Gunfight at the OK Corral

Bamyan is a peaceful, stable, secure place to live and work, not just relative to the rest of Afghanistan, but compared to a lot of places -- there are no places in town that are off limits, whereas there were neighborhoods in New Orleans that I just would not go. Those neighborhoods largely don’t exist anymore, but you know what I mean.

So, what’s with this headline? Funny you should ask. As part of the overall security posture of the province, the Afghan Government (Ministry of Defense) shipped 200 - odd Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers here. I am not entirely certain where they are from, but I think Kandahar. Wherever they came from, it was most definitely an area where less peacekeeping, and more warfighting was called for. These guys have seen ACTION.

Should be no problem, right? Disciplined troops are deployed wherever to preserve overall security, or at least that’s the theory. Only a couple of holes in that idea: 1) discipline is not, ahem, a strong suit for these guys, and 2) the ANA soldiers are almost entirely Pashtun ethnicity, while the population in most parts of Bamyan, including the Afghan National Police, is Hazara.

Flashback to earlier notes: as I mentioned, Bamyan is the unofficial capital of Hazarajat, where all of the Hazara minority people live. Hazaras, akin to Mongolians in appearance, largely Shia Muslim, have been the second-class citizens in Afghanistan for hundreds of years, and most ethnic groups in Afghanistan have no problems continuing to treat them that way. The Taliban were predominately Pashtuns from the Southern parts of Afghanistan. Add all that up, and what do you have? A recipe for trouble, that’s what.

As per their security directive, the ANA formed Vehicle Checkpoints (VCPs -- you knew there had to be an acronym) on strategic locations near the Provincial Counting Center in Bamyan. All vehicles would be required to stop at the checkpoints, and show the proper identification. Those vehicles without the appropriate i.d. would not be allowed through.

Seems pretty straightforward, and, to our relief, everything stayed quiet, at least at first. The night before the elections? Not so quiet. I’m going back to my hooch, getting ready for bed, when I see red flares arcing across the sky. What’s with the flares? I asked. Duh. I’m not military -- they weren’t flares, but tracer rounds. The Alert signal goes off, and we all drop everything, grab our body armor and helmets, and take up our posts in various bunkers throughout the camp.

Up on the wall, we saw fireworks like I’ve never seen before. Muzzle flashes EVERYWHERE. It’s what Ahnold’s stupendous 50 caliber machine gun moment in Commando would be if it happened at night (Somebody told me last night Ahnold killed 105 people in that movie. The guy who discovered this has wayyyy too much free time.) Wow. Somebody has to be dead, at least so I’m thinking. Only on the A-Team do you see people fire that many bullets fly without ever hitting anyone.

Amazingly, no one was injured. Given where some of the bullets went into the vehicle and out again, it really does seem miraculous. I am less incredulous about the Magic Bullet theory and JFK, now that I have seen entry and exit points for bullets that defy rational explanation (I know, I know, there is a perfectly sound physics explanation, but this is not CSI Bamyan -- you’ll have to wait for the video.)

It took a while to reconstruct events (stuck in that body armor for 2 hours -- that stuff gets heavy!), but here is what happened. (If I got this wrong, it is my own fault, no one else). So long as people respected the VCP process, it seemed to work smoothly. The local ANP Deputy Chief of Police, however, did not see that these rules necessarily applied to him. His driver ran the checkpoint at night, the ANA opened fire, and then all of the ANP at the Counting Center came out to support their comrades in arms (leaving their posts, I might add). Dozens of people were all firing at each other.

Well, I’ve had my one experience, right? Now I can boast of being out in the "hot zone" along with all the tough guys! Wrong. I would be quite happy for that armor to be useless luggage for the rest of my time here. (You’ll pardon me if I don’t refer to it as dead weight -- makes me uncomfortable.) Some of my colleagues at other PRTs have a much different experience, with nightly rocket attacks so routine you can almost set your watch to it. One of my colleagues was saying that, given the choice, he prefers being in a tent, because of space, but ultimately chooses to stay in a hooch because schrapnel is less of a concern. (!!!!) This is not my Afghanistan experience, and, honestly, I am happy with that. I will admit I came to Afghanistan to engage in what we like to think of as frontier diplomacy, but you can keep the combat stories. (One U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel is considering applying for a Combat Action Badge based on our little event, but I think we have dissuaded him.) The Deputy Defense Minister, in town at that time, gave his best Rodney King, pleading with ANP and ANA soldiers to work together as brothers for "one Afghanistan."

