practitioners, three specialists, an anesthetist nurse, two X-Ray machines—one of which works—and an ultrasound machine. They have no female doctors and the male doctors are not allowed to deliver babies other than by Cesarean. During delivery, women are on their own with the midwives, and the male doctors are not permitted to treat “female problems.”

Dr. Yaqubi said he did eight Cesareans in last three months with no complications, and that during the last 90 surgeries had only two deaths, and that complications usually occur because people wait too long to seek treatment. The average post-op stay is four days.

No NGOs offer assistance at the hospital, according to Dr. Yaqubi. There is room for 85 patients, and the Lithuanians donated two tents, adding twelve more beds, but those tents are used for storage. I sat on one of the beds and tried to imagine being a patient here. There is no exaggeration in saying that Americans probably had better medical care during the time of our Civil War. The dusty hospital with its buzzing flies is a living museum of unplanned misery, and I heard the cries of babies wafting through nearby open windows. Bedraggled women sat with pitiful-looking children, waiting on steps into the hospital. Dr. Yaqubi said that if there were two shipping containers for storage, the tents would offer a dozen more beds.

Dr. Yaqubi wants to show people that health care is not free, but he says that the parliament in Kabul thinks it should free to all. The Afghan government can’t even drill a well for this provincial hospital, and all their machines and supplies were probably donated, yet they want “free” healthcare. The beggars of Kabul who refuse to drill a well for the Ghor Provincial Hospital want free health care for all!

I told Dr. Yaqubi that the same argument is raging in America, and I asked the Lithuanian doctor sitting beside me if this is an issue in Lithuania. She confirmed that it is. Dr. Yaqubi said that if treatment is completely free, the hospital would be overwhelmed. With about 750,000 people in Ghor Province, they’ve got 85 dirty beds here, and two smaller clinics elsewhere. Free health care? How about steady electricity to run the X-ray machine?

During winter, most patients cannot journey to the hospital no matter what the case. If a baby is burned during a cooking accident, there is no chance to make it to the cold hospital. If people become too sick they just die and are buried in the icy ground next to the village. Five years ago, Dr. Yaqubi recounted spending five months in the remote district of his birth, administering aid to the people stranded by the snows. He conducted more than 150 surgeries, including ten Cesareans, saying that was the first time the locals ever saw such a thing. Usually the women just die if there are any complications, and he said nine women died that winter. “The woman thinks she is going to die, so she does,” he said.

According to their calendar, the year is 1387, and New Year’s Day this year was 21 March. During the year 1386, the main hospital raised the equivalent of $8,447 in fees from patients, according to Dr. Yaqubi.

Every village has a Mullah. The less primitive Mullahs realize that modern medicine—more or less—can actually work, while other Mullahs, through ignorance or power-wielding, claim monopoly on healing rights, and forbid or discourage people from seeing doctors.

Let’s grab a napkin and do some coffee table math. According to the CIA World Factbook estimate, the population of Afghanistan, as of July 2009, is 33,609,937. Just how the CIA arrives at such a precise number but can’t find in Iraq the WMD that certainly existed at one time, must leave the math-whizzes rolling on the floor. For the sake of humoring the CIA, let’s round to the more napkin-friendly number of 34 million. The CIA World “Guessbook” opines that about 24% of the people are urbanized. This leaves 76% in the sticks. Sticks and mountains. And deserts. So that’s about 26 million people in the boonies. Afghanistan is geographically slightly smaller than Texas, the people are 99% Muslim, and the place is home to some of the most forbidding mountains in the world. Deep Appalachia has nothing on Afghanistan.

There is no estimate for the average size of Afghan villages in the CIA Guessbook. My big guess from seeing villages in various provinces and many districts is the average community probably consists of less than a hundred people. Former USMC officer Tim Lynch has lived here more than four years, and estimates the average village might have sixty people. For the sake of coffee table math, let’s say the villages in micro-communities are home to some 26 million, and have about 100 people each. That would leave 260,000 villages, plus the 8 million people who live in cities and towns.

