Michael Baumgartner, a colleague from my time at the Embassy in Baghdad and a featured Profile in Service, has taken a position in Afghanistan in support of the mission there. Below he writes about his recent arrival in country and his duties there, comparing them to our experiences in Iraq during the surge.
Greetings from Helmand Afghanistan!
A few bits of wisdom I’ve picked up from the local Pashtuns:
“Michael, you should not be using too much chewing gum. It is better for women to be gum chewing. If a man is using it too much, his beard will become crooked.”
“…for your cold, you should be taking black pepper and spaghetti noodles. This is the medicine that works.”
I’m having a great time in Afghanistan, and not just because of the above enlightening quotes from a couple of the Afghans I live and work with. Life here is tough, and the narcotics and Taliban insurgent challenges we are facing are tougher, but there is nowhere else I’d rather be.
I’ve ended up being sent to Helmand, a very turbulent province in Afghanistan’s south.
What am I doing? The US supports several counternarcotics programs in Afghanistan. One of these programs is to inbed a foreign advisor with an Afghan counternarcotics (CN) team that advises the Governor of the main opium growing provinces. I’m one of two such advisors in Helmand. The CN team is actually very counterinsurgent in nature – supporting carrots (good governance, economics, and information operations) as well as sticks (poppy eradication, other stuff).
Afghanistan supplies 90% of the world’s heroine and, if it didn’t already have enough problems, is quickly becoming the world’s most problematic narco state. The opium related economy is equal to nearly 1/3 of the rest of the economy. Although opium is clearly prohibited in Islam, it is a big funder of the Taliban and the bad things they do (Taliban mullah’s argue that since the opium is mainly being exported that it is ok because it corrupts infidels). Opium is also absolutely corrupting the nascent system of governance in Afghanistan, and since a successful US exit from Afghanistan requires some form of stability (so that this place doesn’t once again become Camp Jihaddi) – heroine has a lot to do with winning the war here.
Where as in Iraq I worked directly for the US Department of State, here the US has decided to utilize more contract hires. So, although I talk to a liaison at the US Embassy regularly who provides some direction on what we do, I actually work for a private company. Also, where as in Iraq I lived and worked mainly around Americans, here in Afghanistan I am one of only a very few Westerners surrounded and living amongst a compound of Afghans. It is quite a difference.
I’m grateful that I ended up being assigned to the province of Helmand. Helmand is possibly Afghanistan’s most problematic province. The Taliban control large parts of the countryside and have many spies and assassins around. (Their relative strength is evidenced by the fact that they even force the government to turn off the cell phone towers at night to help their movements – so very often my cell doesn’t have a signal).
Helmand is also the absolute drug capital of the world. My province alone produces nearly half of Afghanistan’s opium, which means that more drugs come out of here than Columbia, Burma and whatever other countries you want to throw in combined.
The way I look at it, this means that I’m getting a view to some pretty interesting stuff.
As far as the war goes, British forces are in control of operations in Helmand. I interact regularly with a good group of British officers and diplomats. Because they all live on a base, and I am off with the natives, I have some advantages that they don’t have (and they have a few, to be sure, that I don’t) .
Unfortunately, the Brits don’t have enough forces here. Roughly 8000 troops total, and far too few of them are on offense. The Brits also spend too much time on base and not enough on patrol (kind of like the US in Iraq before the Surge). Newspaper reports say increased US forces are likely coming to Helmand. This will help. In the near term, this place needs at least 20,000 aggressive troops with logistic support to take back control from Taliban forces (“Taliban” is a loose generic term for various groups of bad guys who want to kill foreigners or government forces). Frankly, I’m skeptical of the overall war effort here, but one thing I learned from the Surge in Iraq, is that America can do amazing things if it puts its mind to it.
I have arrived in Helmand smack dab in the run up to eradication season. As such, we have been very busy helping the local Governor with the plan to physically remove poppy. There are many counterinsurgency elements to this. In fact, for someone who likes counterinsurgency, this is a dream job. As many of you know, I was privileged to be very involved in the Baghdad Security Plan counterinsurgency and we had good success there. Hopefully, on a modest, localized level, I'll be involved in some success here as well.
