Photo: Jacobson/AP

Helmand, Afghanistan – The West is losing this war. This has been obvious for more than three years. Less obvious is that in 2009, we are down to the wire. Gen. Stanley McChrystal and others will soon recommend to President Obama the latest treatment for a dying patient.

Meanwhile, allies and Americans are asking themselves why we are here. Some are saying that Al Qaeda is still here or is waiting in the wings to return to its home. Yet Afghanistan was never Al Qaeda’s permanent home to begin with. Al Qaeda was just renting a little space here, just as it was renting space in places like Germany and Florida.

We must face reality: Our reasons for continuing are not the reasons we came for. We are fighting a different war now than the one that began in 2001. Today’s war is about social re-engineering. Given the horrible history of Afghanistan, and the fact that we already are here, the cause is worthy and worthwhile.

The decisions facing us are perilous and immense. On the one hand, we desperately need more troops, while on the other increasing troop levels introduces a host of costs and potential traps.

Yet it seems certain the war will be lost if we do not significantly increase troops. While our enemies grow stronger, years will pass before Afghan forces can replace us. Enemies are gaining ground while we lose the goodwill of the people through disillusionment. In the mostly peaceful Ghor Province, for instance, development is scant and there are no Afghan soldiers.

I just spent more than a month with British combat forces in Helmand. Instead of concentrating on training and operating with Afghan forces, the British are involved in a daily struggle for tiny pieces of real estate.

Last December, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told me in a private discussion while flying back to the U.S. from Afghanistan, Bahrain and Iraq, that his greatest concern is that we will lose the goodwill of the Afghan people. Gates is correct and my confidence in his judgment is high. Gates knows that our stock is still okay here, but clearly it is losing value.

The strongest indicator of progress will come in the form of cooperation from the people. In Iraq, especially in about mid-2007, I witnessed a tidal shift in cooperation from the civilians and largely from that was able to report that the surge was working, long before the statistics would support what might have appeared to be a wild claim.

During 2006 in Afghanistan, I witnessed areas where the population was alienated from Kabul and Western forces. Again, long before the statistics would support what appeared to be wild claims, I published 12 reports saying we were losing here. Analysts cannot feel the pulse through statistics; in this sort of war, statistics lag behind the realities. An observer must be on the ground to sense the pulse.

Pundits who are saying we should pull out of Afghanistan today, to my knowledge, are not here.

Having just spent another month with British forces in Helmand, today I am on my own in the same province. During the last month, our great allies the British lost dozens of soldiers who were killed or wounded. Cooperation from locals is almost nonexistent in many places. Interaction between civilians and British soldiers was nearly zero. The British treat the civilians very well, but being polite and respectful is not enough.

Without significant reinforcements, the British likely will be defeated in Helmand within a couple of years. My respect for British soldiers is immense. I have been in combat with them many times in Iraq and Afghanistan, including during the last couple of weeks and would go into battle with them today. Yet it must be said that the average British soldier has practically no understanding of counterinsurgency.

The enemies here cannot defeat the United States, but they can dissolve the coalition. Some allies are ready to tap out, while others are learning that counterinsurgency is difficult. The Germans, for instance, are losing in their battle space. To avoid watching the coalition melt away, we must show progress before the end of 2010.

Today, the war is still worth fighting, yet the goal to reengineer one of the most backward, violent places on Earth, will require a century before a reasonable person can call Afghanistan “a developing nation.” The war will not take that long – but the effort will.

There are no short-term solutions to fix this place. We are planting acorns. Oak trees grow slowly.

Reader support is greatly valued and crucial to the continuation of this mission. Today I am unembedded in Helmand Province. Please cover my back while I cover the war.

Spraying for bugs on FOB Jackson, Sangin.

03 August 2009
Sangin, Afghanistan

The bugs are not bad in this part of Afghanistan. The scorched terrain is biologically boring. Mice and ferret-like creatures dash around in the evenings when sparrows and doves and a few other sorts of birds flutter through the cool air. But even at sunrise, I cannot make out the songs or see in flight more than ten types of birds, one of which is the rooster. There are no wading birds, not here anyway: no kingfishers, no cormorants or ducks. The dominant hue of land and bird is desert brown. Maybe a bird or two with black feathers, but never one with sharp, primary colors: not even a red wing tip or a white tuft. There are no ornamental birds with glorious plumage or fancy dance, only drab designs, though the lucky ones have short golden legs. There is not a single inspiring song among them.