Those 260,000 villages are spread out in some of the wildest country you can dream of. Now imagine putting one schoolroom and one teacher in every village to teach all kids through all ages. According to the Guessbook, about 28% of the people are “literate”; that’s about 43% of the men and 13% of the women. The hand that rocks the cradle can’t read, and the fact is that the Guessbook has no idea how many people can read because in all the years of war, most villages are never visited.

And so, it’s not a far stretch to say this is a girl without a future as we know it.

It’s too late for most kids who are already born. Outside the cities and towns, most will never learn to read.

The world behaves cruelly and precipitously. If this girl gets sick during the winter, likely she will be out of luck. The hospital is too far.

The girls in many villages wear the same color lipstick, which they slather on with abandon.

Lithuanian and Japanese officials visit a park under construction in Chaghcharan.

When Shigeyuki Hiroki, Japanese Ambassador in UN Affairs, walks through villages inspecting projects, it’s doubtful that anyone around understands the gravity of his recommendations on how to spend that $2 billion. Unfortunately, due to the increasing violence, the Japanese are thinning their staff in Afghanistan. The Afghans must realize that they are facing competition for Japanese assistance. Other places, such as Cambodia, are not dangerous for Japanese aid workers.

Lithuania and the U.S. teamed up to build a training center in Chaghcharan, which a local authority then tried to take as his residence.

These children likely will learn to read because they live in Chaghcharan. In fact, I think this girl was in a nearby school I visited. The Lithuanians, Croatians, Ukrainians and others have been helping with schools and supplies. Many of the kids in Chaghcharan are learning to speak English.

The Lithuanian-run Provincial Construction Team (PCT) at Chaghcharan.

There are still legacy mines near the airstrip next to the PCT, and just few days ago a mine was found and detonated just a meter off of the main road into the camp. Wounds from legacy mines here are relatively uncommon, though. Dr. Yaqubi said that only about one person per month steps on one.

Despite the remoteness of Ghor, the Lithuanian, Croatian and Ukrainian soldiers seem to take pride and joy in their work. The journey is long, but progress in this little patch of Afghanistan is obvious.

PS: The war is heating up and all signs indicate it will continue to worsen. The Afghan war has become more dangerous, on a per capita basis, than the Iraq war ever was. The unit I will soon be with took five KIA last week and many others wounded. July will almost certainly be the most deadly month so far in the entire Afghan war. The press makes it sound like the British must be shaken, but I know those soldiers. They will be striking back. Needless to say, our people will do the same as needed. Nobody over here is shaking in his or her boots. We don’t have enough troops, or Afghan forces, but our folks are ready for more action and will do what needs to be done.Please support this mission by making a recurring contribution. I need to stay focused on the war, not the funding. Recurring contributions are a great help in planning and budgeting.

Thank you and stay tuned…

Michael

The wake-up alarm sounded at 0345, and by 0430 the Lithuanian soldiers were ready to roll. The Lithuanians had always arrived early, prepared for action before every mission, but this time we relied on an Afghan guide. The first part of the mission was to find the Kuchi. Normally, Lithuanian soldiers perform a reconnaissance before a mission, but they decided to skip the recon to find the Kuchi nomads because, well, they are nomads. Even if the recon were to locate the camel caravan in a specific location, the Kuchis would likely have moved by the time we got there. So we were relying on the local guide who had a cell phone number for the Kuchis. He was 21 minutes late and held up the mission by 27 minutes. One guy holding up about three dozen soldiers and a mission should be flogged.

Lithuanian Soldiers Prepare Humvees under the glow of the Milky Way

The base at Chaghcharan sits at nearly 7,500 feet above sea level, so at night the Milky Way hovers in magnificence above the clean, dry air. But come morning, the stars fade as the sun rises with blinding vengeance.

As we rolled to find the Kuchi nomads and their camels, the six vehicle convoy kicked up “moon dust,” which reflected the bright sun, causing instant blindness as if driving through white clouds. The convoy had to space out, else the vehicles would be driving dangerously close through the arid fog of dust. As we passed villages made of stone, mud, and straw, the white smoke from their cooking fires hung low, just above the villages, lightly blanketing their dwellings, as farmers were already heading to the fields. The Afghans are a hard-working lot. The cruel mountains must have killed off the lazy ones a long time ago.

