It's eight o'clock in the morning in the mountains of Afghanistan, and I would really like a beer. A cocktail would be good too, perhaps a gin and tonic. Wine would also make me happy. Actually, anything with an alcohol content higher than the one Bitberger non-alcoholic waste of an aluminum can that I drank for some reason almost two months ago would make me happy.
Before anybody recoils at the thought of an upstanding young gentleman like myself craving an early morning buzz, please bear in mind that I've been here almost seven months, and at this point I am somewhat overdue for a break. I'm a bit burned out, and fortunately I only have about five more days until I get on a plane and fly home for my fifteen day mid-tour leave period. I'll be splitting the time almost evenly between Seattle and Mexico, and at this point, the thought of sitting on a beach in Mexico going out of my way to do absolutely nothing is pretty much what's keeping me going. Realistically, there are any number of things keeping me going, but the Mexico-beach-scene is one of my favorite screensavers that I like to turn on inside my head when it's time to tune out and attempt to make the week end more quickly.
There's another more profound element of the beach and beer that I miss, but you'll have to bear with me for a second because it requires a brief explanation, and I'm going to try to use an example to explain it. When we first got here in April, everybody started to figure out that the internet at the Green House (and now the FOB) could support VOIP phone calls, which basically means using an online program to call anybody, typically at ridiculously low rates like a penny a minute. Since I have a Mac, I had some difficulty initially using my computer as a phone because of compatibility issues with Yahoo Voice, the cheapest and most common VOIP program. Instead, I would borrow my boss's computer. He's stationed in Japan, and he has a four year old daughter who's picture is the background on his computer. While I was borrowing his computer, the background picture was his daughter standing next to a tree on a street corner in Japan. Aside from the fact that his daughter is adorable, what really struck me about the picture is that there's one person in the background, across the street. She's a rather pretty woman pushing a stroller. The reason I found (and continue to find) this striking is that she's a woman, standing freely in the street, and not wearing a burka. This little scene goes a long way toward explaining why I want a beer right now.
I think what it comes down to is the idea of being able to have a beer if I so choose. Or the idea of a woman freely walking down the street without a society of men crushing her. And to imagine a beach full of nearly naked men and women roaming around, swimming, and drinking all at the same time? It's almost more than I can conceive of right now. There are going to be restrictions and prejudices everywhere you go, but what I've really begun to miss is the ability to do as I please without a culture bearing down on me. If I want to walk down a street and step into a bar, why should anybody stop me?
I know what a few of you might be thinking, which is that I'm veering dangerously close to some popular right-wing slogans, and that the next words out of my mouth are probably going to be that everybody around the world deserves a chance to drink the sweet sweet milk of freedom and democracy without being oppressed. In a sense, I guess that is where I'm going (I'm going nowhere near methods for exporting all that milk to foreign countries, though). However, I understand that progress, equality, and freedom take time, and that this place isn't necessarily ready for all of it. All I know is that I value those things, and I would really, really like a beer.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
If you're going to work in the developing world...
...you have to be able to deal with poo.
Those sage words were spoken by our former USAID representative, and she has proven to be more right than I ever expected. As you might anticipate from a title like that, this may not be the most appetizing blog post you have the good fortune to read today. My apologies up front if anybody walks away from their breakfast or is bothered if I happen to let fly with an obscenity now and then. Shit happens; we'll all get through it.
I hadn't really thought about Amy's comment much more - she made it several months ago - until I read this article today: http://www.slate.com/id/2175569/nav/tap3/
Although like most Americans I generally go out of my way to avoid dealing with crap, the article threw into sharp relief the different types of personalities we have on this team, representing a pretty broad cross-section of consumers, from guys who think the Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese is God's greatest gift to gastronomy, to people more on my end of the spectrum. I may not like seeing goats slaughtered on the way to work, hung on meathooks next to the road, and then slowly coated with dust and wasps until all that's left at the end of the day is a lonely yellowed chunk of something, no more identifiable than the origins of the aforementioned hamburger, but I can still harbor an appreciation for the fact that at least the goat lived a pretty respectable life up to that point. Unlike its American cousin, the McDonalds beef cow, at least the goat ate grass and roamed relatively freely, as opposed to being force-fed corn, antibiotics, and rendered byproducts of its brothers and sisters to make up for its grotesque and otherwise limited diet. Also, the goat didn't live and die atop a steadily growing pile of its own crap. That alone has to count for something.