In the dark of night the bats discreetly flutter about, and in most places even the flies and mosquitoes are not too bothersome in July and August. I’ve not seen a moth bounce off a light, and in fact the few brightly lit bare bulbs draw no crowds. In the river at night, where I sometimes swim in the dark, a flashlight will draw hundreds of small fish, and on shore there are a few toads, or at least toad-looking creatures. Seldom does one hear frogs or insects calling out from the grasses or trees. I’ve seen no butterflies coming to drink during the day, and down here, in fact, in Sangin, I have yet to see a butterfly. At night there are the jackals, more often heard than seen, yelping and yapping off in the blackness. Sometimes a housecat can be seen slinking about, neither tame nor feral, but something in between…like the people.

By comparison to Florida, mosquitoes in Sangin during this time are practically nonexistent. Some Afghans will say this is the worst part of Afghanistan, practically lifeless, and inhabited mostly by brutish, uneducated people whose lives are made somewhat relevant only by their violence and drug dealing. In fact, it seems that many Afghans care less for the people of Helmand than do the foreigners who come here.

Word came that a British unit from 2 Rifles was in contact with the enemy, and that nine soldiers had been wounded. Two low-flying A-10s had roared over the base—a sure indicator that soldiers were in trouble. The snarling aircraft are meant to cause the enemy to think twice before continuing, which buys our folks a little time to defend or counterattack. Shortly after they swooped in, the A-10s fired their cannons. During a different firefight last week, one that I could hear from base but was not involved in, an American A-10 swooped in and was cleared hot. The fire support team soldiers explained to me that the A-10 pilot was lined up and preparing to squeeze the trigger when he saw a child emerge from the enemy position and so the pilot flew by with cold barrels.

It was just in this location a few weeks earlier—a little to the right in the photo above—that the Mi-26 helicopter was shot down about 500 meters from the location of the camera. Many soldiers from FOB Jackson responded to the crash and there they found the burning bodies and the two killed Afghan children. “Mr. Flemming,” an Afghan interpreter here, said he thought the helicopter was going to crash on him but got lucky. Mr. Flemming and the British soldiers said the crash looked like slow motion from a movie, and that the pilot had struggled. One soldier, a direct witness, told me the crash had occurred about five seconds after being hit, but Mr. Flemming and other British soldiers who also had witnessed the strike, said the pilot had struggled for about ten seconds and that finally the helicopter flipped tail over cockpit and crashed on its nose then onto its back, where it exploded in flames. Still, the tail rotor which had fallen free had sliced into a house unburned. Each account varied but all agree that it was an RPG strike, and that the charred wreckage, that which was not consumed by flames or carried away by scavengers, is still there.

The enemy has the ground advantage, but Apaches, A-10s and other aircraft are crucial platforms, without which we would be far too outnumbered by man and terrain (mostly terrain) to be effective. UAVs are incredible tools and we need all we can get. We won’t complain about the IEDs, and the Taliban should not complain about the Apaches, A-10s and Predators.

I was up on a watch post with a soldier from Ghana while we waited for soldiers who have been fighting to return to base. The war is serious here; earlier in the day, another soldier from 2 Rifles had been killed upriver at Kajaki. Though morale in the U.K. seems to be slipping, I see no evidence of low morale among the soldiers, though there are increasing grumbles that they don’t get mail from loved ones due to helicopter shortages. Helicopters are one of our great advantages against myriad disadvantages, yet our combat forces are shortchanged by penny-wise, pound-foolish governments. The helicopter shortages are adversely affecting our op tempo.

While the soldier and I talked on the roof, waiting for the wounded to return, something detonated. He said that none of our guys were in that area, but he radioed information about the explosion and wondered if the ANA or ANP had been hit. Turns out, it was just another of a countless string of seemingly random explosions for which we never know the cause. Maybe it was some goofball Taliban accidentally blowing himself up, or maybe a dog hit a tripwire, or maybe a cow stepped on a pressure plate. A British soldier told me yesterday that they had been in a fight a few days back, and apparently some Taliban made a mistake because something exploded – it wasn’t from us – and the soldiers saw a leg or two flying through the air. There have only been four suicide bombers in Sangin, according to the soldiers, but the fad is growing.

