Pretty Red and White Rocks

On a more scenic topic I have decided how I’ll decorate the garden when I return. I’m getting quite fond of little white rocks and red/white rocks. The solid red rocks are another story. It’s a funny thing here. You look out into the fields off the base and see lots of painted rocks. These are all about baseball size. The three color combos they’re painted is important stuff. I’m quite surprised we didn’t get any briefing on these before we arrived. They are the kind of garden decoration you really want to understand before you first see them. What you want to do is stay on the white side of these markers. The red side denotes un-cleared minefields. So you look out and see paths cleared and marked by red/white stones. In other places red stoned dot fields. Not a good place to hang out. I prefer to keep my limbs attached, thank you. No fences separate these fields from areas used for farming or goad herding. I don’t know how many kids accidentally chase livestock into these fields, but I do know it happens. One of the fields near the base has a few scattered craters and the hulk of a Russian armored vehicle decorating it.

Now, as odd as it is to gaze out at these low-tech life savers the really odd sight are the steep mountainsides covered in large white spots. It’s the same system applied to places difficult to imagine as normally passable to other than mountain goats. Apparently the Russians were worried of the Mujahideen scrambling down cliffs to attack convoys on narrow mountain highways. To be fair it I sure they were simply trying to avoid the fate of Elphinstone’s army. He was the British general who lost 16,000 retreating from Kabul to India in 1842. Only one man survived the ordeal. Not the most glorious page in Brit military history!

Now, land mines share some key benefits with that other favorite fixture of modern battlefields, cluster bombs. They are both fantastically effective against the enemy. As an added bonus they are both fantasticality effective against kids, livestock and the occasional adult once the battle has moved on to another town. These really are barbaric implements. So far as I know we haven’t used either in Afghanistan. The mines are Russian made souvenirs. I don’t know if cluster bombs have been used here. Anyone with a thread of morals will support the ban of these disgusting trinkets of war. Mines still show up in European fields on occasion, leftovers from the 40’s. As for the cluster bombs, I vividly remember a movement to ban them when I was a kid and we used them in Vietnam. Anyone who defends the use of either is a sick SOB who should be made to clean them up from the fields of the world.

If anyone is interested in knowing more here are some good sights…

http://www.icbl.org/
http://www.landmines.org/
http://www.stopclustermunitions.org/
http://www.clusterconvention.org/