Life at HQ ISAF

Dusk at HQ ISAF after a sweltering day.  The Headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force is located in the heart of Kabul, in a fortified green zone also housing several embassies, and ornate, gilded Afghan houses occupied by ex-pats and wealthy Afghans.  The camp is quite small--the inner running loop is not even a kilometer—but, in the daytime,  home to over 2000 soldiers, civilians, diplomats and Afghan employees.  Not surprisingly, as this is a war, this is a 24/7 operation.  There’s always people around you where ever you go.  Folks here talk about, when they get home, how they love to wander around an empty house and luxuriate in the solitude.

Everything here is shades of grey and brown—the camouflage uniforms, the great blast walls surrounding you, the metal containers that contain offices and “hooches."  Everything except for the flapping of the bright flags of dozens of nations in the hot twilight wind.  Some Americans celebrate the 4^th of July with a volleyball game in the floodlit court.  Officers from Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the US, Turkey, Romania and a myriad other nations.  There’s enough brass here to outfit every bar in Dublin.  The mountains of Kabul, with their sprawling square, mud-brick dwellings climbing up the sides, are visible over the twenty-foot blast walls, past the watchtowers and through the miles of coiled razor wire.

The view outside my base.

Rzaor wires, blast walls, check points: a reality for the citizens of Kabul.

The camp is dominated by the “yellow building,” which was previously the hub of a renowned military sports club.  Sports, like most everything else, were pretty much banned under the Taliban, and the building fell into disrepair.  When coalition forces seized it, it had been used basically as a toilet and cooking fires had been used in the middle of many of the rooms.

Headquarters, ISAF.

Nearby are the Destille Gardens, not much bigger than a large backyard, but a haven that is the envy of nearby bases.  Here you can rest in the gazebos or under the desert stunted trees and watch the fattest cats in Afghanistan in their comic attempts to snare the garrulous birds.  Many nights it hosts a special-event barbeque.  With all these countries present, national days roll by regularly.

Destille Gardens (aka Dusty Old Gardens) decked out for Canada Day.

My hooch is basically a metal container, probably about the size and appearance of a boxcar.  We have it pretty good at HQ, and there’s only two to a room, and I end up with about sixty square feet of personal space.  Bed, wardrobe, table, chair.  Online is the lifeline for many here, and we spend evenings viddying back home, or watching movies. The web is frustratingly slow and sketchy, but it’s there so we don’t complain.

A rare rainbow in Kabul.  Right over where I live too!

You really don’t complain about much here.  Its HQ.  If you want to moan about it, there’s always somebody to remind you of what it’s like in a combat outpost in Helmand province.  Or what life is like for the refugees swarming into the outskirts of Kabul.  We’re here for those soldiers and those people, not to get a tan.

The food here is, well, I guess what you’d expect when you get British multinational to provide sustenance to suit the culinary peccadilloes of 50-odd nations.  It provides the necessary nutrients to sustain life, let’s put it that way.  Yesterday they had hot dog soup.  There are a couple of other places to eat on base, a pizza joint and a burger joint, that, in the end, just make you miss pizzas and burgers back home.  Still, in comparison to the fare at the dining hall, it’s pretty good.  Or “Afghan good” as they like to say here.

The gym is another highlight, though.  They’ve got a court, a spinning room, a weight room and a treadmill room, and plenty of classes and activities to make it easy to stay in shape.  I was about 220 lbs when I got here and now I’m 195.

Alcohol is strictly verboten on base (except for the two we were allowed on Canada Day—Yay!), and fraternization with the opposite sex is not allowed.  After more than ten years , the bureaucracy of the military has had time to assert itself and the list of Do’s and Don’ts is lengthy and detailed, prompting one friend of mine—a veteran of many campaigns—to remark, “I remember when war used to be fun.”

The best thing about it is the people you meet, from all over the world, all cast into this remote, violent, backward place to deal with seemingly insurmountable problems.  Fighting the insurgents in six regional commands throughout the country and along the Pakistan border, training Afghan police and military (who have a nasty habit of occasionally turning their guns on you), dealing with a democracy imposed over top of a tribal feudal system we do not understand.  Logistics, intelligence, engineering, planning and operations in a hostile environment, thousands of miles from home and family.

These challenges forge a strong camaraderie, as strangers from strange lands like Texas, Sicily, Queensland, Manchester,  Dusseldorf , Kuala Lampur, the Faro Islands and Reykjavik become your family. Sure the bad guys are out to get us, but its amazing, even in the thick of it, how we can all have a good laugh.

The mosque outside the walls is calling the faithful to prayer now.

Four more weeks to go.