A couple minutes after the explosion in the photo above, an Apache flew over to take a look but like so many times, it’s just a mushroom with no known cause. A few days ago, in this area, another RPG was fired at a British helicopter and missed. The area within these photos contains more IEDs than perhaps anywhere else in Afghanistan. The British managed to locate one of the worst places in the country and proceeded to build bases all around.

The cloud drifts away and we forget about it.

Curious Afghans came to the roof. Some people – including Afghans – say that Afghans hate the British, but I don’t see that here. Seems like the people here don’t like anyone in particular, including the British, Americans, and the Afghans from other parts of Afghanistan, and the Pakistanis, and the Iranians. But that’s only in some places. In other parts of Afghanistan, we are warmly welcomed. Other Afghans see this as an extension of previous British wars, apparently having missed the point that we were minding our own business on 9/11. Many of us seem to share with the Afghans an equal empathy: we care for their plight as much as they care about the attacks in the United Kingdom, United States, Indonesia, the Philippines…keep listing. Most combat soldiers are pragmatic. Nobody should carry the burden of illusion about why we are here. Despite that the Afghans can be a very likable lot, this is not a mercy mission. We owe nothing to the Afghans, especially not to those who continue to harbor murderers.

The Operational Military Liaison Team (OMLT) going on tonight’s mission: Major Guy Stone; Lance Sergeant (a Guards’ Corporal) Paul Ratcliffe; Lance Corporal Jason Crabb (back); and Lance Bombardier Grant on the machine gun on the WMIK Land Rover.

Sangin is an active battlefield. To describe missions with other than vague details would present danger to these soldiers and to the next rotation. This is not like the sweep from Kuwait into Iraq, wherein the previous week’s missions were tantamount to ancient history. Here in Sangin it’s a daily brawl over the same terrain and sentiments, morning and night.

The next Afghan elections are scheduled for 20 August 2009, so the Commander’s intent for the mission on 28-29 July:

“Disrupt insurgent activity across Sangin in order to create sufficient security for elections.”

This OMLT consists mostly of short soldiers in 3 Company from the Welsh Guards. They are short because the tall soldiers are sent to the Prince of Wales Company, while the short ones, called “Little Iron Men,” are sent to 3 Company. Tonight, the Little Iron Men would accompany the ANA.

Coalition nations have largely wasted nearly eight years in developing the Afghan Security Forces, and so today we are left outnumbered as much by terrain as by foe. American special operations forces, for instance, spent more than a half-decade on the greatest manhunt in recent memory. Today we have little to show for the Great Manhunt other than bumper crops of opium and an increasingly powerful array of enemies. The press had focused on Iraq while handing out hugs and lollipops on Afghanistan, leaving governments free to operate with practically zero critical outside auditing. Surely it was the war of their dreams. They fumbled it. When I reported with twelve dispatches during 2006 that we were losing the Afghanistan war, the United States government denied my return to Iraq. Today, in mid-2009, there are no Afghan Army forces in Ghor Province to the north of Helmand. Here in the 4-km2 Sangin district of Helmand, 100 ANP are authorized but only about 36 are available. This, after nearly eight years, is typical across the country.

Instead of peace, tonight’s intelligence-driven mission was to unfold in an area of Sangin that the British call Wishtan, a most brutal corner of today’s war. Wishtan is particularly perilous because of the people and their dwellings and the maze of passages and alleys and doglegs and canalizations between the compounds. Routes are predictable and bombs are easy to hide in the walls or in the ground, and the channels created by the walls contain the men and the blasts. During firefights there is little room to maneuver. Wishtan is a big series of fatal funnels, or in the words of British Army Captain Alexander Spry, “Wishtan is like something from a Freddy Krueger movie.” Captain Spry believes that Wishtan is almost certainly the most dangerous place in Afghanistan.

The OMLT was to link up with Afghan soldiers under the command of Colonel Wadood, a Tajik from Kapisa Province, whose goals are simply stated. Colonel Wadood told me all the problems will be solved by killing the Taliban and going home.

