Second Leave

I arrived in Finland at around midnight last night. It means that I won't be posting to this blog for a short while. The flight was late, which is the case more often than not. It was certainly no pleasure to sit in the very uncomfortable plane seat again for eleven hours, including two stopovers. Turkey is the only place where we get to disembark, but we might as well not, because it's a very depressing place. There is one toilet in the whole terminal, and it stinks. There are 'no smoking' -signs, but an ashtray just below them. The prices in the shop are ridiculous, except for alcohol, which we are not allowed to drink. Anyway, there we spend an hour or so, doing nothing, while the plane refuels and the crew is changed. This time was the first that we landed there during daylight, so we go to see the Black Sea, and those with a window seat, also the Hagia Sophia, which should of course not be confused with the real thing in Istanbul.


There was also a fire. Someone said there's always something on fire in Turkey.


Our plane. To the left some pilgrims are boarding their flight to Mecca, and to the right is the horizon of the Black Sea.

It feels really good to be home. The constant drizzle of rain doesn't bother me at all - it only means that there's no dust in the air. The darkness is almost as complete as in Aybak, and although it lasts a bit longer, there are more electric lights and less noise here.

Liar, Liar

Afghans lie. They don't think that they are lying themselves, of course. They exaggerate. They turn, twist and bend matters, cover up, hide and steal facts and details until there's not much left to analyse. They plot, confuse and mislead. They do this so frequently that one gets used to it. They do it every day, all of the time. In fact, I think that should I spend a few years here, I would propably not even notice the absence of truth and any trace of reliability anymore. But the funny thing is that Afghans don't resent lying. It's quite easy to get them to agree to the facts - and even details - when they have no other way to turn. I suppose it has something to do with losing face and not losing face and not losing face to Afghans and losing face to foreigners. Or Uzbeks, Tadjiks, Pastus, Hazaras, Turkmens or whatever. When you finally have them pinned down, after two hours of useless negotiating, and they agree to what you were saying from the start, they actually seem relieved somehow. They seem to show you at least some kind of respect. Or was I just imagining things?


Here I'm being lied to. It's not the interpreter's fault, he just translates.

Short Range Patrol

In the morning, the Department of Women's Affairs came over for a cup of tea. They wanted the usual: some stuff.


In the afternoon we went out on a SRP to Darreh-i Zendan village. Here we are at the local ANP checkpoint. The dog wasn't dead, just sleepy.


Our IP's were enjoying the magnificient views in the valley as much as we were.

A bit later we stopped at a mosque and gave away some psyops material: children's winter clothes and rubber boots, and a football. A bit further, as the sun was going down, we stopped at another ANP checkpoint, where I tried the panorama feature of my camera. Here is the result:

Shopping in Aybak

The duty officer woke me up twice last night. The reasons were nothing serious, but it was good that I got the information right away. So when it was time get up at 0700, it was really difficult to wake up. Getting up is easy, but waking up usually takes its time. We went out to the governor's office to invite him and the provincial chiefs of ANSF to a meeting later. The governor's secretary wasn't there, so we had to wait for the deputy governor to come to work. Meeting him usually takes a while, and this was the case today as well. So we were almost late for the usual OCCP meeting, but just almost, because they started late, too. From there we went to the police headquarters to talk to the training officer. That didn't take as long as we had expected, so there was just enough time to do some shopping.

I got word just yesterday, that a project proposal of mine, my second one actually, had been approved. It was about purchasing heaters with water boilers to be distributed to the ANP checkpoints around the province. I found out that the price for one heater was about 35 to 45 USD for PRT soldiers (and about 25 to 30 dollars for locals). I applied for sufficient funds to acquire 30 heaters, a total of 1200 dollars. It was a really good proposal, because giving away a heater to the freezing police officers is a quick and easy way of getting long-lasting goodwill from the security forces. So today we went to the sheet-metal worker's street and bought 8 heaters, including transportation to the PO, for only 250 dollars. Our IP Y made a really good effort bargaining.