About 45 minutes into the journey, the guide got a call that the Kuchi nomads had moved, and there was some confusion as to where they were. This treeless terrain might look wide-open, but its vastness is like the sea and extremely difficult to search through. Furthermore, despite the fact that the Kuchis might know their way around here, for generations gone, few locals have use for maps or know how to use them. They couldn’t just give a grid reference to us. They might have known where they were, but not where that was in relation to where we stood. And so we kept going, stopping, and asking many people along the way.

Most of the men we asked were cutting grasses to feed livestock.

Lithuanian soldiers are good with maps, but nobody else was, so there was much confusion as to where the Kuchis might have gone. The grass cutters were of little help. The man closest on the left is a Pashtun from Chaghcharan and is the Kuchi representative. He’d never heard of Michael Jackson though the interpreter (pointing) had, and knew he had died. We turned around and headed off in a different direction.

After two hours of searching, we found the latest of many cutting grass: ‘The Kuchis went that-a-way!’

The Lithuanian soldiers had brought four doctors along to examine the Kuchis and offer simple medicines, and despite that the Kuchis actually wanted to be found, they were nowhere to be seen. In regard to the war, the Kuchis have a reputation for neutrality, and there are said to be about five million in the region. I see them in many places, but they are standoffish and have giant dogs that are called, not surprisingly, Kuchi dogs. Kuchi dogs look like they could rip a door off a Humvee.

The man in the middle is an Afghan doctor who studied medicine in Kabul. In my Humvee were two other doctors. The first was Vitaly, from Ukraine, and he was a laugh because every time we stopped, he wanted his photo taken several times in various poses with different cameras. The second doctor was from Georgia and I called him “Georgia.” The gunner and driver were Lithuanian soldiers whose English was only slightly better than my Lithuanian, so we didn’t talk much.

We moved again: ‘Gotta be some Kuchis around here.’

We came to a steep hill, with the road we wanted down below. The directions we were given to reach the Kuchis would lead us through a known minefield, so the Lithuanian PRT Commander, Colonel Alvydas Siuparis, radioed from base to find a new route.

The hill was so steep that most of us got out and walked down the hill.

I was already part of the way down when the image above was captured. None of the vehicles flipped and we continued the mission to find the Kuchis.

And so we headed higher, because that’s where the grass cutters said the Kuchis had gone. Up, up, up, the road ended and we drove through high meadows, eventually coming to the end of a small stream that disappeared into the soil. The higher we climbed, the higher the grass. And we came into an area with many butterflies, but within just a couple of minutes we were through the butterflies and came straight into an area of thousands of baby frogs, for here the little stream was still flowing and had not yet reached its end. Thousands and thousands of baby frogs were hopping about. And just as quickly as the butterflies ended, the frogs were behind us and we came to a small field with many small birds, and there was a hawk. Just through the other side of the small birds, we came to another field, this one was filled with plants, from one to two feet tall, and each of them looked like a giant golden pipe cleaner. Now the grass was higher and there was a small field with a many plants, each blossoming with white and gold flowers, side by side. Each plant had both white and gold blossoms growing on the same stems. Amid these flowers were many small birds and butterflies at the same time. Then we drove through and the land opened to a village, which we did not expect.

Unfortunately, Google Earth imagery for this area is low resolution. Please click on the above image for a larger view.

There were no power lines or satellite dishes, but there were three turkeys, a cow, a donkey, four horses, a crazy man and several kids running around. The crazy barefooted man ran out to the lead vehicle and stared. The kids neither waved nor ran. They didn’t smile or frown. The place looked fairly stone aged.

There were two Kuchi dogs, but no Kuchis in sight.

The crazy man had a shaved head.