As I begin to think about overall US policy here, I’m finding Afghanistan foreboding. For all of the challenge that the US faced (and continues to face) in Iraq, I think that Afghanistan is a much tougher challenge. The economic potential is much more limited (landlocked, few natural resources); less developed and educated people (God love them, but many of the Pashtuns here have a outlook on life that makes the dregs of Sadr City look like champions of the enlightenment) the problems coming out of neighboring Pakistan are more difficult to deal with than the very serious problems that come out of Iraq’s neighbor Iran; Iraq is flat and easy to move around (road bombs notwithstanding) – mountainous and roadless Afghanistan is a logistics nightmare; and, the opium black market is corrupting everything. To top it off, US allies here don’t have enough political support back home to get out and do the fighting that needs to be done and the number of Taliban attacks is increasing precipitously. Overall, Iraq is bloodier, but Afghanistan is tougher. Fortunately (sort of), success in Afghanistan is much less strategically important for the US than is success in Iraq.
Security wise, whereas my main threats in Iraq were mortar/rocket fire and potential IEDs, here they are likely to be targeted assassinations and suicide bombers. Sure enough, just last week we got a general tip some suicide bombers were around looking for targets of opportunity. What do you know, the next day as we were out and about, and just as we were driving past the most logical place to launch a hit against us if you were a bad guy, I look to the left and see a lone motorcycle rounding a corner and approaching at speed, I look closer and see that he’s about 18 years old, heavily robbed and, to top it off, carrying a (expletive) propane tank across the handle bars. I think to myself “well that didn’t take long” while wondering if we had time to do something that would make him a little less interested in driving up close to us, no time, he’s right there...and then...nothing – just a kid carrying some propane. Let’s hope they’re all like that. (And I must underscore that I face nowhere near the security threat of our brave troops out on patrol – God bless them).
Before coming down to Helmand, I spent several days in Kabul and made a few trips to a local US military base to get supplies and sneak in a couple of sessions at the gym. The gym had TVs carrying Armed Forces Network (really wish I had that in Helmand) and during a rest on the weights on one of the commercials up pops a general who is some top psychologist for the US Army and she gives a short infomercial about mental health in a war zone. Two of the points she made were 1: get enough sleep and 2: feel grateful for the ability serve your country in an effort bigger than yourself.
I’ll try to keep in mind her advice on number 1, but I won’t find it difficult at all to abide by number 2. I really do feel grateful. Exceptionally grateful. For the moment, I think I’ve got the best job in the world. I’m sure as heck not going to be doing this kind of stuff forever, and certain parts of life here suck to be sure, but for the time being it is something I am really enjoying.
Picture collage:
Pic 1/2: Can you tell who is the Afghan and who is the American? I thought not ;) You’ll notice that I’ve adopted the American practice of wearing a beard and a local scarf to blend in. Just in case you can’t tell, I’m the one in the blue stocking cap ;)
Brian, the other Westerner in pic 2 is a fantastic Scottsman, and although I can oft times barely understand him through his absurdly thick Scottish accent, we have a great time telling Iraq stories. He was a PSD there from 2003 to 2008 and has more Iraq contact stories than anybody I’ve yet met. The craziest one I’ve heard so far is when he randomly told how he once took a side contract to spend 2 weeks tracking down and recovering 11 stolen armored SUVs from some bad guys near Mosul in 2006. Private contractor world is really like the movies sometimes.
Pic 3: I find many of the old Pashtun men quite striking in how they look and carry themselves. Very rough, but at the same time strangely very regal. I think that this fellow is the head of education in Helmand. There are two things that seem to be ubiquitous around here, AK-47 riffles and cool looking old Pashtun men with cool beards.
Pic 4: What we call Operation Enduring Freedom, the Brits call “Operation Herrick.” I really get a kick out of the politeness and tone of discourse when discussing military stuff with British Officers. “Why yes, I would like a spot of tea before we begin…”
Pic 5: A bit of a sad picture. This fellow was a really friendly guy on our security team who has just had to leave and go home to his village. Taliban had previously killed his father and older brother some months ago. The other day he learned that they have kidnapped another brother. He was very matter of fact in that he had to go home, get his cousins, and either go and kill those local Taliban or be killed himself trying. It’s a different world out here...