I'm giving the shopkeeper the IP's cell phone number, just in case he wouldn't be able to find his way to the safe house. A woman came up to us begging for money.

When we came back to the PO, a British gentleman was waiting for us. He was a head researcher for AREU, and he wanted to talk with us about the district level political issues of Samangan province. We offered him lunch and had a chat. In the afternoon we had a meeting with the chief and deputy chief of NDS, which turned out to be a very pleasant experience as usual. There was spaghetti and meat sauce for dinner. After the briefing I tried to have a nap but was interrupted all the time by incoming messages. In the evening I wrote three reports about today's activites. It's all in a days work.

Commander's Conference

I've usually posted something in this blog each and every day that I've been in theatre. In fact, I don't think that I've missed out on a single day. Sometimes I've admittedly written a post one or two days afterwards, but changed the the post date and time accordingly. But today I think that I'll do an exception, and write one post that covers two days. I'll do so for no other than because the two past days were quite alike, except that things happened in different order. That, and because I'm tired. I'm not saying that there has been days that havent resembled other days here before, on the contrary, nor that I haven't been this tired before, but you get the picture.

So yesterday, after a cold breakfast (because our cook T was driving the other car and couldn't stay to clean up the kitchen), we left for CNL. The purpose was for me to attend the commander's conference, and for the others to run some errands, and then return back to Aybak. It started as planned, but thing soon changed as usual. The transport that I was planning to take back to Aybak left early and the conference continued until noon today, so the only altenative was that the team that drove me to CNL would stay there and wait until the conference was over. Later that turned out to be a good thing, because Lion needed some repairs anyway. During the conference's breaks I literally ran around the camp, attending to various business. I revised the cash, collected some archive paper and memorial shields for the Swedes, and signed my application for a second rotation, until 12 August 2010. The conference lasted to about 2000, and after that I slept, again in bunk 14 of tent 3-4.

This morning the conference continued at 0800 and went on for what felt like forever. After lunch it was time to climb back up in the front seat of Lion and drive back to the PO. The weather was beautiful and the traffic light. We tried a different route through MeS, which turned out to be fine, and that also saved us a lot of time. Upon coming back to home base, I took care of some business with J of G9 and P of G2 (the G's are different departments of PRT staff), who had arrived with the early morning transport. We had one briefing with almost everyone, including the IP's, one with everyone except the IP's, and one with just the leaders and others who write reports. We had brought back some "Suomi-food" from CNL, so of course the guys wanted to wrap up the evening with grilled "Camping" sausages and "Prepared Mustard" from Turku. It was good, actually, for a change.

I heard that the guards have started calling the puppy "Isaf". So now its name is Isaf, despite the fact that it might show disrespect towards the operation. I wonder if someone brought some sausage to Isaf? They must have, the way they are spoiling her.

Puppy Love

Although it was Friday, I was very hard-working today. I woke up at 0830, and spent a full hour on the cross trainer. After brunch we had medic training and a camp defence excercise. Then I prepared four messages to staff, counted the PO's cash, prepared some more papers, wrote a report, and then prepared even some more papers. At some point inbetween, I went outside the gate to take a look at the tiny puppy that has appeared in our street. It's very young, only four or five weeks, but it acts as if the street belonged to it. When we give it a meatball, it takes it away and snarls if anyone comes near. But after it has eaten it comes back and lies on its back at our feet.


Medical training on the sundeck. It's over 20 degrees in the day, but the nights are freezing.


The little dog house was built by the previous rotation for the PO's previous puppy, that mysteriously disappeared about six months ago.


She didn't dare come over the water to say hello.


So I had to walk over.


And kneel down.

Green Buses and Moses in the Cheddar

Our second medic, M, likes to talk. But his English isn't what it perhaps should be in a multinational operation. Nevertheless, this doesn't stop him from communicating his thoughts vividly, which sometimes leads to hilarious expressions.

