Return to Waristan, 2009
Dear all,
I almost haven’t slept in the Pamir Airways plane from Dubaï, departing at 03.00 AM local time, arriving at 06.00AM local time in Afghanistan, back from Paris and the warm embrace of family and some friends. The Kaboul approach by air is spectacular today, right after a night storm that might explain a crystal like atmosphere, so many mountains surround it with some snow left and then undulating plains of brown dust, rarely interrupted by some plantations that gather around and probably dry the rivers[1], : the shades, the curves of sandy hills, the high walls of grey compounds made of dried clay, the fields of wheat are incredibly well defined and look as if they were part of a projected HD movie. Then everything looks more and more real until finally it obviously is real when the plane touches ground.
A good indian is a dead indian. And a good writer is a locked in writer. Not that I presume that I qualify for the good writer title but I certainly write more easily when I am confined to my comfortable jail (it is probably comfortable as compared to most actual jails, although inmates do not have to worry about IED and suicide attacks from outsiders). And I was thinking that confinement and generally speaking, constraints tend to provoke my (and others) imagination. As a matter of fact, I really started writing again when we were as a family in Togo where the confinement was no less real if more subtle than in Afghanistan. No bullet proof jacket then, but day and night guards, high walls around the house, broken glass stuck in the cement at the top, and barbed wire intertwined with thorny flowered vines. And we always traveled with car doors closed. We spoke with the natives though.. And this is something I managed exceptionnally to do upon arrival, my armored car being very late, and taxi drivers soliciting me to bring me back to the HQ, I finally started chatting with an old Tadjik from the Panshir valley, where Massoud resisted both the russians and the talebs, talking with him being a way to keep the others at bay, but we finished by talking about life, Afghanistan history, the name of trees, birds, moon and sun in dari. He was sixty five, which is highly respectable here, as long as life expectancy averages around forty six years and that means that you must be very resilient to war, famine, illness and I forget one, yeah, death, and then probably wise and cunning also. He certainly convinced me to part with my 30 dirhams left from Dubaï without having to ask, which corroborates this idea. Other than that, he never said he personally knew Massoud which probably means he did or was a very subtle way to convince me he did.
I come back to the theater of operations to find a new commander challenging the briefers at the commander’s update and assessment and specifically the idea that an average of forty incidents a day is “normal”. He wants to see trends and explanations or consistent interpretations briefed to him alongside facts. He also significantly challenges the use of airstrikes against compounds, which is also very relevant, if you remember what I was pointing out some weeks ago about the Farah civilian casualties (wrongly attributed to ISAF when it was an OEF operation). To tell the truth, he seems to be reasonable and to understand that there is no operational need in most cases to attack compounds from where we get shot at, where it is likely that talebs have human shields or hostages or worse want to commit what I would call ISAF assisted suicide. Let’s wait them out, and take them when they flee in the open.. We have infra red, synthetic aperture radars capacities, satellite imagery. We can even fall back and keep the civilian population safe until we make contact with insurgents in a more favorable time or location frame. So despite the fact that Mac Chrystal responded to a US senator’s question about waterboarding that qualified legal advice cleared its use[2] and that therefore it had been justified, when definitely and as a fact, you do not need legal advice to tell you what is is, and it is torture, this commander is starting well in my not so humble opinion.
He might even go as far as aligning OEF and ISAF rules of engagement, special instructions to the aircrews and reducing the use of airstrikes against compounds to emergency situations. In the meantime, a good taleb commander is a dead taleb commander and we still have “Capture or kill” operations. It is not exactly “Dead or alive” like in the Wild West, but it is not far from the targeted killing concept which from a legal adviser point of view is perfectly acceptable in a situation of international armed conflict but starts to lose ground when the conflict is internal and as such when criminal activity or insurgency is liable to be dealt with by the local justice system.
I managed to smuggle a bottle of cognac through the afghan customs which at six o’clock in the morning were still less than effective and I am going to warm up a tiny bit of it in a glass before drinking it and then sleep, dreaming of the next time in France. I have decided I need three days at the ocean to gather myself for the last remaining three months after that. But we’ll see..
This conclude my Waristan brief for today,
Très amicalement,
X
[1] Named “wadis” here, which is close to the arabic “oued” and describe a more often than not dried expanse of entranched sand, and is temporarily filled by fierce floods of water after the rain.
[2] Reminded me of Clinton and his need for a legal definition of what having sex is…
.