So anyway, distasteful as a freshly butchered slab of goat or sheep may look while hanging next to a mud shop and enveloped in a cloud of bees, I can readily admit that if you stick that thing in a pressure cooker, roast the hell out of it, and throw it onto a plate of rice, it's a damn good meal. If you're into the whole organic movement, it's hard to get more organic than what I've seen around here. Alternatively, it's just as good if you grill it on a skewer and wrap it in a piece of local flatbread. Nine times out of ten, local foods like Palau (the rice and meat plate) and kabobs are immeasurably better than the processed, pre-cooked stuff they serve most nights in our dining facility.
That being said, there's still the McDonalds crowd on the team that shies away from anything more adventuresome than an occasional piece of local bread, and this is where the Slate article comes in. For better or for worse - at least if you can take Dr. Sepkowitz's word for it - it's not too hard to figure out who on this team has eaten more shit than others. And although I guess it should pain me to say this, I probably come out on the higher end of that spectrum.
The reason I find all this blog-worthy is that Dr. Sepkowitz appears to be quite right. Not that I've studied it scientifically, but the people around here who seem to get sick the most are the ones who most strenuously avoid the local food and stick with the processed, boiled, vacuum-sealed dinners the US military has the generosity to send to us. I've been sick maybe three times as a result of bad food since I got here, and I'm not convinced in any of those cases that the local food was at fault. I have my limits - there's no five-second rule in Afghanistan, as far as I'm concerned - but I suspect that the occasional trace of fecal matter in my next kabob won't be any worse for me than the "restructured beef patty" that might be the entree in my next MRE.
Two other thoughts come to mind. One is that the people who skip the local cuisine aren't just short-changing their immune systems; they're missing out on an element of the local culture that we have the incredible good fortune to be able to experience on a daily basis. Where else in Afghanistan can you drive down the street and have dinner on the back porch of a restaurant, while listening to the river flowing ten feet away?
The second issue is that the Panjshir Valley produces the best fruit that I've ever eaten. I can understand the Army sticking with strict hygiene standards about where meat comes from and how it's prepared, but we could buy nearly all of our fruits and vegetables locally, save a tremendous amount of money rather than shipping all the same stuff into the country, and the quality would be better. Money would go back into the local economy, the logistics tail required to supply us would shorten, and food quality would increase. The watermelon this summer...best I've ever had. The Army-supplied watermelon? I can't speak for how it tasted, but the whiteness and stringy texture told me all I needed to know. The one Panjshir peach I had the good fortune to eat a few months ago? No shit, no exaggeration, best peach of my life. The Army-supplied peach? Again, I don't know what it tasted like, but I'm pretty sure the big brown spot on the bottom wasn't an extra patch of juicy deliciousness. And then there were the local apricots...best apricots ever. They were so sweet and juicy that it took me a few minutes to figure out that the aftertaste reminded me of eating a raw sugarcube. It turns out - and I never knew this until the locals looked at me like an asshole for throwing away the pit - that if you crack an apricot pit open, there's a delicious nut inside that's kind of like an almond. Now you know.