Like when we were considering a surprise visit by a Swedish rifle squad, who wanted dinner without having ordered it in advance, M suggested the we "give them the green bus", meaning the green bags that the combat rations are packed in.

Or, when we were sitting down at the briefing on the day that we had discovered that there were mice in our cellar, M declared that "there is Moses in our cheddar".

A Day in the Camp

For the first time in many days, we didn't leave camp today. There's not much point in going anywhere, because we won't be able to have any meetings without interpreters. We could of course go on road recce or something, but we usually like to combine thing like that with other patrols. So today we could concentrate on the usual thursday activities: unloading the food trucks and receiving the support transport. We also had an hour of weapons training. There were two surprise visitors: the head of security for UNAMA dropped by to hear our views on the security situation in Samangan province. He was from India and looked like a guru with long, white hair. The other visitor was a private constructor, who wanted to offer his services to the PRT. Fortunately both of these visitors spoke English.

The interpreters were at CNL. There was a memorial service there and they also participated at the private funeral. There will be a mourning service at some mosque tomorrow that will last 5 hours, so they won't be available tomorrow either. Fortunately it's Friday, so there probably won't be much going on anyway.

I ate too much today: there was hamburgers for dinner. For lunch we had pea soup and Poor Knigts. What's worse, I just haven't had time to go to the gym now that the CO and OPSOFF are on leave. What even more worse, there's ice cold Inza Choko Drink available in the dining hall fridge every morning. It's just too good to be missed - but it also has all the calories.

More V.I.P.s

Wednesday started with a visit to the provincial governor's office, where the deputy governor received us. He was very courteous at first, but towards the end of our meeting he showed his true nature. He made jokes about the PRT sleeping all day, not confronting the enemy and not doing any reconstruction either, and laughed loudly. The deputy governor is pashtun, and it would probably not have been a good idea to say or do something against his idea of pashtunwali. So I limited my response to regretting his view and assuring him that we at the PRT are doing our best with the resources we have, and that we are risking our lives for peace in Afghanistan. My IP was under a lot of pressure towards the end of the meeting and did not perform too well. I'll have to mention this in some later IP report about him. The Swedish political advisor from PRT staff was there too, and she stayed in town for some other meetings when we left.

In the afternoon two generals and a major from the Finnish Defence Command paid us a visit. The gentlemen seemed relaxed and happy, unlike the previous VIP delegation from Finland. Just as they arrived, there was news about an incident in the north-western parts of the PRT AOR. The tragic turn of events made the visit a little shorter than planned, but the feedback we got was good. The Chief of Operations told us not to worry too much about the news headlines that we see in Finnish media - the support for our troops back home is really better than headlines suggest.

Later in the evening we learnt that one of the PRT IP's had died in the attack. Two of our IP's knew him personally, and of course they had to leave to see his family. But before they left, our remaining two interpreters came to see me, saying that they wanted to go to MeS too, because the chief IP had told them to. I said that it was a decision that the "chief IP", of IP coordinator, could not make, but they insisted that it was approved by the CO. "You have to be more flexible", one said, with tears in his eyes. It's a good thing that I didn't say out loud what I thought of him, his demands for flexibility and of my options of being flexible at that time. What could I do? I would have to cancel all operations for tomorrow and wait for the poor, poor boys to return. I hope they finally grow up after this - this is what they signed up for when they chose to become ISAF interpreters. And this is what we pay them for, almost three times more than a general in the ANA. The IP's are the true VIP's here, or at least they seem to think they are.

Snow-peaked Mountains

Today was a normal, busy day. It didn't rain - in fact there was periods of sunshine during the day - and it was quite cold outside. We visited OCCP and the second police district headquarters in Aybak. Their back yard was a sad but typical sight:


Dump, junkyard and recycling center combined.


A stray dog was walking across a nearby field, onto which more Soviet armour had been scrapped.


The fascinating ugliness of the old tanks looked almost unreal against the breathtaking backdrop of the snow-peaked mountains.

