To be allowed to sit in the Amir’s presence is a sign of great favour and an honour accorded to few, and chiefs and high officials when asked to sit down, would do so on the floor, sitting with their backs against the wall, and if many were present they would sit in a line along the wall on either side of the Amir, those highest in rank or favour being nearest to him.
—Frank A. Martin, Under the Absolute Amir, 1907
As summer turned into fall, one day dissolved seamlessly into the next. We would arrive at the district center, speak with the line directors, and brainstorm on their ideas and how to carry them out. We talked to whomever was in their offices—the directors of health, agriculture, education, or rural development. Matt Kotlarski, Mohammad Zahir, and I, accompanied by Sergeant Brian Hull, who wrote reports for the army, walked from office to office. We talked over ideas for projects the line directors considered viable and figured out how to fund them.
Assisting Matt were several civil affairs soldiers. They helped the staff learn about computers, in particular how to use spreadsheets and compose reports. The line directors’ computer skills were good, but their assistants’ ability ranged from good to basic to nonexistent. One of the agricultural assistants taught at Kandahar University and used his computer for a wide range of tasks. The education staff were generally well up to speed, while the assistant for Mohammad Naseem in the rural development office worked mostly with pen and paper. The village affairs officer never turned on his computer. The Afghan governance advisor assigned to the district had considerable expertise in computer use (he was in his twenties and working on a bachelor’s degree at Kandahar University, where Mohammad Naseem also studied). Governor Nazak was completely fluent with his laptop, posting most days on his personal Facebook account, while he employed several aides who had had little experience with computers. We spent considerable time trying to teach the basics of computers and cameras. Those skills became increasingly important as we began to demand reports with photographs to prove the projects we’d commissioned were being done.
In Afghanistan it is impolite to refuse tea from a host, so in the course of the daily rounds we might get four or five cups of piping hot tea, one after another. We sipped from dirty glass mugs with bits of the tea leaf floating on top. Some days the cups were reused endlessly as more guests arrived, with the remnants of the lukewarm tea tossed out and the cup refilled immediately. You looked for a clean part of the rim before sipping. Refusing was out of the question, because that would be an insult.
Lunch presented the same dilemma. Most days lunch would arrive in whichever office we were in. Sitting around communal bowls of eggplant swimming in vegetable oil accompanied by freshly baked loaves of flat bread, each person ripped their bread and dug out a chunk of oily eggplant. Decorum required leaving a little distance between your bit of eggplant and that of the person next to you. Life in Afghanistan was not for the squeamish. Some people avoided tea and lunch altogether, heading back to the base as soon as lunch appeared. Most soon adjusted.
In Afghanistan it is also impolite to discuss business at lunch, so we generally talked about life outside Dand. Karim Kamin, the governance advisor assigned to the district by the Independent Directorate of Local Governance (IDLG), faced two more years in his university studies. The rural development director was a former businessman who had traveled to Greece and India and was studying many subjects at Kandahar University. DG Nazak had his own colorful history.
In midsummer Cip Jungberg, the second USAID officer for the district, arrived. As Antoine Huss left, the district needed two officers to work there, plus Mohammad Zahir, our local cultural advisor-cum-interpreter. Cip, who was from North Dakota, had worked on a provincial reconstruction team in Iraq, knew plenty about working in war zones, and had good ideas about developing new businesses. With a wiry beard, a wry sense of humor, and midwestern common sense, Cip was an immediate hit with the Afghans, who were impressed by his empathy and willingness to try anything at least once to get results and back them up. Cip was not a fan of the eggplant and oil.
The district center in Dand stayed busy during the work day. Maliks and elders came to talk to district staff about the projects they’d requested. We often waited our turn until a particular director’s office was clear of elders so we could sit down and consult with him on our next moves. Villagers also came to have their disputes settled by the district governor or the huquq (the government legal representative). To speak with DG Nazak we sometimes waited an hour, though usually he had us sit in the office as he dealt with his stream of visitors. The closer to your turn you got, the closer you moved to Nazak, shuffling from one sofa to another as the visitors came and left. If we were at the top of the square and speaking with Nazak, we were often dislodged by important visitors, starting again at the other end of the room. This was convenient because when we had VIP visits from the military, Nazak could easily cast a subtle glance down the room at our district team to get visual confirmation on specific points, and visitors seldom would notice our nods or headshakes in return. When Antoine was in the room, before he left in early summer, he seldom left Nazak’s side and always occupied the plush chair next to the district governor’s in almost every meeting.
