Dust shaken, falling from the ceiling
Allcon,
Suicide gate is the name we immediately gave to the main gate to the camp. I went there two hours later to oversee the coordination of the contracting effort for temporary repairs. Not a leaf left on the trees, uglily burnt down for most. The engine of the Toyota was found sixty meters away during the perimeter search, aimed at checking for secondary devices and gruesomely, for human body parts for identification purposes. Cement blocks of a size of three cubic meters, close to the car were either cast away or reduced to dust. Debris littered the ground, leaves, metal pieces, cement gravel in a thick layer. Soldiers were mostly calm and weapons were at the ready, although some less well trained did not keep them oriented to the ground as they should have.
Blindness organised, blindness to others, their history, their projects, to the world complexity or beauty. Willed and focused blindness. The suicidal criminal is in a fog, a somber corridor, trying to overcome his fright, blind to what is not his purpose, his given objective pressed upon him by religious, economic and social coercion and promises. He is blind to himself, his desires, he doesn’t look right or left, he looks ahead without blinking, without seeing the leaves or the trees that shall burn, the children walking in the street, the interpreter with a family, may be from his own tribe. He cannot maintain this focus or concentration for more than some hours, may be one, after he has been prepared by intense psychological brainwashing, prayers, rituals, a chain of organised actions, designed to take him step by step to the only course of action that consists in going through this dark, foggy corridor where thought is minimal, prayer replacing it, all external stimuli ignored, and then lost, the way out is death in a burst of promised light.
The burst, followed immediately by the blast, dislodged dust from the ceilings of the ops room of the stone building where we were attending the commander’s update and assessment briefing. Somehow, immediately everybody understood that it was close and serious. Alarms rang, and the commander after two minutes time for the first reports to come up, decided to carry on almost as if nothing had happened[1]. He also, as he learnt it, and then went back to the matter at hand, told us what was going on and that everybody was to stay in the building. As a matter of fact, the situation was such that a commando could have tried to seize the opportunity to enter the compound and in a Mumbaï way, proceed to kill as many as possible. I certainly regrettted to have left my gun in my office, but to tell the truth, the americans are the only ones that keep them with them at all times, and sometimes people look at me funnily when I bring it from my bedroom to my office in the morning (they don’t anymore now). Some questions remained unanswered, incompetence of afghan army and police in charge of securing the access to the green zone with private companies guards (Blackwater under a new name..), complicities, or guards making the rational choice to let the car go and burst somewhere else, preferably far from them. I was supposed to grab my airlines tickets at the “formerly called main gate” for Paris via Frankfurt[2] two hours later, needless to say, it did not happen[3]. As the French senior officer on camp, a general being on leave, I had the French unit commanders report to me regarding the status of our nationals, one was by the way wounded, not by the blast, although indirectly as he fell.
A French NCO had been in the first reaction team, gathering human body parts and hushing the afghan military away from the scene, directing them to make a security perimeter. She is a tough one, in charge of human intelligence, but slighltly overexcited, pumped up on adrenalin probably, we had a eye on her for the rest of the day. An American NCO of my team was in her room when her building, behind protection walls but only fifty meters away from the detonation point, got severely shaken. She was lucid enough to get other women to go away, took her gun but forgot her glasses. We comforted her when she eventually cried.
It ultimately shows there is no front line in this war and no rear, if anybody thought so[4]. The HQ is a high value target.
We spent some times in bunkers before we got cleared to go out again and if you have never been in a bunker before and if you plan to, you should know that it is preferable to go the loo before entering it, because the concept of minimum military requirement is here implemented to extremes and totally disregards gender and privacy. There are compartementalized walls of dirt contained by heavy duty material and wire, a thick metal ceiling covered with a layer of large pebbles and that’s it.
It is true that talebs are not amateurs, and hopefully I never conveyed this appreciation, willingly or not. They have networks, financial means, training camps, schools, mosques, they are supported from abroad and through drug trafficking, they also have well maintained internet sites. Besides their uncanny ability to make use of the internet, insurgents have also their own communication network (relays) for mobile phones[5]. They have learnt how to run information operations.
They mainly recruit among Pashtu tribes whose specialty has been for three hundred years for example for one of them often described to ambush and kidnap travelers, or for another one to fight relentlessly in harsh mountainous terrain. There are other breeding grounds for the insurgency. Like everywhere, the refugees come back to their country and despair, no land, or occupied by others, no jobs. The breaking of old traditions like the Kushi nomadization is another one. The lands where their cattle and sheeps graze in the summer is being appropriated by the government to be further given to local sedentary tribes in exchange of votes for the right presidential candidate. The lack of confidence in the government[6] and the judicial system, ranking 176/180 and falling, in terms of corruption among audited states, according to Transparency international, is another factor. There are also the land consignments we proceed with to extend our bases, without indemnifying the peasants because it is legally speaking the afghan government problem, but of course it does not work, the GIROA being ill equipped to manage such problems even if he were willing to solve them, which he is not, couldn’t care less if some peasants get evicted.