In the afternoon we interviewed the three remaining applicants for the position of guard. Funnily enough, they all turned out to be related to the guard commander. No surprise there - the importance of family relations can not be over-estimated: they far surpass any other commitment for Afghans.

Recruitment

Today the PRT CO visited us for a situation update, so we didn't do any patrols. It's always nice talking with the CO. Just as they left, there was a visit from a delegation of 7 people from the USAID (United States Agency for International Development). They wanted to see our compound regarding a preliminary plan to deploy an American development aid official here permanently at some point in the future. We'll see what happens.

Then it there was finally time for us to start the job interviews with the applicants for the position of guard at the PO, which has been open since I was forced to fire one of our guards a few weeks ago. K and I interviewed three guys today, and we'll do the remaining three when there's time. Of today's applicants one was good, one was no good, and one was somewhere in between. We'll select two or three guys, who the security officers at PRT staff will then scrutinise more closely. It was actually quite interesting to meet the locals and to see how they handled the interview.

It's getting quite cold now, and temperatures below zero are forcast for this area tonight. In the south parts of Samangan province, there is snow on the ground, but those areas are more than 2000 metres above sea level. The flu epidemic that 5 soldiers here have caught is not swine flu, which the analysis of a sample that we sent by taxi to the German military hospital in camp Marmal proved. (The taxi driver first asked for 200 USD for the trip, which is more than the average monthly income! Still, we paid him 100 $.) This type of flu has usually passed in one or two days, and the worst seems to be over for now.


One very peculiar sign, that can be found in both of the bathrooms in the main building.

A Second Rainy Day

It rained practically the whole day today. The streets are no longer full of dust, but instead they are getting muddy, and as a result extremely slippery in some places. A muddy road that is inclined in some direction can be very difficult to navigate with our armoured vehichles, because of their weight.

After the OCCP meeting we paid a visit to the First Police District headquarters. There I let our police liaison officer K do the talking, and stood guard outside for a change. As we were parked inside the compound, I could concentrate on taking pictures. There was a hornet in the yard, that was a little confused from the rain.




As I was watching it, a police officer came and took it in his fingers. The hornet acted very aggressively but it was not harmed, and when the man let it go, it flew away.


Outside the gate of the police compound, there were puddles in the street. An uzbek man was talking on a very strange looking mobile phone, while his friends were waiting.



We spent the afternoon at the shooting range, and finally got the PKM up and running. What a great weapon. We also shot a few rounds with the TRG 42, and K managed to pop five small balloons with five rounds from a distance of 295 to 315 metres (we used a laser range finder). Not bad, although I think anyone of us could have done that. The TRG more of a precision instrument than a rifle. The evening was spent cleaning the weapons and drying and cleaning the equipment from the mud and the rain.

Rain!

Today it rained almost the whole day! Sometimes there were only a few drops in the air, but in the evening it turned to proper rain. Not too strong, but rain nevertheless. It felt really strange, because it hasn't rained at all since I arrived here.

The day was very, very busy. I had four meetings and wrote three reports. Two of them were about normal intelligence questions, but one was quite strange. The mullah from the mosque across the street came to the gate and wanted us to pay him "power tax" for hearing the daily prayers from the mosque's sound system. It uses electricity, and all who hear it must contribute to the cost. He told me that the people living in the PO compound haven't paid the power tax in three years, so we owe him one hundred U.S. dollars. One of the loudspeakers and the power amplifier were malfunctioning, so he wondered if we could help him to get new ones for the mosque. I promised him nothing, but said that I would write a report to PRT asking for their advice (in the report I also suggested a solution: the muslims who live in our compound, i.e. the guards and IP's, pay the tax).

Sure. Yes, we'll buy him an even stronger amplifier and bigger loudspeakers, because we enjoy so much listening to the prayers five times a day, especially the one at about four in the morning. Not to mention the propaganda preaching that goes on for more than an hour every Friday. NOT!