I'll close with a story that makes me laugh, but also makes me kind of sad. I was trying to convince a visiting Army guy to try the local food, and he wasn't going for it. Finally he leaned over and half-whispered that he had been told in training not to eat food sources (like local vegetables) not approved by the Army, because they might have "been fertilized with animal shit". I started to tell him that fertilizer, by definition, pretty much is shit, but I quickly stopped myself. He (and an amazingly large number of others) can go on thinking fertilizer comes in pellets from a plastic bag you buy at Home Depot, and that meat is pre-made by a butcher behind a wall at the supermarket, shiny plastic and styrofoam included. Meanwhile, in response to the question posed by Dr. Sepkowitz at the end of his article, I'll go on eating just enough crap to keep myself healthy. You should join me.
Those sage words were spoken by our former USAID representative, and she has proven to be more right than I ever expected. As you might anticipate from a title like that, this may not be the most appetizing blog post you have the good fortune to read today. My apologies up front if anybody walks away from their breakfast or is bothered if I happen to let fly with an obscenity now and then. Shit happens; we'll all get through it.
I hadn't really thought about Amy's comment much more - she made it several months ago - until I read this article today: http://www.slate.com/id/2175569/nav/tap3/
Although like most Americans I generally go out of my way to avoid dealing with crap, the article threw into sharp relief the different types of personalities we have on this team, representing a pretty broad cross-section of consumers, from guys who think the Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese is God's greatest gift to gastronomy, to people more on my end of the spectrum. I may not like seeing goats slaughtered on the way to work, hung on meathooks next to the road, and then slowly coated with dust and wasps until all that's left at the end of the day is a lonely yellowed chunk of something, no more identifiable than the origins of the aforementioned hamburger, but I can still harbor an appreciation for the fact that at least the goat lived a pretty respectable life up to that point. Unlike its American cousin, the McDonalds beef cow, at least the goat ate grass and roamed relatively freely, as opposed to being force-fed corn, antibiotics, and rendered byproducts of its brothers and sisters to make up for its grotesque and otherwise limited diet. Also, the goat didn't live and die atop a steadily growing pile of its own crap. That alone has to count for something.
So anyway, distasteful as a freshly butchered slab of goat or sheep may look while hanging next to a mud shop and enveloped in a cloud of bees, I can readily admit that if you stick that thing in a pressure cooker, roast the hell out of it, and throw it onto a plate of rice, it's a damn good meal. If you're into the whole organic movement, it's hard to get more organic than what I've seen around here. Alternatively, it's just as good if you grill it on a skewer and wrap it in a piece of local flatbread. Nine times out of ten, local foods like Palau (the rice and meat plate) and kabobs are immeasurably better than the processed, pre-cooked stuff they serve most nights in our dining facility.
That being said, there's still the McDonalds crowd on the team that shies away from anything more adventuresome than an occasional piece of local bread, and this is where the Slate article comes in. For better or for worse - at least if you can take Dr. Sepkowitz's word for it - it's not too hard to figure out who on this team has eaten more shit than others. And although I guess it should pain me to say this, I probably come out on the higher end of that spectrum.
The reason I find all this blog-worthy is that Dr. Sepkowitz appears to be quite right. Not that I've studied it scientifically, but the people around here who seem to get sick the most are the ones who most strenuously avoid the local food and stick with the processed, boiled, vacuum-sealed dinners the US military has the generosity to send to us. I've been sick maybe three times as a result of bad food since I got here, and I'm not convinced in any of those cases that the local food was at fault. I have my limits - there's no five-second rule in Afghanistan, as far as I'm concerned - but I suspect that the occasional trace of fecal matter in my next kabob won't be any worse for me than the "restructured beef patty" that might be the entree in my next MRE.
Two other thoughts come to mind. One is that the people who skip the local cuisine aren't just short-changing their immune systems; they're missing out on an element of the local culture that we have the incredible good fortune to be able to experience on a daily basis. Where else in Afghanistan can you drive down the street and have dinner on the back porch of a restaurant, while listening to the river flowing ten feet away?