At the entrance and in the hallways the police bodyguards carefully eyed the visitors, checking papers and bringing tea for Nazak and his guests.
In the midst of this bustle we would hear the whirl of helicopter blades as a green or tan helicopter swooped onto the base next door. A few minutes later most of the activity at the district center would pause as a general officer, a foreign dignitary, or a U.S. civilian arrived to kick the tires. Most often it was Canada’s Brig. General Dean Milner, come to inspect “his” district. Dand was one of three districts in Kandahar Province assigned to Canada, and he visited about once a week, often bringing high-ranking guests with him.
His forces covered Dand, its neighbor to the west, Panjwai District, and its neighbor to the east, Daman. Dand and Panjwai resembled twins in a dysfunctional family: Panjwai, the violent ne’er-do-well, and Dand, the shining boy wonder.
Canada had varying experiences in Kandahar. On one hand it had showered its districts with largesse, and Dand had been among the biggest recipients of this bounty. Canadian money improved security in Dand by allowing the villagers to see the benefits of working with the government in the form of freshly dug canals, new roads, and better mosques.
On the other hand, for years the Canadian Army was overtaxed in Kandahar Province. The Canadians had too few troops to control all the ground. In the early years of its deployment, its units would rush from one spot to another, trying to put out fires. As soon as one fire was out, the troops would be moved to another sector and insurgents would simply filter back in again. So the population saw much violent action but little permanent security, which proved intensely frustrating for soldiers and farmers alike.
The Canadians benefited from two things. First, in their early years in Kandahar they saw few IEDs. Running in eight-wheeled light armored vehicles (LAVs) armed with 20mm cannon, the Canadians could defeat any opposition they encountered. When IEDs began to appear in volume in 2008, the LAVs began taking casualties. This problem would later plague the Americans, who supplemented the Canadians and who used an American version of LAVs, the Strykers. These would eventually be redesigned because they offered too little resistance to IED strikes.
The Canadians benefited as more Americans arrived, which allowed them to reduce their territory and exert a much greater effect on the area they retained.
Now Dand was part of the rump of Canadian-controlled territory. Like clockwork every week the Canadian general visited District Governor Nazak. By the time the helicopters dropped their passengers and departed, the general would be sipping his first cup of green tea.
Nazak had steadily improved the district center to impress guests. The walls of the large meeting room were covered in shiny plastic patterned to resemble wood. Glass coffee tables stood on red embroidered carpets. Nazak called this conference area his “corruption room.”
He boasted that although a contractor offered him a kickback, he declined, saying, “I won’t take the money. But now you can use that money to refurbish the shura room here so all the people can benefit.” Dand was known for having the nicest district offices in Kandahar Province.
Nazak often explained with a sly smile, “Having nice offices is good, because people can see I am not just walking off with the government’s money.”
Nazak and the general sat at the end of the room with the rest of the visitors seated on the sofas lining the walls. Ordered by rank, the meeting resembled some bygone imperial court. Cip and I usually parked ourselves far down the line, among the lowly lieutenants.
Nazak took full charge when he hosted visits.
Brigadier Milner’s visits helped to build a personal relationship with Nazak, but their discussions seldom centered on anything specific or even very useful for the district. The men talked in generalities—how Nazak was dealing with his maliks, how things in Dand were better than elsewhere, the Canadians’ plans. They typically exchanged the latest gossip about Kandahar Province’s governor Tooryalai Wesa, a divisive figure and former college professor in Canada who did little to tamp down the rampant corruption in the province.
After an hour or so the visit would conclude. Sometimes there would be lunch, with rice, flatbread, and meat. Then the general would be whisked away and we would return to business in the DDC.