I probably know better than most when something falls on deaf ears. That plea for unity surely did. Every great hit from Hollywood deserves a sequel, right? (These days, every mediocre movie gets a sequel too -- what’s up with that? I blame Michael Eisner and the entire Straight to Video phenomenon.) We got a second dose of ANA-ANP love fest, not a week later. Wrapping up work a couple of Fridays ago, I am online chatting with my wife, when I hear that ever-so-distinctive ‘pap pap pap pap’ off in the distance, and, a few seconds later, more paps in answer. Rats, rats, rats, rats, big #@%% rats! Run back to the hooch, grab the armor and the helmet, and head straight for the bunker. Vuja de all over again.

This time, an off-duty ANP officer refused to give up his weapon after the ANA demanded it. (He did not have any type of identification or permit for it, as would be the case with your neighborhood police officer or state trooper.) He fired his weapon into the air to scare them off. Bad move. The ANA guys grabbed him, grabbed his weapon, and then proceeded to beat the stuffing out of him. (The ANP officer’s lung collapsed later that night from his beating.)

Those random bullets brought the reserve ANA guys out of their compound, running hither and yon, firing at whatever happened to be moving. Did they know what was going on? No. Did they wait to find out before running out, guns blazing? You guessed it -- also no. Like I said, this particular group of ANA soldiers is not exactly the most disciplined soldiers on the planet.

This second incident triggered the local government. In a meeting the following day, Provincial Governor Sarabi was as mad as I have ever seen her. Given that this seems to be a culture that prides itself on courtesy, on face, her blowup was all the more surprising. Defense and Interior Ministry officials were called up for an investigation, and all of us sat down with local shura leaders a few days’ later to head off a potentially incendiary protest. (We were successful, this time. Just keep talking, eventually people get tired, or drink too much tea, or something. They run out of gas.)

To be fair, it takes two sides to have an argument. Hazara and Pashtun people may not see eye to eye, but at some point they will have to realize that they are all from one country. If Afghans do not develop a sense of national identity, rather than tribal or ethnic identity, this experiment’s chances are not good, no matter how hard we (the US, the UN, NGOs, other donors, all of us) work to get this country onto the same sheet of music. Everybody knows that you cannot create a nation, or a national identity, overnight. The real question is how much breathing room with events give Afghanistan? Can it tread water long enough? Time will tell.

Election Day

It’s finally here. I’m up EARLY this morning (4? 5? Don’t even remember now), to head out to the JEMB communications center. I really wanted to go out with some of the Kiwi patrols doing election security out in the various districts, but they go out for 7-10 days at a shot, and it is hard to get all of my work done when I am that far from base. We compromise and send out one in-town observation team with my USDA colleague Stacy (who took some great pictures of stuff she saw all day -- I'll try to insert them later when the internet connection works a little better), and I sit at the coms network and report back to the Embassy in Kabul what we find out.

It’s a slow day. A really slow day. I get bored, pretty quick. Reading my copy of Ghost Wars, (The book is a great account of how we got from the ’79 student revolt in Iran, the Mujahadeen war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the rise of Osama bin Laden, and ultimately September 11. Hindsight is hell sometimes.) listening to the various reports filter in. A rocket has hit the UN Compound in Kabul. Voting started late in a lot of places, but got righted pretty quick. Numbers ran high later in the morning, but have relaxed. There are some skirmishes, and some scuffles (one guy came in to "show" some women how to vote, and they turned on him, throwing him, the ballot box, the election official, and a few other things out into the street!), but nothing like what was expected.

The afternoon is similarly quiet. The security guys have hooked up a satellite TV with hundreds of stations on it, and they have settled on one that shows Italian remakes of 80’s hit music in some bizarre costumes. Ok, the women are gorgeous, even with the bad hair, but this is far from expected.