And there was a fairly well marbled cat. The GPS indicated that the village was about 8,800 feet above sea level, which means we were high up in the middle of nowhere, and it seemed curious that a cat this far up would be so healthy looking. Not that I know much about cats, but it seemed noteworthy

About half a dozen men came out. They were unarmed and friendly and wondered why the Americans were here, but in fact it was the Lithuanians. Just about everyone in Afghanistan is seen to be Americans. It doesn’t matter if there is a giant Canadian flag on your forehead: many Afghans have never heard of Canada, nor other places. Down in Chaghcharan everyone knows the difference between Lithuanians and Americans, but not out in the villages. Luckily, the Lithuanians have been giving Americans a good name.

The women did not hide and the men were good with the kids who hovered around but only out of curiosity. The kids never asked for anything, although some smiled at the Lithuanian soldiers when the soldiers smiled. But the kids didn’t seem to have any idea what a wave meant. If you waved, they just looked at you, but if you smiled they smiled back. After a few minutes of talking, the Lithuanian Captain asked the headman if he’d seen any Kuchis around here, and the man said they were about 1.5 hours “that-a-way.” If the last few hours were any indication, this man had no idea where the Kuchis really were.

He said the village had been in this location for fourteen years, and its name was Karbasha Qalat. There are about twenty families in Karbasha Qalat, and by now I had counted six men, seven women, twenty-three kids, two Kuchi dogs, three strong horses and a foal, a healthy-looking donkey, a mangy cow, three turkeys, about seven scrawny chickens, and one fat cat. There were huge piles of dung that was formed into cakes for heating and cooking, but there was far too much dung for the meager inventory of animals (listed above) to have produced versus the consumption of these people. There were some goat and sheep prints on the ground, so likely there were shepherds still in the high pastures.

The Lithuanian commander had to make a decision: push on and maybe not find the Kuchis, find them too late to render medical work, or ask the village headman, whose village has never seen a doctor, if they wanted help.

Meanwhile, I kept talking with the men, who had never heard of Michael Jackson. I asked them if they knew about the war, and they laughed and said there had been no war here in forty years. “Why would I want war?,” they asked. All is good here, they suggested. I asked whether it was “forty years or fourteen years” (they said the village was founded fourteen years ago), and the headman clarified “no war in forty years here, and the village was made fourteen years ago.” When asked if cars ever came here, the headman said he had only seen two cars come up in fourteen years. The cars — had to be 4-wheel drive — had come last year and the people who came in them were looking for information on minefields. (Those mine clearance people, whoever they are, get credit for truly pushing into the boondocks!)

Asking if they knew about the current war, they laughed again, saying there hadn’t been a war there in forty years. “Why do you want war?”

I said, “No, no, the war down south – did you hear about it?”

“Yes, the war in Helmand,” they said.

I said, “The Russians are back.”

The men burst into laughter and said, “Please, welcome back our old friends, the Russians,” and they kept laughing.

They joked constantly about this and that. They said they were Tajik and only the headman could read. They were a very funny lot and enjoyed seeing the screen on the digital camera, but the kids, who almost certainly had never seen a television or anything electronic, didn’t know what to think of it. At first, they didn’t seem to know what a camera was, but apparently the men explained to the kids and some of them held still for photos.

A Lithuanian soldier had walked up into the village with a man, and I saw the man run out with a switch and start smacking some dung cakes, and I thought, What in the world? That’s how I used to catch lizards.

Then the soldier walked down with this lizard, and we all said, 'Wow! Look at that thing!'

The Afghans kept catching the lizards and handing them to Lithuanian soldiers and, as you might imagine, that seemed a bit odd.

There were lizards galore! Hundreds – no, thousands – of lizards living in holes both in and around the village. They were scampering everywhere. It was like a little Galapagos, Afghanistan.

A boy came up to help and, using a sack, pulled lizard eggs out of a hole. I asked why he used the sack. 'Are the eggs poison?'

The boy said “it’s unlawful to touch them,” and so he used the sack to catch lizards and handle eggs. I asked if they eat the lizards, but that, too, is unlawful. “Unlawful” means that Mohammed did not specifically authorize to eat the lizards, so they can’t eat them. Those lizards could have fed an entire village of Costa Ricans.