Captain Andy White came from the Australian Army into the British Army to fight in Afghanistan.

Jason Crabb will drive the second WMIK Land Rover: the vehicles are mostly unarmored and so avoiding bombs is especially important, though of course we are canalized by the roads and so avoiding bombs is a function of securing the roads, which can only be done in a limited fashion for short distances. Our movement is severely restricted by countless bombs.

Departure is scheduled for1900 hours. Coincidentally, just before we depart, there is a ceremony for a 2 Rifles soldier just killed up at Kajaki, and so the soldiers stood at attention and then we loaded up.

We drove down the bumpy road to Patrol Base Tangiers, which was only about a seven-minute journey through a market where an ANA soldier had been shot in the arm last week, and there were plenty of other dramas of note. We passed by the spot near the gate where a suicide bomber had blown himself up in March, leaving behind only his legs and some scattered parts that were collected and dutifully photographed.

Along the way I could not see out of the WMIK, and so just closed my eyes and hoped that if we hit a bomb it would be big and fast. The final dispatch would not be written by me. BAP!, we hit a bump and my helmet cracked into the turret overhead. A few seconds later, as my heart rate began to approach normality again, we came into FOB Tangiers, where we would wait. Our part of the mission was “relatively” safe: if the British soldiers and ANA conducting raids were to be blown up or got into a serious fight, we would come for the casualties. That would be the dangerous part. Despite the extreme danger, the OMLT soldiers and the ANA exuded confidence and were ready to go within a couple of minutes. The British soldiers praise the courage of their Afghan Army counterparts, and the respect is mutual.

Patrol Base Tangiers, in Sangin.

ANA collect for evening prayers as the cries come from distant loudspeakers and another hot day melts into night.

Patrol Base Tangiers is situated in ramshackle accommodations in a bombed-out compound. ANA use a British 'Mozzie net' as a window.

Major Guy Stone, the OMLT Commander here, disappears into the rubble and emerges with a filthy mattress unfit for a goat, and says to me, you are the guest and this is yours for the night. Major Stone drags the stained mattress through the dust and drops it against the barrier, which radiates heat like an oven that has just been switched off. The British soldiers never seem to complain about discomfort or filth. In fact, Major Stone was serious that as a guest, I was getting special treatment; the OMLT soldiers were going to sleep in the hot dirt on their sleeping pads, and so it would have been embarrassing for me to accept the disgusting mattress. Instead, I asked the ANA Commander, Colonel Wadood, to let me sleep on the tiny patch of grass planted by the ANA. An Afghan soldier took the mattress for his bed.

Darkness has settled, but while I make a satellite phone call, the camera gathers light from the kitchen where Afghans prepare our dinner. Wake-up is scheduled for 0300, though the actual raids should begin at about 0400.

The grass where we enjoy Afghan dinner with Afghan soldiers. Some of us will rest here under the stars while awaiting the mission.

Just before dinner, Colonel Wadood, Commander of 2nd Kandak, 3rd Brigade, 205 Hero Corps, consults a map with Sergeant Satar and Captain Nadari.

Dinner was served to a half dozen Afghan soldiers, five British and the interpreter, Mr. Flemming, who sat to my right while Colonel Wadood was to my left. Major Guy Stone wisely retired for some sleep so that if we had serious combat in the morning, he would be better prepared for quick decisions.

The conversation with Colonel Wadood and the Afghan soldiers ranged over the war in space and time. As with our dinner the night before, Colonel Wadood clarified that his view of success is two-dimensional: kill the Taliban and the war is over. Of course, the Taliban is one of many enemies here. This was my second dinner with Wadood wherein he seemed uninterested in development and related all problems to the Taliban and drug lords. ‘Kill them. There will be peace.’

Colonel Wadood’s 2IC, Maj Zelgai, who recently spent nearly two weeks in the United Kingdom, stayed the night at the home of Major Guy Stone, telling Major Stone’s wife not to worry, as he would take care of her husband. And one might suspect that Colonel Wadood and the ANA mean just that; no British soldier I have spoken with questions the courage and ferocity of Wadood or his men. American soldiers will further confirm that Afghan soldiers are ready to fight. There are exceptions – bad units wherein the Afghans often prefer to smoke dope than to fight – and there are other impressively negative narratives. But again, many of the units, such as Wadood’s, earn praise.