Four o’clock rolls around. Voting does not stop right away, but by 5:00 p.m., all is quiet. Now all the ballots must find their way back to the provincial capitals, wherever JEMB built the Provincial Counting Center, so that we can find out who are the winners, and who are the losers. No CNN flash predictions of victory here -- we won’t know who will make up the wolesi jirga and the provincial council until October 22. I wonder how the losers are going to take losing. We’ll find out soon enough, I guess.

Election Prep

For the next two weeks, priority number one for all of us are the upcoming elections. The Afghans will be voting for a parliament, the wolesi jirga, as well as a provincial council. (They were also supposed to be voting for district council reps, but the country could not decide what the districts WERE, so that one will wait until next year. We hope.)

While not as sexy as the election in 2004 for the Presidency, this round of elections may well prove more important to people’s individual health and welfare. The district councils will be the layer closest to people, and the one most responsive to their needs, but until that time, this is the best representation they will get.

The logistics of this enterprise are staggering. Afghanistan’s 34 provinces will select 259 Wolesi jirga representatives, of whom a set percentage must be women. Representation is apportioned out roughly according to population density. Not surprisingly, therefore, Kabul will have the most reps of any single province. Each province fields candidates for these 259 seats. Last time I checked, there were over 4000 candidates for the 259 seats.

So, come election day, the Afghans just walk into a booth and flip the lever or push a button, right? Yeah, as if. Afghans, after waiting in lines at separate centers for men and women, waiting for however long, will have their bona fides checked (they can only vote in their province of residence, with very, very few exceptions), to try and minimize fraud (we don’t want any cemeteries in Chicago voting in this exercise!). If they are legit, the poll station operators will give each of them two ballot books, a yellow one for the provincial election, and a blue one for the wolesi jirga. Each book has pages upon pages of candidates (averaging about 100 a page), identified primarily by their picture and their party symbol. With this many candidates, some of the symbols are a bit, well, arbitrary. My favorite was this one guy whose symbol was a wedge of Swiss cheese. :) Oh, and if you are kuchi, i.e., a nomad, you can vote anywhere, using a special kuchi ballot. (They cannot vote for the provincial council, since, technically, they are not resident in any province.) There is no room for hanging chads here. If we tried to organize something of this magnitude in the U.S., the only thing that I can guarantee would be the lawsuits. Sometimes it beggars the imagination just how much we take for granted.

Anyway, as daunting a task as this appears, the U.S., UN and other donors/sponsors have the good sense to work with an organization with lots of experience handling tough elections, the Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB). Elections are pretty much what they do. Despite the odds (and many thought they could not make it work), they largely managed to train all of the polling station workers, get the desks, chairs, ballot boxes, ballot papers, indelible ink (to mark the fingers of the voters, avoid Chicago syndrome, as explained above), the works, out to every polling station in every district in every province in the country. They used Kamag’s (huge Russian trucks), jeeps, helicopters, trains, donkeys, planes, you name it, every resource they could think of they used to get the materials out on time.

On top of logistics, we are all concerned about election security. In other parts of the country, candidates have been assassinated (in retrospect, the U.S. way to settle this is better, at least marginally -- call out the lawyers, rather than the guys with the guns). Various bad guys (there are quite a few, not just the Taliban that you’ve all heard of -- btw, Taliban is Dari for "student." Go figure.) are putting out IEDs (improvised explosive devices) all over the place. They could be strapped to a car, a donkey, or a human being. Before I left Kabul, an IED demolished one of the US Embassy Landcruisers. Thank goodness our Landcruisers are armored, or else everyone in that truck would’ve been hurt much, much worse. (I am tempted to wax rhapsodic here about the wonders of the Landcruiser, but you’ll think I am a shill for Toyota, so I will pass for now.) The Coalition is going on the offensive against the bad guys, hoping to disrupt them so much that they cannot, in turn, disrupt election preparations and voting.