I almost haven’t slept in the Pamir Airways plane from Dubaï, departing at 03.00 AM local time, arriving at 06.00AM local time in Afghanistan, back from Paris and the warm embrace of family and some friends. The Kaboul approach by air is spectacular today, right after a night storm that might explain a crystal like atmosphere, so many mountains surround it with some snow left and then undulating plains of brown dust, rarely interrupted by some plantations that gather around and probably dry the rivers[1], : the shades, the curves of sandy hills, the high walls of grey compounds made of dried clay, the fields of wheat are incredibly well defined and look as if they were part of a projected HD movie. Then everything looks more and more real until finally it obviously is real when the plane touches ground.
A good indian is a dead indian. And a good writer is a locked in writer. Not that I presume that I qualify for the good writer title but I certainly write more easily when I am confined to my comfortable jail (it is probably comfortable as compared to most actual jails, although inmates do not have to worry about IED and suicide attacks from outsiders). And I was thinking that confinement and generally speaking, constraints tend to provoke my (and others) imagination. As a matter of fact, I really started writing again when we were as a family in Togo where the confinement was no less real if more subtle than in Afghanistan. No bullet proof jacket then, but day and night guards, high walls around the house, broken glass stuck in the cement at the top, and barbed wire intertwined with thorny flowered vines. And we always traveled with car doors closed. We spoke with the natives though.. And this is something I managed exceptionnally to do upon arrival, my armored car being very late, and taxi drivers soliciting me to bring me back to the HQ, I finally started chatting with an old Tadjik from the Panshir valley, where Massoud resisted both the russians and the talebs, talking with him being a way to keep the others at bay, but we finished by talking about life, Afghanistan history, the name of trees, birds, moon and sun in dari. He was sixty five, which is highly respectable here, as long as life expectancy averages around forty six years and that means that you must be very resilient to war, famine, illness and I forget one, yeah, death, and then probably wise and cunning also. He certainly convinced me to part with my 30 dirhams left from Dubaï without having to ask, which corroborates this idea. Other than that, he never said he personally knew Massoud which probably means he did or was a very subtle way to convince me he did.
I come back to the theater of operations to find a new commander challenging the briefers at the commander’s update and assessment and specifically the idea that an average of forty incidents a day is “normal”. He wants to see trends and explanations or consistent interpretations briefed to him alongside facts. He also significantly challenges the use of airstrikes against compounds, which is also very relevant, if you remember what I was pointing out some weeks ago about the Farah civilian casualties (wrongly attributed to ISAF when it was an OEF operation). To tell the truth, he seems to be reasonable and to understand that there is no operational need in most cases to attack compounds from where we get shot at, where it is likely that talebs have human shields or hostages or worse want to commit what I would call ISAF assisted suicide. Let’s wait them out, and take them when they flee in the open.. We have infra red, synthetic aperture radars capacities, satellite imagery. We can even fall back and keep the civilian population safe until we make contact with insurgents in a more favorable time or location frame. So despite the fact that Mac Chrystal responded to a US senator’s question about waterboarding that qualified legal advice cleared its use[2] and that therefore it had been justified, when definitely and as a fact, you do not need legal advice to tell you what is is, and it is torture, this commander is starting well in my not so humble opinion.
He might even go as far as aligning OEF and ISAF rules of engagement, special instructions to the aircrews and reducing the use of airstrikes against compounds to emergency situations. In the meantime, a good taleb commander is a dead taleb commander and we still have “Capture or kill” operations. It is not exactly “Dead or alive” like in the Wild West, but it is not far from the targeted killing concept which from a legal adviser point of view is perfectly acceptable in a situation of international armed conflict but starts to lose ground when the conflict is internal and as such when criminal activity or insurgency is liable to be dealt with by the local justice system.
I managed to smuggle a bottle of cognac through the afghan customs which at six o’clock in the morning were still less than effective and I am going to warm up a tiny bit of it in a glass before drinking it and then sleep, dreaming of the next time in France. I have decided I need three days at the ocean to gather myself for the last remaining three months after that. But we’ll see..
This conclude my Waristan brief for today,
Très amicalement,
X
[1] Named “wadis” here, which is close to the arabic “oued” and describe a more often than not dried expanse of entranched sand, and is temporarily filled by fierce floods of water after the rain.
[2] Reminded me of Clinton and his need for a legal definition of what having sex is…
.
