I bent the rules the other day. I left my 9mm and uniform on the base and took a ride with one of our contractors to visit a FOB (Forward Operating Base) in Jalalabad. It was a very rewarding trip for me, both professionally and personally. I have a much better understanding of the traffic patterns and issues facing trucks as they negotiate the pass up the Kabul river gorge. What should take an hour and a half could easily be an 8 hour trip at the wrong time of day. The logistics issues we deal with in the states are a cakewalk compared to Afghanistan!
The trip was a short fused opportunity for me. The offer came up one evening and the next day I was off the FOB in civvies. I was a bit apprehensive. Bagram is a very insular place. It has the look and feel of somewhere in a Mad Max movie. The up armored trucks add to the si-fi effect. It’s easy to look out past the mine fields and ruined mud compounds and imagine a world torn by insurgent warfare. I knew our carrier reps drove this regularly but people on the base generally fly from place to place or speed along in frightening columns of sand-colored, steel reinforced trucks topped with heavy machine guns and automatic grenade launchers. So I was trying to imagine what I was going to find on the other side of the wire. It was disconcerting leaving the base in civvies with body armor on.
Once outside the base I met up with our rep, left the armor with my assistant, and we were off. Driving away from base was liberating. The ruins gave way to occupied mud castles. The compounds here have two or three foot thick mud walls 10 or more feet tall. They look imposing but the living quarters aren’t that large, just the wall. The road between Bagram and Kabul climbs slowly up a low pass. Not much grows here this time of year. The horizon is dirt without trees, those mud compounds and the occasional police checkpoint. The road itself is pretty bad, potholes everywhere. The speed bumps by the checkpoints seem nearly invisible thanks to the khaki dust everywhere. It’s a very alien landscape. The only place I’ve been that comes even close is Bolivia between Copacabana and La Paz. As we drove we passed the occasional kid shoveling dirt into potholes and holding out their hand for donations to their road maintenance efforts. GW would be proud of this privatized road maintenance scheme!
Once through the low pass the smog from Kabul came into sight. This confused me. I wasn’t aware Kabul had any industry to speak of and there aren’t that many cars in the area. I was wondering, why the smog? I found out a short distance later. The Afghans have a booming industry in mud brick production. They are firing these with a unique, if not filthy, fuel source… old tires. They cut them up and use them to heat the furnace. Not clean, but quite effective.
The landscape on the downhill run to Kabul varies little from the run out from Bagram. More mud castles some kiln chimneys, a few Afghan national Army and Coalition bases, oh and more Russian armor carcasses. Unfortunately the old Russian armor can’t be melted down and reused because it is not normal steel. Like all modern armor it is a weird allow of steel, magnesium and who knows what. The Afghans, being fantastically resourceful completely dismantle every bolt on part from these old relics. BMP’s and BTR’s are barely recognizable carcasses. The T62’s and T72’s are more easily spotted because the turrets and main guns are not easily removed. I’m guessing these are cleaned out inside like the APC’s. I don’t have much desire to climb inside one to check. A friend told me of a couple Americans that tried that a while back in the large tank graveyard north of Bagram. They stepped on a land mine in the process. Oops!
Traveling around this land I am struck by the amount of heavy equipment left behind by the Russians. They were fighting against light infantry that had decentralized command structure. These fighters didn’t have much in the way of heavy weapons and yet the Russian losses were staggering. It’s a sobering sight.
The trip was a short fused opportunity for me. The offer came up one evening and the next day I was off the FOB in civvies. I was a bit apprehensive. Bagram is a very insular place. It has the look and feel of somewhere in a Mad Max movie. The up armored trucks add to the si-fi effect. It’s easy to look out past the mine fields and ruined mud compounds and imagine a world torn by insurgent warfare. I knew our carrier reps drove this regularly but people on the base generally fly from place to place or speed along in frightening columns of sand-colored, steel reinforced trucks topped with heavy machine guns and automatic grenade launchers. So I was trying to imagine what I was going to find on the other side of the wire. It was disconcerting leaving the base in civvies with body armor on.
Once outside the base I met up with our rep, left the armor with my assistant, and we were off. Driving away from base was liberating. The ruins gave way to occupied mud castles. The compounds here have two or three foot thick mud walls 10 or more feet tall. They look imposing but the living quarters aren’t that large, just the wall. The road between Bagram and Kabul climbs slowly up a low pass. Not much grows here this time of year. The horizon is dirt without trees, those mud compounds and the occasional police checkpoint. The road itself is pretty bad, potholes everywhere. The speed bumps by the checkpoints seem nearly invisible thanks to the khaki dust everywhere. It’s a very alien landscape. The only place I’ve been that comes even close is Bolivia between Copacabana and La Paz. As we drove we passed the occasional kid shoveling dirt into potholes and holding out their hand for donations to their road maintenance efforts. GW would be proud of this privatized road maintenance scheme!
Once through the low pass the smog from Kabul came into sight. This confused me. I wasn’t aware Kabul had any industry to speak of and there aren’t that many cars in the area. I was wondering, why the smog? I found out a short distance later. The Afghans have a booming industry in mud brick production. They are firing these with a unique, if not filthy, fuel source… old tires. They cut them up and use them to heat the furnace. Not clean, but quite effective.
The landscape on the downhill run to Kabul varies little from the run out from Bagram. More mud castles some kiln chimneys, a few Afghan national Army and Coalition bases, oh and more Russian armor carcasses. Unfortunately the old Russian armor can’t be melted down and reused because it is not normal steel. Like all modern armor it is a weird allow of steel, magnesium and who knows what. The Afghans, being fantastically resourceful completely dismantle every bolt on part from these old relics. BMP’s and BTR’s are barely recognizable carcasses. The T62’s and T72’s are more easily spotted because the turrets and main guns are not easily removed. I’m guessing these are cleaned out inside like the APC’s. I don’t have much desire to climb inside one to check. A friend told me of a couple Americans that tried that a while back in the large tank graveyard north of Bagram. They stepped on a land mine in the process. Oops!
Traveling around this land I am struck by the amount of heavy equipment left behind by the Russians. They were fighting against light infantry that had decentralized command structure. These fighters didn’t have much in the way of heavy weapons and yet the Russian losses were staggering. It’s a sobering sight.
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