JEMB, in the meantime, has hired its own security firm to oversee the significant security aspects of ensuring that the logistics team is given the chance to do its job. The firm, KROLL, seems to know what they are doing. All of the local KROLL reps for the Central Highlands region (including Bamyan and Dai Kundi province to the south) are grizzled Welsh and Scottish guys, chain smoking, ex-British military types. They are unfazed by anything, and have a wonderful way to keep efforts in perspective. "I’ll put et straaight -- we’ve ‘ad eh cockup, an’ na mistaake," said one of the guys one day. I thought understanding Kiwi accents was hard -- this is another level!!

Despite the inevitable hiccups, things in Bamyan seem to be running smoothly. It’s all ahead for the big day -- September 18, here we come.

The Boss Comes to Visit

One of the nice things about being the only State Department employee out here in Bamyan is that I am, to a large extent, my own boss. I keep my own hours, follow projects that interest me, and assign priorities based on what I think are the important issues to watch. Those of you in large organizations know that this type of independence is a rare luxury.

It is also ephemeral. One week after I arrived here, we had a visit by the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Ronald Neumann. Ambassador Neumann is a great choice for an Ambassador here, in my own opinion. His father was Ambassador here some 40 years ago in the 1960s. Neumann the younger has made a career of working in some tough diplomatic environments, including just coming from our mission in Iraq as our head Political-Military Counselor.

In almost any instance, when you work with your Front Office, the amount of effort required to get from Point A to Point B is much higher than that you might otherwise experience, mostly because there are more layers between you and the top. Those layers have a tendency to diffuse and distort your message, unless you put in extra effort to keep on top of things.

The Ambassador’s visit certainly fit that pattern. We would make preparations based on ground truth, preparations which would be obviated and ignored by someone up the chain who unilaterally changed his mind on something. This would happen every day -- we would prep based on the most recent information, only to have the rug pulled out from under us logistics-wise. It is the sort of thing that can make you go batty.

The Kiwis, in contrast, were unfazed. If the situation changed, all I heard was "Sweet as," we can do it. I don’t want you thinking that the Kiwis approach was unprofessional -- far from it. They ran the show by the numbers, and everything went smooth as clockwork, notwithstanding the constant changes. The Ambassador’s security detail went so far as to single out the Kiwis as the best unit they worked with in all their visits around Afghanistan. No, the Kiwis were professional, but they don’t sweat the small stuff. I hope to emulate that approach in time.

Anyway, the day finally arrives. The C-130 hits the airfield, and our convoy races out to meet them. We scoop up the delegation, the Ambassador, his aide, my boss, his wife, several other straphangers, the security detail, and of course, the press, and shuttle them over to the PRT to begin the day. The Kiwis gave the Ambassador a heluva welcome, doing a traditional kapa haka wero welcome, something used as one Maori tribe would visit another. The sentries came up and challenged the Ambassador, as leader of this foreign tribe, demanding he announce his intentions. While never taking his eyes off the sentry, the Ambassador had to pick up a leaf to signal his intention of coming in peace. It’s not that easy -- I know from experience! He pulled it off without a hitch, though. I guess that’s why we pay him the big bucks to be my boss. ;)

We spent the rest of the day giving the Ambassador a taste of Bamyan, visiting a couple of development projects U.S. taxpayers are funding (a midwife clinic, road reconstruction, among just a few), took him for a tour of the male Buddha site, dropped him and his delegation off at the Governor’s office for meetings and lunch, and then arranged a meeting for him with local village shura and other community leaders. It was a LOT of work, but I think things went well. With this visit over, I can focus on my real job, right? Well, sort of!

Buzhkazi

Every place has their hardcore sports fans. For the Kiwis, for New Zealand, its rugby (watch the All Blacks in action, that’s all I will say). For much of the world, it is soccer, or futbol, especially the English Premier League (my wife has been a Man U fan longer than I have known her, even while she cannot stand Sir Alex Ferguson). For the U.S., I believe it is football (some historical buffs say baseball, but the steroid scandal has really stained our national pastime).