As weeks passed the absence of substance in these VIP visits became more and more astonishing. At that time the district center lacked electricity from the power grid (generators ran on expensive diesel fuel paid for by the Americans), and the U.S. cohort was looking to take over the area. It was one of many problems left unsolved. But by then, in the waning weeks of the Canadian presence in Kandahar, what was there left to say? Other VIP visits seldom got past the same vague generalizations about the district. Eventually we stopped hoping substance would come out of these meetings. They were part of Afghan culture—strictly for show, not for solving problems.
This waste of time did not bother Nazak. His expectations were low. He mostly wanted to look good in front of ISAF, and avoiding any discussions of substance was a good way to accomplish that. He figured if he looked good to ISAF, they would help him get promoted. He wanted to become Kandahar City mayor, or deputy provincial governor, or even governor. Convinced that ISAF wielded major influence on President Karzai’s appointments, he aimed to project the image of a savvy governor firmly in control of his district.
The weekly bustle at the DDC was followed by an abrupt quiet on Thursday afternoons. Friday is the Sabbath in the Islamic nation, and by the afternoon before the Sabbath the DDC would be deserted. Then Cip and I would go back to our accommodations on the military base next door and write the weekly report to KAF. Every Friday we would make a trip to the battalion’s main base for the weekly planning meeting. On Saturday the cycle started again. We didn’t get a day off.
On most business days the DDC would clear out after lunch, which was served at about 12:30. The district staff worked on average three or four hours a day. But they did actually work. They talked to maliks and wrote reports for their own headquarters in Kandahar City. After lunch most of the district staff headed home. No one lived at the district center, because Kandahar City was only ten minutes away by motorcycle. Dand was a commuter district with a twist: people kept an eye out for insurgents on the trips to and from the city.
After everyone left the DDC the Americans’ second workday shift began. Cip and I would wade through emails and write reports; some days we worked as late as 10:00 p.m. Some emails were about the USAID programs we were overseeing, while others were requesting information needed to help the staff with their jobs or simply expressing new ideas to staff at KAF or in Kandahar City. Was Dand slated to receive any new schools? Could USAID boost farm exports to India? Reports covered USAID-funded projects such as roads, seed distributions, or new wells.
Many of the USAID programs essentially ran themselves. Others did not because some partners were unreliable, doing shoddy work and failing to make progress reports. The bad ones would require us to write reports to KAF and correspond with the embassy people to exert pressure on the companies to work harder.
One of our USAID contractors was digging eighty drinking water wells in several villages. Several wells failed the water quality test. They were retested, but the company dragged its feet on the retesting and didn’t update us on progress or even pass along basic details such as the depth of the wells. The coordination between us, KAF, the embassy, the contractor, and the district government dragged on for weeks. There was no real way to take shortcuts.
Usually we finished up the work at about nine o’clock, and then it was time to put on the music—usually from YouTube videos—and write a few emails or call home or have a chat.
Cip lived in Antoine’s old trailer neighboring mine, and sometimes we would walk fifty yards to the dining tent, in which eight wooden benches faced a TV that, if it was working, could be used to watch movies. But most people stayed in their tents at night and played video games or went to the morale tent, where they could phone home or send email on a handful of communal computers. There was also a laundry tent, where the washing machines broke down frequently, a shower tent with a few moldy stalls and water that was usually hot, and a small gym inside another tent. That was the extent of the facilities; we had all the essentials and couldn’t ask for much more. Who needed the boardwalk fast food of KAF when you had autonomy instead? It was liberating. The stars at night were amazing, bright dots easily visible through the clear desert air.
Most Westerners in Afghanistan tended to have one of two experiences: either they had cushy assignments on bases such as KAF, complete with dining halls and coffee shops, or they lived on tiny forward outposts where soldiers had to cut each other’s hair. Our life in Dand lay about halfway between the extremes, because our small base actually had washing machines—something the smallest outposts lacked. Most people enjoyed movies and games on their computers, and the base never suffered an attack.