The second issue is that the Panjshir Valley produces the best fruit that I've ever eaten. I can understand the Army sticking with strict hygiene standards about where meat comes from and how it's prepared, but we could buy nearly all of our fruits and vegetables locally, save a tremendous amount of money rather than shipping all the same stuff into the country, and the quality would be better. Money would go back into the local economy, the logistics tail required to supply us would shorten, and food quality would increase. The watermelon this summer...best I've ever had. The Army-supplied watermelon? I can't speak for how it tasted, but the whiteness and stringy texture told me all I needed to know. The one Panjshir peach I had the good fortune to eat a few months ago? No shit, no exaggeration, best peach of my life. The Army-supplied peach? Again, I don't know what it tasted like, but I'm pretty sure the big brown spot on the bottom wasn't an extra patch of juicy deliciousness. And then there were the local apricots...best apricots ever. They were so sweet and juicy that it took me a few minutes to figure out that the aftertaste reminded me of eating a raw sugarcube. It turns out - and I never knew this until the locals looked at me like an asshole for throwing away the pit - that if you crack an apricot pit open, there's a delicious nut inside that's kind of like an almond. Now you know.
I'll close with a story that makes me laugh, but also makes me kind of sad. I was trying to convince a visiting Army guy to try the local food, and he wasn't going for it. Finally he leaned over and half-whispered that he had been told in training not to eat food sources (like local vegetables) not approved by the Army, because they might have "been fertilized with animal shit". I started to tell him that fertilizer, by definition, pretty much is shit, but I quickly stopped myself. He (and an amazingly large number of others) can go on thinking fertilizer comes in pellets from a plastic bag you buy at Home Depot, and that meat is pre-made by a butcher behind a wall at the supermarket, shiny plastic and styrofoam included. Meanwhile, in response to the question posed by Dr. Sepkowitz at the end of his article, I'll go on eating just enough crap to keep myself healthy. You should join me.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Token Crazy Guy
I realized several days ago that my experience in Gulbahar (see "Everybody is an Engineer") actually followed a standard model for how these meetings with the locals tend to go. Last Saturday we had a similar sort of meeting with another group of villagers, for another project we're getting right to start construction on. It was essentially a pre-construction meeting to try to set realistic expectations about how much power they're going to get from this micro-hydro when it's done, and to try to get them to start some sort of rudimentary community planning to decide how to divide up the power once the project is complete.
Like what happened in Gulbahar, we expected to talk to a few elders, the contractor, and maybe some younger guys who would be involved in operation and maintenance of the equipment once the project is done. As we walked into the meeting, it became obvious that most of the village had showed up, because the classroom we were using for the meeting was overflowing with people. We said our piece and answered some questions, and as it became more and more apparent that we can't provide 100 kiloWatts just because the governor promised at the groundbreaking ceremony that we would install two 50 kW generators rather than the two 28 kW generators the site can actually support, the bickering and complaining rose dramatically. We were still able to keep some semblance of order and continue with the meeting, but I'm speaking from experience when I say that it's hard to shut up a room full of forty Afghan men once they've started having their own conversations.
Shortly after the noise level jumped, right around the time we explained that there would be limits to how much power each family could realistically take, Token Crazy Guy made his obligatory appearance. He started shouting from the back row, then he stood up and shouted some more. Apparently he has ten houses, and two light bulbs just won't do. He needs a lot more power than that, and if we can't provide it, we might as well not build anything. Even as he started ranting, other people were trying to calm him down, but he wouldn't have any of it. He shouted until he was pushed from the room, then we heard him shouting at other people outside.
Also like Gulbahar, although even more so this time, it was quite obvious that he was not representative of the group. People in the front of the room were laughing, and even the guys who were trying to push him out the door knew that he was one agitated crazy guy who probably does the same thing on a regular basis. Once he was gone, we were able to finish the conversation relatively quickly. The villagers all want 100 kW, but they know they're not going to get it from us, and I think we were able to at least start a dialogue that will enable this project to be used realistically and maintained by the villagers for a longer period of time.