So all in all a sad and a harsh week for all here, and a general level of confidence probably declining, which is the general purpose of the adversary. Who needs confidence, though, to do one’s duty ?
Music tonight, of course “Psycho Killer”, Talking Heads, “Because the night belongs to lovers”, Patty Smith for the rush of life you get after the scare, “Achilles last stand”, Led Zep, and “No Quarter”, Dave Matthews band “Cortez the Killer” and Neil Young “Heart of Gold” to think of other things.
Yours, faithfully,
X
PS The voting turnover although weak should be understood in the light of many contributing factors, more to come.
[1] Symbols are important : were we to let the talebs shape our behaviour right into this morning usual event?
[2] Hopefully no such suitable name shall be given to this almost direct flight.
[3] But I got them now.
[4] The commander tried to prohibit any consumption of wine or beer at the HQ on moral grounds “because you understand there are young soldiers who lay down their lives in Helmand”, as if there was no threat here, and we were having a constant party, as if the existing policy of two beers ot two glasses of wine between 7 pm and 10 pm for which there was a consensus was unacceptable, and as if there was a disciplinary problem when there is not. All old nations representatives told him they would carry on to do what their national policy provided for in their national support cells and the ugly specter of Prohibition with his well known results was put aside. He sometimes is ill advised and there is a pattern here I’ll come back to. Tuesday, two rockets fell in the presidential palace grounds and a SVBIED, suicide vehicle borne improvised explosive device killed a US soldier from the HQ and seriously wounded five others, wounding further 30 afghan civilians, on a trip from a camp to another in Kaboul.
[5] And here you hesitate upon destroying them, there are so many uses you can make of it. But it tells quite a story about their organization and power over some parts of the country. There undoubtedly is, whatever spin you give to the metrics, an insurgent push these days.
[6] whose cars are sometimes, I’ve been told, used to smuggle drugs..
.
Suicide gate is the name we immediately gave to the main gate to the camp. I went there two hours later to oversee the coordination of the contracting effort for temporary repairs. Not a leaf left on the trees, uglily burnt down for most. The engine of the Toyota was found sixty meters away during the perimeter search, aimed at checking for secondary devices and gruesomely, for human body parts for identification purposes. Cement blocks of a size of three cubic meters, close to the car were either cast away or reduced to dust. Debris littered the ground, leaves, metal pieces, cement gravel in a thick layer. Soldiers were mostly calm and weapons were at the ready, although some less well trained did not keep them oriented to the ground as they should have.
Blindness organised, blindness to others, their history, their projects, to the world complexity or beauty. Willed and focused blindness. The suicidal criminal is in a fog, a somber corridor, trying to overcome his fright, blind to what is not his purpose, his given objective pressed upon him by religious, economic and social coercion and promises. He is blind to himself, his desires, he doesn’t look right or left, he looks ahead without blinking, without seeing the leaves or the trees that shall burn, the children walking in the street, the interpreter with a family, may be from his own tribe. He cannot maintain this focus or concentration for more than some hours, may be one, after he has been prepared by intense psychological brainwashing, prayers, rituals, a chain of organised actions, designed to take him step by step to the only course of action that consists in going through this dark, foggy corridor where thought is minimal, prayer replacing it, all external stimuli ignored, and then lost, the way out is death in a burst of promised light.
The burst, followed immediately by the blast, dislodged dust from the ceilings of the ops room of the stone building where we were attending the commander’s update and assessment briefing. Somehow, immediately everybody understood that it was close and serious. Alarms rang, and the commander after two minutes time for the first reports to come up, decided to carry on almost as if nothing had happened[1]. He also, as he learnt it, and then went back to the matter at hand, told us what was going on and that everybody was to stay in the building. As a matter of fact, the situation was such that a commando could have tried to seize the opportunity to enter the compound and in a Mumbaï way, proceed to kill as many as possible. I certainly regrettted to have left my gun in my office, but to tell the truth, the americans are the only ones that keep them with them at all times, and sometimes people look at me funnily when I bring it from my bedroom to my office in the morning (they don’t anymore now). Some questions remained unanswered, incompetence of afghan army and police in charge of securing the access to the green zone with private companies guards (Blackwater under a new name..), complicities, or guards making the rational choice to let the car go and burst somewhere else, preferably far from them. I was supposed to grab my airlines tickets at the “formerly called main gate” for Paris via Frankfurt[2] two hours later, needless to say, it did not happen[3]. As the French senior officer on camp, a general being on leave, I had the French unit commanders report to me regarding the status of our nationals, one was by the way wounded, not by the blast, although indirectly as he fell.