Lizard hunting on one of the dung piles.

Lizard Boy: This kid seemed to be the best and most enthusiastic lizard hunter.

The lizards were sunning on dung piles and rocks around the village, and one soldier pushed up to a hilltop to pull security, a 30-minute walk, and said he saw thousands up there.

By now, the kids seemed to really like us, because we were interested in the lizards.

Suddenly there was a suitable explanation for the fat cat – lizards!

Sweet Home Lizard Hole, Afghanistan. Please click on the above image for a larger view.

Due to the lack of wood, villagers in countries all over Asia collect dung for heating and cooking. Already by early July, this village had collected and dried large stacks for winter.

Often they cook indoors with little ventilation, but this cooker is at least outside.

One Afghan man told me that if the mud homes are extremely well made, they can last a hundred years. The walls are very thick and far more than bullet proof, and so the homes have much thermal inertia, keeping them somewhat cool in summer and warm during winter. Afghanistan is known for its dramatic temperature swings that can occur in very short time spans.

The people said they live with the animals inside the houses during the wintertime, keeping everyone warm.

Signs of Modernity: Two tractors and a plough.

Boys from Lizard Hole, Afghanistan, greet Lithuanian soldier Marius Varna.

Meanwhile, the commander decided to forgo the Kuchi chasing and asked the village elder if he wanted medical attention for the village, which made everyone happy. The women brought down all the kids, and the four doctors (Afghan, Georgian, Lithuanian and Ukrainian) went to work.

Wife of the village elder. Many people in such countries are very greedy and horde everything they can get, but this woman took what she got and started handing it out to others, while Lt. Marius Varna and I looked on in astonishment.

Children of Lizard Hole, Afghanistan.

Far removed from the war and education.

A villager arrived with probably two hundred goats and sheep. The piles in the background are just a couple of the dung collections where the lizards sun themselves. This village has no winter heating other than that dung. The people could greatly benefit from a cheap Gobar Gas collector.

The villagers separated the animals to their various pens.

The four doctors, from Afghanistan, Georgia, Lithuania, and Ukraine, saw all the villagers. These medical missions also have military value: “MedCaps” (Medical Civil Affairs Patrols) allow soldiers to go into a village or neighborhood and take “inventory” and vital information. Special Forces teams have used these for many years not only to build good will, but to sense the “atmospherics” and derive information. For instance, we left knowing a great deal about the village, including taking down names and photos, and we came away with the knowledge that this is a friendly village. Information also got back to the Japanese, who are investing billions of dollars in Afghanistan, that the village of Lizard Hole has no electricity and they people are friendly. The Japanese took immediate interest. And so, with any luck, maybe our aborted trip to find the Kuchis will bring the Japanese to Lizard Hole.

The symbiotic relationship between the Japanese and the Lithuanians is bringing great benefit to these Afghans. The Lithuanians first reached out to the Japanese as potential donors, and the Japanese opened an office on the PRT and have been very busy out here. The Lithuanians provide security, transport, nice facilities to work, and help of all sorts, while the Japanese bring in money that is in short supply.

And so that was it. We didn’t find the Kuchis, but we found Lizard Hole and then headed home with valuable information. If the Japanese venture up here, the people of Lizard Hole will be very lucky.

PS: The war is heating up and all signs indicate it will continue to worsen.  The Afghan war has become more dangerous, on a per capita basis, than the Iraq war ever was.  The unit I will soon be with took five KIA last week and many others wounded.  July will almost certainly be the most deadly month so far in the entire Afghan war.  The press makes it sound like the British must be shaken, but I know those soldiers.  They will be striking back.  Needless to say, our people will do the same as needed.  Nobody over here is shaking in his or her boots.  We don’t have enough troops, or Afghan forces, but our folks are ready for more action and will do what needs to be done.

Please support this mission by making a recurring contribution. I need to stay focused on the war, not the funding.  Recurring contributions are a great help in planning and budgeting.

Thank you and stay tuned…

Michael