So here's the general layout of how these meetings seem to go. I'll call it the Panjshiri Curve of Unrealistic Expectations, and I'm pretty sure that it could be modeled mathematically with some sort of equation. Here are the key variables: Length of time spent waiting for the project, which in this case was several years. Sense of loss and/or entitlement; at Gulbahar the sense of loss was significantly higher, this time entitlement seems to have dominated. Time of day (only really relevant during Ramadan); later in the day means more hunger and dehydration, so probably relatively more impact of tobacco and whatever else is available to be smoked, resulting in a lower threshold for excitability. Average age in the room; in this case we had a wall lined with old men, with Token squarely in the middle.
When you plot it out, the shape of the curve varies, but the common thread always seems to be the crazy guy who appears right at the apogee. In Gulbahar it was a steady buildup to his appearance, followed by a quick drop as the meeting rapidly ended. In Korovah yesterday it was a smooth ascent, Token's outburst, and a smooth descent back to relative calm. Sometimes there are multiple smaller peaks that build up to a really big one, such as when I tried to convince Haji Akbar and his villagers that assaulting the excavator operator wouldn't be the best course of action to get them help digging out from the mudslide that followed the June flood. Haji Akbar would show up, quickly start to shout, storm off or get dragged away by other villagers, and then reappear several minutes later for another show. That whole scene ended with him in the middle of the road shouting at anybody who would listen, and the rest of the villagers smiling and waving and thanking us for coming as we drove away.
What's the point? Again, I don't know. In a way these experiences are kind of amusing, and they make for good stories after the fact. I think we're also managing to accomplish something productive each time; it's a slow and gradual process, but if nothing else, at least when Token Crazy Guy starts his tirade, it helps everyone else keep things in perspective, so maybe it's for the best after all.
Like what happened in Gulbahar, we expected to talk to a few elders, the contractor, and maybe some younger guys who would be involved in operation and maintenance of the equipment once the project is done. As we walked into the meeting, it became obvious that most of the village had showed up, because the classroom we were using for the meeting was overflowing with people. We said our piece and answered some questions, and as it became more and more apparent that we can't provide 100 kiloWatts just because the governor promised at the groundbreaking ceremony that we would install two 50 kW generators rather than the two 28 kW generators the site can actually support, the bickering and complaining rose dramatically. We were still able to keep some semblance of order and continue with the meeting, but I'm speaking from experience when I say that it's hard to shut up a room full of forty Afghan men once they've started having their own conversations.
Shortly after the noise level jumped, right around the time we explained that there would be limits to how much power each family could realistically take, Token Crazy Guy made his obligatory appearance. He started shouting from the back row, then he stood up and shouted some more. Apparently he has ten houses, and two light bulbs just won't do. He needs a lot more power than that, and if we can't provide it, we might as well not build anything. Even as he started ranting, other people were trying to calm him down, but he wouldn't have any of it. He shouted until he was pushed from the room, then we heard him shouting at other people outside.
Also like Gulbahar, although even more so this time, it was quite obvious that he was not representative of the group. People in the front of the room were laughing, and even the guys who were trying to push him out the door knew that he was one agitated crazy guy who probably does the same thing on a regular basis. Once he was gone, we were able to finish the conversation relatively quickly. The villagers all want 100 kW, but they know they're not going to get it from us, and I think we were able to at least start a dialogue that will enable this project to be used realistically and maintained by the villagers for a longer period of time.
So here's the general layout of how these meetings seem to go. I'll call it the Panjshiri Curve of Unrealistic Expectations, and I'm pretty sure that it could be modeled mathematically with some sort of equation. Here are the key variables: Length of time spent waiting for the project, which in this case was several years. Sense of loss and/or entitlement; at Gulbahar the sense of loss was significantly higher, this time entitlement seems to have dominated. Time of day (only really relevant during Ramadan); later in the day means more hunger and dehydration, so probably relatively more impact of tobacco and whatever else is available to be smoked, resulting in a lower threshold for excitability. Average age in the room; in this case we had a wall lined with old men, with Token squarely in the middle.