On the other hand, the toilets were portables, the water in the showers occasionally turned cold or stopped altogether, and patrols were sometimes attacked. In one year in Dand one U.S. soldier and about a half dozen Afghan police and soldiers died on patrol. More were wounded. In Dand things were generally okay, with a small frisson of bad. It was dangerous and inconvenient enough to be interesting, but the danger for most of us who spent the majority of our time on base was remote. I would try to get out once or twice a week, accompanied by Mohammad, to inspect projects or the sites of proposed projects or to visit villages and get a sense of how the people lived and what they thought about the government, the United States, their jobs, and life in general.
One of my earliest trips involved the village of Bellanday on the western edge of the district, near Panjwai. An infantry company had located its base next to the village school. We walked to the school, passing through a gap in the fence. The school was clean and modern, with classrooms arranged along three sides of an open square. Inside a small common room with dusty floors and a few wooden tables we found the teachers, who were friendly and offered us apricots.
They said the school was safe and secure, though three years before the Taliban had come and killed two teachers and a school worker. They experienced a few problems. They hadn’t been paid for a month, which happened all the time because the provincial ministries were notoriously slow in processing the budgeted funds. The school stood empty, because the children were on summer vacation and would not return until the fall.
Eight teachers taught three hundred schoolchildren up to grade eight. They needed books, although they’d received some supplies from the province and 150 notebooks from the Canadian civil affairs soldiers located at the base nearby. The books were important because each student took seven courses: Pashtu, drawing, science, math, life skills, religion, and, for the older children, English. It was a well-run, efficient school. When we followed up with the district education staff, they said the book shortage was being solved and it was not a problem (several other schools complained of the same problem and we received the same stock answer).
The teachers lived in Bellanday village, where the Canadians had built a system of concrete-lined ditches to carry water from one end of the village to another, channeled by metal sluice gates set at intervals. We walked past the project, and the quality was top-notch. But the teachers told us the project was supposed to include sixty sheep. Meant for the local people, the sheep had been diverted to the contractor and to people at the district center, and the livestock had probably been divided up among the contractor, the local elders, and various district officials.
“If the people at the district center were not involved, the contractor could not have taken the sheep,” one teacher explained, offering an early lesson in the corruption that reached into almost everything in Afghanistan.
The opposite side of the village lay right against the border with Panjwai, and teachers said that side of the settlement was less secure. While we were at the base the soldiers told us the next village, situated across the border, was a hotbed of insurgent activity. Because it lay in Panjwai, clearing it would require additional troops. It was a problem they would solve once they shifted to Panjwai for good. Our trip lasted a day.
In July the Canadian Army cleared out the last thirty men at COP Edgerton, and the base grew very quiet. The battalion staff lived primarily at the main U.S. base ten kilometers to the south of the district center. The Americans at our little base either worked with the Afghan government, ran the base, patrolled the nearby villages, or mentored the Afghan police. Everyone had a purpose and time passed quickly.
There were horror stories on the large bases—booze, prostitution, sexual assaults, and despair. At our little base we lacked such problems. Life for us remained low-key, and we knew we’d lucked out.
We had occasional diversions. The soldiers in our headquarters element became enamored with a local cat that was striped and cute. He promptly acquired the name Carl and a feeding schedule. From there he became an Internet star for the soldiers’ families back home at Fort Wainwright, Alaska. As the unit’s tour wound down, an Internet appeal went out. Carl needed about $2,500 to be shipped home. The families back home took about a week to raise the money. Even before the soldiers arrived home, the cat had already arrived and was waiting for them. The whole thing was amusing and bemusing; the average Afghan lived on about $450 a year, and kids in the villages often went shoeless in winter. Other units didn’t take as kindly to pets. One day at dusk we heard a sharp crack as a senior enlisted soldier of another unit shot a base cat through the head with his 9mm pistol.
As USAID civilians, Cip and I each lived in a shipping container that was half house and half office. We had our own computers and phones to call home anytime we liked. We could complain, and sometimes we did. Our setup was so good, it was slightly embarrassing to tell anyone the details. A satellite dish sat atop my container, providing twenty-four-hour Internet and free phone calls via the embassy in Kabul direct to America.
Cip and I were spoiled, and we knew it.