A French NCO had been in the first reaction team, gathering human body parts and hushing the afghan military away from the scene, directing them to make a security perimeter. She is a tough one, in charge of human intelligence, but slighltly overexcited, pumped up on adrenalin probably, we had a eye on her for the rest of the day. An American NCO of my team was in her room when her building, behind protection walls but only fifty meters away from the detonation point, got severely shaken. She was lucid enough to get other women to go away, took her gun but forgot her glasses. We comforted her when she eventually cried.
It ultimately shows there is no front line in this war and no rear, if anybody thought so[4]. The HQ is a high value target.
We spent some times in bunkers before we got cleared to go out again and if you have never been in a bunker before and if you plan to, you should know that it is preferable to go the loo before entering it, because the concept of minimum military requirement is here implemented to extremes and totally disregards gender and privacy. There are compartementalized walls of dirt contained by heavy duty material and wire, a thick metal ceiling covered with a layer of large pebbles and that’s it.
It is true that talebs are not amateurs, and hopefully I never conveyed this appreciation, willingly or not. They have networks, financial means, training camps, schools, mosques, they are supported from abroad and through drug trafficking, they also have well maintained internet sites. Besides their uncanny ability to make use of the internet, insurgents have also their own communication network (relays) for mobile phones[5]. They have learnt how to run information operations.
They mainly recruit among Pashtu tribes whose specialty has been for three hundred years for example for one of them often described to ambush and kidnap travelers, or for another one to fight relentlessly in harsh mountainous terrain. There are other breeding grounds for the insurgency. Like everywhere, the refugees come back to their country and despair, no land, or occupied by others, no jobs. The breaking of old traditions like the Kushi nomadization is another one. The lands where their cattle and sheeps graze in the summer is being appropriated by the government to be further given to local sedentary tribes in exchange of votes for the right presidential candidate. The lack of confidence in the government[6] and the judicial system, ranking 176/180 and falling, in terms of corruption among audited states, according to Transparency international, is another factor. There are also the land consignments we proceed with to extend our bases, without indemnifying the peasants because it is legally speaking the afghan government problem, but of course it does not work, the GIROA being ill equipped to manage such problems even if he were willing to solve them, which he is not, couldn’t care less if some peasants get evicted.
So all in all a sad and a harsh week for all here, and a general level of confidence probably declining, which is the general purpose of the adversary. Who needs confidence, though, to do one’s duty ?
Music tonight, of course “Psycho Killer”, Talking Heads, “Because the night belongs to lovers”, Patty Smith for the rush of life you get after the scare, “Achilles last stand”, Led Zep, and “No Quarter”, Dave Matthews band “Cortez the Killer” and Neil Young “Heart of Gold” to think of other things.
Yours, faithfully,
X
PS The voting turnover although weak should be understood in the light of many contributing factors, more to come.
[1] Symbols are important : were we to let the talebs shape our behaviour right into this morning usual event?
[2] Hopefully no such suitable name shall be given to this almost direct flight.
[3] But I got them now.
[4] The commander tried to prohibit any consumption of wine or beer at the HQ on moral grounds “because you understand there are young soldiers who lay down their lives in Helmand”, as if there was no threat here, and we were having a constant party, as if the existing policy of two beers ot two glasses of wine between 7 pm and 10 pm for which there was a consensus was unacceptable, and as if there was a disciplinary problem when there is not. All old nations representatives told him they would carry on to do what their national policy provided for in their national support cells and the ugly specter of Prohibition with his well known results was put aside. He sometimes is ill advised and there is a pattern here I’ll come back to. Tuesday, two rockets fell in the presidential palace grounds and a SVBIED, suicide vehicle borne improvised explosive device killed a US soldier from the HQ and seriously wounded five others, wounding further 30 afghan civilians, on a trip from a camp to another in Kaboul.
[5] And here you hesitate upon destroying them, there are so many uses you can make of it. But it tells quite a story about their organization and power over some parts of the country. There undoubtedly is, whatever spin you give to the metrics, an insurgent push these days.
[6] whose cars are sometimes, I’ve been told, used to smuggle drugs..
.