The dinner conversation meandered from one interesting vignette to another, with British soldiers explaining, for instance, how they were “mugged” by mobs of Afghan boys. The boys appear from the market and rush in, stealing anything they can grab, including one soldier’s wallet (why did he carry a wallet?), and a hand grenade pin from a live grenade. Luckily, the soldiers keep the grenade spoons secured, or the soldier would have been killed along with the kids. The soldiers and Mr. Flemming, the interpreter, talked about the Mi-26 that had been shot down and the burning bodies and the heat and how they thought one of the children who had burned to death was not a girl, but a boy as first assumed.

Over dinner, at 2015 hours, there was a distant explosion, sounding like an RPG, which nobody bothered remarking about, because it would be like bringing up something as common as a mosquito or a fly. I said that President Karzai’s brother has a restaurant in America, and the ANA soldiers laughed, saying that President Karzai himself had been a restaurant owner, until we made him President, and they joked not to bring any more restaurant owners to become Presidents. Still, they agreed that Karzai is a good President. Two of the soldiers are from Jalalabad and one had been a Mujahadeen fighter, while Colonel Wadood had fought on the Russian side, and so they laughed that they had been enemies, yet now they fight the Taliban.

At 2115 we heard what sounded like a jet, but I was unsure, and then BOOM!, a large explosion. At 2125, there came word via radio: five Taliban had been killed by a Hellfire launched from a Reaper prowling invisibly in the dark skies. About five minutes later, the Apaches were overhead and then came four thumping bursts from the 30mm turrets. No flame or tracer could be seen, just darkness and thumping and the sounds of the Apaches, also prowling invisibly in the ink above. Four minutes later a pen flare arced just outside our perimeter, and at 2140, there were two very loud explosions approximately one second apart. We were told later that the second explosion was from an enemy bomb that detonated after our bomb had hit it and killed some men. I say in English, “Someone is not happy tonight,” and Colonel Wadood and the Afghan Sergeant Major, who speaks English, both burst into laughter, “Yes, yes…someone not happy tonight.” Seconds later, there were two more bursts from the Apache 30mm. We are later told that the Apaches were chasing squirters. Our radioman called back to the JOC (Joint Operations Center), and they said, “the aircraft are attacking people who are laying IEDs.”

Word comes a little later that the Taliban are saying we bombed people who were eating watermelon in a field. The Afghans responded by telling us this was a lie, because they know how careful the British and Americans are with their fires, and they also knew that Afghans do not sit in fields around here this late at night eating watermelon.

I’ve witnessed too many missions (several in the last week) wherein British or Americans refused to fire because they could not positively spot a weapon, despite it being flagrantly obvious that we were tracking actual enemies. It’s very frustrating for me at times because I want to say to an American or British commander…Take the shot! This is too obvious! But that is not the place of a writer. The strategic wisdom behind the Rules of Engagement can be difficult to contest, though tactically, those same ROE can be fantastically frustrating. Tactically, the restrictive ROE endanger our troops every day, but strategically there is no doubt that strong ROE save the lives of even more.

I needed to place another satellite phone call to a friend regarding replacement of some camera gear that was stolen in Kabul. While we were talking at 2151 hrs, the Apaches began firing again. The attack sounded like nine or so distinct bursts of 30mm, though I was unsure.

There was time for possibly four hours of sleep before heading into hell, just a few minutes away. Sleep would not come, so I watched the big screen of the Milky Way for a couple of hours as it drifted from left to right across the sky. During this interim, I saw nearly twenty meteors slit the vast black screen, like a white-hot torch, sometimes leaving a trace. And I wondered how many people might die in the coming few hours.

As the earth continued to revolve around our tiny star and lie seemingly insignificant within the billions of lights overhead, a rooster crowed at 0215 as a couple of gunshots rang in the distance. Finally, there came sleep. And as if time had slipped by unnoticed, Major Stone woke me at 0400 and I packed immediately, in case there were combat.