When you plot it out, the shape of the curve varies, but the common thread always seems to be the crazy guy who appears right at the apogee. In Gulbahar it was a steady buildup to his appearance, followed by a quick drop as the meeting rapidly ended. In Korovah yesterday it was a smooth ascent, Token's outburst, and a smooth descent back to relative calm. Sometimes there are multiple smaller peaks that build up to a really big one, such as when I tried to convince Haji Akbar and his villagers that assaulting the excavator operator wouldn't be the best course of action to get them help digging out from the mudslide that followed the June flood. Haji Akbar would show up, quickly start to shout, storm off or get dragged away by other villagers, and then reappear several minutes later for another show. That whole scene ended with him in the middle of the road shouting at anybody who would listen, and the rest of the villagers smiling and waving and thanking us for coming as we drove away.
What's the point? Again, I don't know. In a way these experiences are kind of amusing, and they make for good stories after the fact. I think we're also managing to accomplish something productive each time; it's a slow and gradual process, but if nothing else, at least when Token Crazy Guy starts his tirade, it helps everyone else keep things in perspective, so maybe it's for the best after all.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Everybody is an Engineer
Several days ago I experienced again one of the great frustrations I've encountered working in a place like this. We were at a project site meeting with the local elders of a village that sustained major road damage as a result of a flood on August 9th. This particular project site is actually outside of the Panjshir Valley, so it's technically outside of our area of responsibility as a PRT, but since it's just out of the mountains, and since it's the only road into the valley accessible to vehicles bigger than a large pickup truck, it's quite important. We took over responsibility for developing and overseeing the project because we have relatively easy access to the site, and if the road gets any worse or collapses completely, the entire valley is pretty much screwed for quite a while.
The immediate solution is essentially a long retaining wall spanning from the upstream shop to the downstream shop (it was originally a continuous row of shops, most of which fell into the river when the bank collapsed. Thankfully, nobody was killed). For anyone without a geotechnical background - pretty much everyone, myself included - retaining walls can be deceptively difficult, involved, and expensive, particularly when the ground might be saturated with large amounts of water. We spent several days developing and refining a suitable design for the site, while trying to keep the continually escalating cost within our budget. What we presented to the locals - who knew we were developing a project but lacked the specific details until we met with them a few days ago - was a technically sound and financially acceptable solution that will create two lanes on the road again and provide some protection against future floods. Obviously we can't build something that will save everything in the village from every conceivable flood event, especially considering the amount of damage upstream that could quickly get worse and cause problems at this site. Despite our limitations, what we designed is a good short-term solution that will help the village and the entire Panjshir Valley further up the road.
My conversation with the villagers took place in two acts. The first act was half an hour long and involved me telling them about our plans, our limitations, and what they could reasonably expect as a result of this project, followed by their explanation for why our plan obviously wasn't good enough, and how we should be doing things differently. This went back and forth several times, until my boss stepped in to try to disperse the crowd and only keep the key leaders involved. Then for Act 2 he took over and went through essentially the same speech - probably a little more diplomatically - countering the same objections over and over. To the villagers' credit, they did suggest alternatives and what they viewed as compromises, but none of them were technically acceptable (from an engineer's standpoint) and most of them involved some variation of us building a longer, shorter wall, then they would come back and finish the top of it, thereby saving money in a way that allowed a longer wall to be built. The problems with this approach are probably evident, but the most significant one I saw was the likelihood that they would never actually do their part. I had the brief urge to suggest they go first and build the bottom half of the wall instead, but that probably wouldn't have gone over so well.