In the Southern United States, it DEFINITELY is football, specifically, college football. If you think Americans have lost their religious identity, drop into Death Valley, or the Swamp, or waltz Between the Hedges in Athens, or listen to ol’ Rocky Top in Knoxville, or see the Eagle fly in Jordan Hare Stadium, or, if you are really brave (and really hungry) visit Dreamland Barbeque in Tuscaloosa on Crimson Tide gameday. Win or lose, some of the best BBQ in the U.S., but if you are not drenched in crimson, you may be drenched in something less savory. Passion and religion are alive and well as people cheer on their team. Don’t believe me? You should have seen me in the heartbreaking fourth quarter of the LSU-Tennessee game.

Afghanistan is no exception. They go crazy for their national sport too. Only difference? Instead of using a bat, or ball, they use horses, and either a goat or a calf. The night before the match, they kill the animal, decapitate it, and then sew the neck shut. They then soak the animal all night in water, so that it will not explode the following day with all of its abuse. BTW, I have pictures of all of this stuff, but the internet connection here really, hmm, well, to be as delicate as possible, it BLOWS. If you want to see pictures from me, you may have to wait until I burn some CDs for everyone.

Buzhkasi is an excuse for a holiday. Everyone who is anyone (that is, everyone who is anyone and male -- no women were anywhere to be seen) will be out where the horses and riders go after it. Men and kids are out hawking candy, watermelon, sodas, water, Afghan long bread (it’s reeealllly good), almonds, all kinds of stuff. The Bamyan Mayor makes a speech. The UN makes a speech. The Deputy Governor makes a speech. Everybody makes a speech! This is worse than an election rally (I found out later that the Joint Electoral Management Body, the organization overseeing the Sept. 18 elections, organized the event. Now it makes sense!)

Finally, the horses hit the field. In theory, there are two teams, Yakawlang District’s finest against Bamyan City. In reality though, Buzhkazi reflects Afghan society, because the situation can change with a blink of an eye, as alliances change and attitudes shift. The whole thing looks like merry chaos to everybody on the outside.

Anyway, the object is to carry the goat from one side of the field to another, and then to drop it in a circle in the center of the "field." One rider grabs the goat, and immediately almost falls off his horse. Turns out this was on purpose -- riders try to stay very low to avoid getting hit by the other riders’ riding crops. We see a mass of horses, riding crops lashing this and that, and lots of dust. (Did I mention there is dust here? I’ll have to write about that another time.) They run one way, they run that, more whipping, more dust, more galloping, more dust. Like with pro hockey, fan and field interaction is pretty intense. A lot of fans run around the field taking pictures. Occasionally, the riders charge straight into the stands (ok, there are no stands, it is just up the hill where people are sitting). No time to go get that beer and pretzels, or you miss your chance to play!

Buzhkazi can go on for days (it’s like cricket in that respect, i.e. pernicious). It only took me thirty minutes to start glazing over, however. For one, the entire event began in the middle of the day. At least at this point in September, it’s still pretty hot in the daytime! Second, I must confess I am from the MTV generation, and our attention span has to be broken up into definable segments, else we switch to Playstation and hook up Madden. (Remember when that word meant a coach first, not a videogame? That means you’re old too.) In other words, my attention wandered, but leave it to the Afghans to snap it back.

People have told me that the Afghans usually play buzhkazi in the winter, because the heat can be too hard on the horses. These horses run full tilt at their riders’ behest. There is no holding back. (Some of these horses are little more than bones stitched together in some skin bag.) Well, I guess it was inevitable. One rider pushed his horse too hard, and the horse finally went down, not to get back up. Did the rider try to get water for his horse? Did he try to find a vet? (There are vets in Afghanistan.) Of course not. This rider proceeded to begin beating his horse, flogging it to "encourage" it to get back up. As the horse was dead, this proved not to be a successful strategy. It did not stop the guy, though. I always thought flogging a dead horse was just one of those expressions, but now I have seen it actually happen. Yikes.

Once the horse died, the audience began to dissipate, most paying more attention to the dead horse, some getting in the way of the other riders, some just going home. At some point, without anyone noticing, one team got the goat into the middle circle, and Bam! Game over. Everybody packs up, on Chinese motorcycles, bicycles (with plastic flowers on the front of every one -- I’ll get you a picture), donkeys, wheelbarrows, and of course, on foot, and heads either to home or to Friday afternoon prayer. A good time was had by all -- all that is, except for the horse.