As indigo seeped from east to west, with gradient hues of lighter blue, closely followed by yellow, the British soldiers were all ready to go, as were the ANA. We waited as the sun rose over the horizon, and with it the temperature.

Staff Sergeant Ben Worthington waits for a call. If our people get hit, we will be there in minutes.

Time elapsed and nothing happened. The raids turned up very little, and so I walked inside the building to talk with Colonel Wadood and eat breakfast with the ANA.

Boots at Patrol Base Tangiers in Sangin.

Mr. Flemming the interpreter came with me to breakfast with the ANA, as the British soldiers stayed by the vehicles outside, ready to crank and roll. Over a breakfast on the floor of bread, yogurt, jam and tea, the ANA intelligence officer said that he feels the morale of the Taliban in Sangin is slipping. They lost another seven nearby last night, and another five upriver at Kajaki, making twelve enemy killed in a single night and we did not get a scratch. We talked about the world and a little about America, and I asked if they knew that Michael Jackson had died. Four Afghan soldiers said yes, they knew, they saw it on television, and one said “we are sorry to hear this.” Colonel Wadood said somberly that Michael Jackson was “a good artist” and another ANA soldier said “I never know if he was male or female” and everyone laughed. I asked if they liked to watch wrestling, and yes, they love wrestling “competitions,” which they said are televised every night from Kabul.

I asked Colonel Wadood what he thinks about a British idea to negotiate with the Taliban and he said it was a good idea so long as everything is open and nothing is hidden, and he said, “War has exhausted the people of Afghanistan.” (They don’t seem exhausted to me.) And then he launched into something about President Obama, saying the whole world has positive views of Obama and “almost all people of entire world have bad memories of Bush and family.” Later I said to a British officer, just wait until I report the words about Bush and Obama, and watch the daggers come out, and the British officer said something like, “Yes, but you are free not to report it and they will be angry that you did.” As Colonel Wadood spoke of the Taliban and Obama and Bush, a curious coincidence flowed into the dusty room from the shortwave, as Secretary Clinton’s voice could be heard in a sound bite, and she was talking about talking with the Taliban.

I asked Colonel Wadood if the people of Afghanistan understand Democracy and he said yes, but not the people of Helmand, who “understand only Swordocracy,” and everyone laughed. And then spontaneously, Colonel Wadood said, “We have the best Democracy with Islam. Our religion is one of brotherhood and oneness. Our religion is about equality, no status.” He said these things, and more. Colonel Wadood continued, pausing long enough for me to write, “Women have the right to education, to have a job, to be a candidate in elections.” Colonel Wadood paused, and continued, “If we applied these things it is the perfect democracy and perfect religion. Killing people is forbidden. Drug trafficking is forbidden. Cruelty and brutality is forbidden. Attacks that Taliban execute are all against Islam and Sharia. The best Muslim never harms anyone with his eyes, his tongue or with his hands. He should only be useful not harmful. We cannot kill infidels without reason. But if they invade our honor, our religion, our land or our pride, we can kill them. Same condition applies to Muslim too. If he does these things we can kill him.”

After breakfast: Sergeant Mohammed and Captain Nadari stay in the conversation.

Colonel Wadood said that “Muslims in their deed, character and ethics should make the best example, and this does not just apply to Muslims but all humanity.” He said, “people should have fair and good relations with people around the world.”

I asked the Colonel about the Sangin economy, and he answered that first they need a paved road, with actual tarmac, and the road should link to Kajaki, then Musa Qa’lah. But then comes the crux, the crux according to Colonel Wadood: “We cannot build the roads until we destroy the drug lords and drug factories.” The drug lords depend on ignorance and so they do not let girls and boys go to school, and the Taliban, at least in the beginning, were their enforcers. (In fact, on 30 July I went on a mission with Gurkhas in the British Army, and we walked to a school that the Taliban had blown up and which the British were constructing.)

“They need ignorance,” said Colonel Wadood, in reference to both drug lords and the Taliban. “The government failed to provide opportunity, so the drug lords provided their ‘opportunity,’ but they needed security. So they hired the old Taliban to fight while the drug lords carried on with their business. Pakistan noted that this was in their vested interest, so they started to support the Taliban.” Colonel Wadood called this “The second rising of the Taliban,” and I’ll just call it the Resurrection.