Finally, after nearly an hour, the oldest guy in the group stepped forward and basically said, If you don't build it our way, you might as well not build it at all. This gave my boss the opportunity he was looking for, because he was able to take them up on their threat by telling them that was a great idea, we would save our money and be quite happy to see what they could build themselves. Of course he didn't mean it literally, but they got the point. They actually tried to keep the old guy quiet before he even finished telling us his thoughts, so I don't think he was representative of the group, but he gave us the chance to make the point, without coming across as petty or threatening, by using "we'll take our ball home with us and nobody will get to play" defensively rather than offensively. The point of the whole discussion, after all, was to negotiate an agreement, and at that point I think they grudgingly gave in to the fact that they would be better off with something rather than nothing. It wasn't all smiles and handshakes, but they were willing to go along with the project, which, considering the importance of the road, is really all we needed.
What really gets me about this situation is the underlying attitude involved. This is one of those situations where I have to remind myself that I volunteered for this job, and that I can't let myself get too cynical or judgmental, because I chose to be here and I owe these people more than to get upset about these things and to take them personally. I completely understand that I'm the outsider in this situation, and that the locals have personally experienced and should know firsthand how the river changes each year and how unpredictable the weather can be. The suggestion that the locals know better than we do how to build retaining walls and survive near a volatile river seems logical enough at first glance, but I've come to realize it's not entirely true. I've heard that suggestion in the few days since I talked to the locals about this project, and I've heard different variations of it from different groups of people around the valley.
I understand that we're newcomers here, and that the locals have a better idea of the geography and the climate than we do. I don't think that means that most people have a better understanding of what structures will and will not work in situations like this. If they did, the previous flood wouldn't have destroyed most of the existing retaining wall. The most common "structure" around here is a stone masonry wall. With the possible exception of the one contractor we hired to rebuild this particular wall, I don't think I've run into a single person who has given any more structural thought to these walls (and much of their other construction) other than to expand the recipe by making the wall as large as the bank it has to hold back, generally with a shallow foundation (or none at all), poorly mixed concrete, and no reinforcement.
If you want a nice looking stone masonry wall or canal, Afghans - I should probably be more specific and say Panjshiris, since they're the only Afghans I've worked with - probably know better than anyone else on earth how to build it. It's just what they do. But if you want something that stands a chance of surviving a major flood, or that won't succumb to years of gradual undercutting and erosion and then eventually collapse and take a bunch of houses with it, more is required than just piling up a bunch of rocks, but nobody seems willing to acknowledge that because they've always done it their way. There are quantifiable, demonstrable physical realities to deal with, and there are ways to mitigate problems even if it means part of the wall is underground and you can't see exactly why it works better just by looking at it.
Like I said, I understand that if an outsider walked into my town and told me they were coming to help, but just to trust them, they know how it's done and I need to adapt and learn from them, I probably wouldn't be very receptive either. If the outsider was a 25 year-old "engineer" would looks like he's fifteen and couldn't grow a beard if he spent the next five years trying...you get the idea. I know why it's hard to accept, and we certainly didn't go down there telling them they were wrong and we were right. This whole thing gets to several much bigger issues: How much do people really want help? Is there any hope when people won't recognize a level of knowledge required beyond "we've always done it this way"? On a more abstract level, this actually reminds me of the fact that there are fundamental, unchanging physical laws that govern the way things work, and that rather than trying to mold them to the way we want to perceive the world (a problem certainly not confined to Afghanistan), it would be immeasurably better and more productive to try perceive the world in a way that fits the facts. It strikes me as resistance to reality, but I know that my approach probably appears the same way to them.
I know, I know, that's a really philosophical take on the fact that a bunch of people want to build a rock wall differently than we do. The fact of the matter - arrogant though this may sound - is that there are reasons why our way will work, even if they can't see it. And regarding the geography and climate, you would be surprised at how actively people can go out of their way to avoid acknowledging facts they've probably dealt with their entire lives. General Rajab worked for months and finally put the river back where it was, and it accomplished nothing. Next spring when the river rises, it's going to go right back to where it was originally, and all his time and effort are going to be an even bigger waste than they've already turned out to be. Similarly, the people the other day in Gulbahar asked us to have the contractor move the river to the other bank once the wall is done, even though as soon as the river rises in the spring it will go right back to the permanently low spot on the outside of the bend and will be exactly the way it was before.