Maintenance and administration

My Friday started with an hour on the cross-trainer before brunch. Then I the Finnish military police unit arrived, and conducted their investigation into the matter of the money missing from the PO’s cash. It was a routine investigation, but the verdict might not come until next year, so I must have patience. After the MP left, we returned to the Friday routines of maintenance and administration, such as weapons check, cleaning, and paperwork. Some rather interesting intelligence also came our way, the analysing of which took most of my evening spare time. And, to no-one’s surprise, there were minor and major changes to the plans of the coming days evenly spread throughout the day. But I’m already used to it.

Bird Life

At the OCCP today they had a briefing about the crowd and riot control plans of the provincial ANSF. Their plans were again quite good, actually, but of course I had to add my views on a few points (such as the use of reserves, support and rules of engagement). From the briefing we followed the NDS representative to the northern parts of Aybak, where we had a look at the site of a development project that he had suggested to us. It concerns building water pipes from a well to over 300 households, all in all about 3000 metres. We took pictures a talked to the locals. On the way back a radio antenna on Lion got caught in a tree and broke.


The OCCP operations center was fully manned during the briefing. (That's my haircut in the bottom of the picture.)


The pump house of the well, which by the way is 400 metres deep! And of course the children turned up again out of nowhere to ogle at our equipment.

In the afternoon all of the PO staff except for myself went to Camp Marmal to give the guys returning from their leave a lift home. I tried to work, but the swedes and the local employees kept bothering me. There were also some messages coming in, and as the only Finn and PO personnel, it was my job to answer them. It was already dark when the transport returned. Now that T is here we'll get some proper food again, instead of combos and salad.

There are a lot of wild birds here. Many different kinds of doves can be seen every day, as well as sparrows, but they were fewer when it was really hot. I've also seen birds of pray on at least three occasions. But every day I see birds that I can't identify, and sometimes I'm quite sure that I haven't ever seen that kind of birds before. It's too bad that I know so little about them. Not that I would like to know more, but I could describe what I've seen much better. I'm sure that some of my cousins could do better.


It's no wonder that the birds come here in November, when the roses blossom in the police station's yard.

No Second Round

After the usual OCCP meeting we went to have a look at the second main bridge in Aybak, which was torn down by a flood in March this year. It was totalled, as they say, but the locals had built a narrow footbridge over the remains and were fording the river with Zarangs (the local name for motor rickshaws). As usual, a horde of kids gathered around us. From the river bank, we drove to the other side of town to the headquarters of the IEC (Independent Election Council) to hear what kind of orders and plans their chairman had after the cancellation of the second round. Up until today some of the local authorities have acted as if there was going to be a second round in the elections after all, but now it seems that the information (and reality) has caught up with everyone. The IEC chairman said that the cancellation would make some people angry, but that he was not expecting any trouble.

Our first cook A went on leave, and the second one, T, has not yet arrived from his leave, so we had to prepare lunch ourselves. That's really easy using the combat rations, or "combo" like we call it, which are stored in abundance at the PO. Our kitchen assistant F prepared a salad and some fruit for dessert. Some of the guys switched combos for MRE (Meal Ready-to-Eat, the American version) and tried the German and Croatian delicacies. To everyone's amusement, the German combo contained Cevapici and Gulash, which were both german dishes back in 1943. In the afternoon I thoroughly cleaned my quarters, where the dust had covered most surfaces again. I also wrote a couple of reports and did some other paperwork, and the food delivery truck came. The CO left for his leave, so now I'm once again in charge. It looks like a couple of really busy weeks ahead, but I'm sure that I'll manage somehow.


I found this fellow in the gutter outside the PO's main gate around midnight, when I was walking the DO's round. The guard R told me that it was very poisonous to touch.


Here are the Duty Officer's basic tools. Some are fortunately needed more frequently than others.

Wedding Day

At OCCP, they went about their business just as if the second round of the presidential elections had not been cancelled, which we all (the Americans, the Croatian and us the Finns) thought was very strange, especially when at the same time the provincial governor was arranging a victory celebration for all Karzai supporters at a nearby hotel. We'll try to clarify this issue in the near future. In the meantime, we're still following the elections' FRAGO (Fragmentary Order) from PRT staff. There was a lot of people and security forces in town.