We watched the Resurrection blossom with each passing season and, essentially, insofar as tangible outcome is concerned, did nothing at best. At worst, we aided the drug dealers by doing little or nothing while building infrastructure that aided them. I made photos in Urozgan Province in 2006, of road construction paid for by us, and those roads were going straight through fields of poppy. In 2006, poppy was growing within a slingshot range of the Provincial “Reconstruction” Team in Lashkar Gah, and in 2009 it grows abundantly around Sangin. This year’s opium harvest is already on the way to market and the corn that replaced much of the poppy is not yet tall enough to hide in.

I asked Colonel Wadood how many big drug dealers there are currently in Sangin. He said there are 10 or 12, and added that “A month ago, Taliban commanders south of Sangin nearly ran out of ammunition, and so the drug dealer [whose name Wadood gave me but the British asked that I not print] donated almost 5 million Pakistani Rupees to three Taliban commanders to purchase more weapons and supplies. Those Taliban commanders are [M1], [M2], and [M3].”

I asked how long we should stay. Colonel Wadood answered that we should stay until Pakistan interference is cut off, but in the current atmosphere we need to help with engineers, reconstruction and mineral extraction. “After 30 years, we are backwards.” (Before, over two dinners, Wadood talked only of killing Taliban, but over breakfast he talked about development.) “We are hopeful that Pakistan influence will soon be cut because we don’t want to lose Afghans or Coalition because everyone has family.” I asked what the Afghans think of India and Wadood answered by saying the relationship is good, and so I asked about Iran and he said they are the same as Pakistan but Pakistan is the first priority. I asked how long the war will last and Colonel Wadood said he did not know, but that he has been fighting for 30 years and hasn’t been absent a single day.

I cannot operate in the war without your support. If support does not substantially increase, I will be forced to abandon war reporting in September. There has seldom been much interest in the Afghanistan war. True interest has been starkly reflected in the support for this mission. Each journey into Afghanistan, since 2006, has bled out resources from my operations. Reporting from Afghanistan is not sustainable at this rate.

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22 July 2009
Filed from Sangin, Afghanistan

(This dispatch is from Ghor Province, though I am now with British forces down south.)

Lithuanian soldier on Swedish C-130 from Kabul to Kandahar and finally to Chaghcharan. On his left are Filipino workers. Filipinos are like birds; the only place that an American has stepped that a Filipino hasn’t is the moon. Yesterday was a special anniversary for space travel: man first landed on the moon. I watched the launch from our family boat when I was five years-old. Apollo 11 was bright, and loud. Many people think that the Russians also walked on the moon, but this is untrue.

The Swedish C-130 landed at Chaghcharan “airport.” Landmines still wait in ambush in the fields around the airstrip, and in fact a legacy mine (previous war) was found just about three feet off the road—just a minute from the base—while I was there. The mine has been next to the base for about five years and apparently nobody stepped on it. When soldiers say to you, “Sir, please don’t step off the road,” they mean “DON’T STEP OFF THE ROAD!” The director of the local hospital told me that mines strike about one person per month in this area.

Two Ukrainian officers were teaching Word and Excel downtown. One student, the one standing in the back with the blue vest, talked with me for about thirty minutes. He asked about the foods we eat in America. “Do you eat the pig?” “Do you eat the cow?” “The chicken?” Finally, he asked if I hate Muslims. I looked at him like he was crazy and he laughed with embarrassment and apologized for the question. I told him honestly that I like most Afghans.

There is something about Afghans that resonates with Americans. They value independence and personal strength, and honor is a part of their society. There is a substantial reservoir of expats—many are Brits or Americans who have lived here for years on end. Not on bases, but downtown in many parts of Afghanistan. Despite my personal negativity that we are losing the war, one doesn’t have to look far for sparkles of hope. Losing doesn’t mean lost. Difficult does not mean impossible.

When I visited Jerusalem earlier this year, the irony was too heavy to lift. Three major religions collide head-on in the Holy Land. Jerusalem is not the only Thunderdome; there are others. For instance, India has a place called Ayodha, which is sacred to the Hindus, and holy to the Muslims, too, and so the Indian Hindus and Muslims have murdered each other in large numbers for tiny speck of common holy land.

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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