Afghan Weekend

By far, the most asked question I get is "What do you do for fun?" in Afghanistan. The answer to that question is "not alot". This is usually a surprise to most people and I'm not sure why. I guess people are so used to me finding any and every way to have a good time that it's hard to imagine that I wouldn't be setting the Kandahar night life on fire. Alas, it wasn't meant to be. For those interested I'll detail the typical "weekend" in Kandahar after the jump.

Kissinger on Afghanistan

I made a visit to Dand today and heard the inevitable "Dan is in Dand!" jokes about 47 times. It was an interesting trip. I'll probably write more about it when I get my pictures from the trip later. It's an interesting area which will likely have a microscope on it over the coming months/years. I'm writing this short update to share an article I found to be fascinating.

I can't claim to be a fan of Kissinger but he makes what I find to be a novel suggestion in that we should be engaging Afghanistan provincially. I've always wondered how the decision was made to make a strong central government in Afghanistan considering the lead role that America had at the time and the political party in charge at the time. Anyway, If I haven't passed it already I've rapidly approaching that line between what I'm not supposed to talk about in an online forum..so I'll just show the link with the text after the jump.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/23/AR2010062302193.html?wpisrc=nl_pmopinions

Rough Day

Yesterday was a pretty rough day for me.

One of the hardest parts about being deployed to places like this is having to manage the expectations and desires of the people in your life. In some cases people are understanding about the fact that you are so far away from home, but with instant communication and email its easy for people to lose sight of the fact that you are in a place like Afghanistan and that there may actually be some things going on that transcend your relationship with them. What may be a reasonable expectation of discourse and engagement for a personal relationship can very easily cross the line of unreasonableness when someone is in Afghanistan. This came to a head yesterday with an individual who I was particularly close to and lets just say it didn't end well.

That was fast

Well...that took all of of 5 minutes. The biggest news regarding Afghanistan:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2010/06/22/ST2010062202674.html?sid=ST2010062202674

Obama orders McChrystal back to Washington after remarks about U.S. officials

Knocking the dust off..

In Kandahar City. Yep, that's where I'm at right now, on the cusp of another major engagement of the United States Government in what we used to call the Global War on Terrorism.

It's hard to imagine that it has been six years since I first put some of my thoughts to keyboard on this blog. A lot of things have changed since then, the least of which being myself. I'm now a State Department Official specializing in reconstruction and political stabilization. Although I find myself in the same places as before I'm definitely a long way away from the Infantry and the JSOTF. I've been with the Department for almost three years now. The office I'm in is not much older than that. It was created in response to some of our 'difficulities' in places like Iraq and Afghanistan but given a mandate to change the way in which we approached complex emergencies and crisis environments around the world. Through this office I've worked on Georgia, Kosovo, Pakistan, Haiti, Sudan and now Afghanistan.

It's been fascinating to watch us grow from a shoestring operation to one that is helping guide some of the most critical foreign policy engagements of the day. Actually, interesting is probably the better word. It's been interesting.

As a soldier I took it for granted that we had it all figured out, and that all we had to do was execute our mission for things to work out. The reality is that we didn't then and it's arguable whether or not we do now. As the years have gone by I've had the opportunity to have a front row seat as the US Government has grown and refined its approach to these type of environments. Interesting. Yea. That sounds about right.

Which brings me to today. 8 something years after we invaded Afghanistan we've hinged our entire strategy on making demonstrable progress for the average Afghan in places like Kandahar, a historical base of operations for the Taliban movement. The contrast between this and similar "make or break" operations in places like Fallujah and Mosul is striking. Sure, we talked about building a better life for the average Iraqi and "Winning hearts and minds" but that was more of an euphanism for kicking ass and taking names. I remember sitting in my slit trench less than a mile outside of Fallujah watching as heavy artillery and air assets pounded the city for weeks and weeks before our eventual assault.

In Kandahar today? Not so much. There are no howitzers pounding away in the distance and the number of warplanes bombing buildings inside of the city is way down. We aren't encouraging a mass exodus of civilians and the city itself is still in relatively good shape. Even the Generals are talking about putting governence first and emphasising that this will not be a "military" campaign but rather a concentrated effort to link the government of Afghanistan with its disenfranchised people.

Is this better? I guess we'll find out. At least it'll be interesting to watch.

-----

I'm resuming my contributions to this blog to chronicle my life here in Afghanistan. I'll probably also use this as an opportunity to put down some of my general thoughts of life and my place in it. It's been very fascinating to go back over what was running through my mind before as I approached war for the first time. I can only imagine what it will be in many years as I chronicle my growth as a person and what that means when I approach what is hopefully my last war. As before, I won't comment on ongoing operational engagements until they are well over. I may however highlight news articles or events that I find particuarly relevant.