Around lunchtime I paid the local employees their salaries (and as usual some advances for those who can't balance their personal economy too well. But they always have great excuses!)
In the afternoon we went to a "Justice Meeting" at the provincial Court of Appeal. For me it was a very boring two hours, but I suppose our police liaison NCO got something more out of it.

We were all invited to a wedding in the evening. This was in fact the third wedding that we had been ivited to in a month or so, which says more about the weddings here than about our popularity. This time it was the PO's guard commander who was getting married (the other two was our ex-interpreter and the PO's cleaner's sister(!)) We couldn't attend the previous invitations, but this one was just too important to miss out on. The wedding party itself was one of those things that I'll never forget. As a wedding present, we brought him a brand new 21" flat-screen television. I suppose that it was a very typical, traditional Afghan wedding party, but for us the experience was quite extraordinary. I'll write more about it when my first impressions are better processed, when I have more time and am less tired. By then I will propably also have a picture or three to show.

But I've never before danced on a carpet with a dozen men while wearing a pistol belt.

Bark Bark

I'm duty officer again, and that means less sleep (and more time to update the blog). But that's ok: I had the opportunity to take an hour's nap in the afternoon, before going to the gym. The hours before noon were well spent visiting the OCCP and paying salaries to local employees among other things. For lunch there was hamburgers and french fries! In the afternoon the deputy commander of the provincial NDS paid us a visit.


Tea and exchange of information in the PO's dining hall.

Then, after the aforementioned, a quick workout, dinner, and the evening brief, we had a team leader meeting in which we planned our activities a few days ahead - in vain, I'm sure, because as I've mentioned before, things seem to change faster down here than anyone can predict. Just take a look at the election process, which has turned into a farce. The stray dogs outside take no rest from their barking. I wonder which bark belongs to the one who is always staying outside our gate?

Valhall's Bouillabaisse

Unexpectedly, the repairs of MOT Delta's vehicles were finished last night at about 2000. But we didn't leave for Aybak, because M told me that they had gotten another assignment for Sunday morning from COS (the Chief of Staff). "Så det blir sovmorgon för dig", he said and laughed. I was not amused. In the morning, instead of sleeping late I gathered my things after breakfast, read for about an hour and went to the gym. After a quick lunch I hurried to the RVP (rendez-vous point) with my gear, only to find that the guys in delta had just arrived from their patrol and would have lunch before we leave, which for me meant 30 more minutes of waiting. It was quite hot, so I took off my equipment vest and combat body armour and went to get a cold drink and enjoyed in the shade.


One more peculiar sign spotted in Camp Northern Lights!

The trip to Aybak went fine, except slower than usual. The RG-32 vehicles are slower than our MB 28oG's. In Khulm there was a traffic accident where a van had driven off the road and fallen on its side. We stopped but as no-one was injured and the driver had things under control, we drove on. Our Finnish safe house was crowded as usual, but we managed to fit in, myself, two gentlemen from PRT staff, and MOT D. The Swedish MMT and American Tracker were there, as well as two Nato signalists, one from Croatia and the other one from Germany, but both Polish policemen were on leave. This is a truly multinational operation. It felt good to be back.

The news about the withdrawal of the other candidate from the second round of the elections has been the cause of much speculation, but for now it seems that the elections are on. We had a briefing about the current situation in Samangan province and another about our tasks during the elections. In the evening I washed some laundry and organised some things that I brought back from CNL.

The lunch in the dining hall or mess hall, Valhall, in CNL today was something special: a bouillabaisse with saffron. In the soup was salmon, mussels, crab, giant prawns, and octopus, and also some vegetables. Last night's dinner was also excellent: grilled lamb with cream potatoes and red wine sauce. The cooks really try to do the name of the place justice, not that the food at the PO is in any way of a poorer standard.


"The Hall of the Slain"