What's the resolution here? I don't know. At this point, for me, the resolution is to work harder being more patient and more understanding. Not everybody is an engineer, and not everybody can (or even should) approach things from a strictly rational and scientific perspective. The best we can hope for is compromise, and for them to realize when the project is done that they and a lot of other people have benefitted as a result of trusting us and working together on this. It may not be perfect, but not much around here is.
The immediate solution is essentially a long retaining wall spanning from the upstream shop to the downstream shop (it was originally a continuous row of shops, most of which fell into the river when the bank collapsed. Thankfully, nobody was killed). For anyone without a geotechnical background - pretty much everyone, myself included - retaining walls can be deceptively difficult, involved, and expensive, particularly when the ground might be saturated with large amounts of water. We spent several days developing and refining a suitable design for the site, while trying to keep the continually escalating cost within our budget. What we presented to the locals - who knew we were developing a project but lacked the specific details until we met with them a few days ago - was a technically sound and financially acceptable solution that will create two lanes on the road again and provide some protection against future floods. Obviously we can't build something that will save everything in the village from every conceivable flood event, especially considering the amount of damage upstream that could quickly get worse and cause problems at this site. Despite our limitations, what we designed is a good short-term solution that will help the village and the entire Panjshir Valley further up the road.
My conversation with the villagers took place in two acts. The first act was half an hour long and involved me telling them about our plans, our limitations, and what they could reasonably expect as a result of this project, followed by their explanation for why our plan obviously wasn't good enough, and how we should be doing things differently. This went back and forth several times, until my boss stepped in to try to disperse the crowd and only keep the key leaders involved. Then for Act 2 he took over and went through essentially the same speech - probably a little more diplomatically - countering the same objections over and over. To the villagers' credit, they did suggest alternatives and what they viewed as compromises, but none of them were technically acceptable (from an engineer's standpoint) and most of them involved some variation of us building a longer, shorter wall, then they would come back and finish the top of it, thereby saving money in a way that allowed a longer wall to be built. The problems with this approach are probably evident, but the most significant one I saw was the likelihood that they would never actually do their part. I had the brief urge to suggest they go first and build the bottom half of the wall instead, but that probably wouldn't have gone over so well.
Finally, after nearly an hour, the oldest guy in the group stepped forward and basically said, If you don't build it our way, you might as well not build it at all. This gave my boss the opportunity he was looking for, because he was able to take them up on their threat by telling them that was a great idea, we would save our money and be quite happy to see what they could build themselves. Of course he didn't mean it literally, but they got the point. They actually tried to keep the old guy quiet before he even finished telling us his thoughts, so I don't think he was representative of the group, but he gave us the chance to make the point, without coming across as petty or threatening, by using "we'll take our ball home with us and nobody will get to play" defensively rather than offensively. The point of the whole discussion, after all, was to negotiate an agreement, and at that point I think they grudgingly gave in to the fact that they would be better off with something rather than nothing. It wasn't all smiles and handshakes, but they were willing to go along with the project, which, considering the importance of the road, is really all we needed.
What really gets me about this situation is the underlying attitude involved. This is one of those situations where I have to remind myself that I volunteered for this job, and that I can't let myself get too cynical or judgmental, because I chose to be here and I owe these people more than to get upset about these things and to take them personally. I completely understand that I'm the outsider in this situation, and that the locals have personally experienced and should know firsthand how the river changes each year and how unpredictable the weather can be. The suggestion that the locals know better than we do how to build retaining walls and survive near a volatile river seems logical enough at first glance, but I've come to realize it's not entirely true. I've heard that suggestion in the few days since I talked to the locals about this project, and I've heard different variations of it from different groups of people around the valley.
I understand that we're newcomers here, and that the locals have a better idea of the geography and the climate than we do. I don't think that means that most people have a better understanding of what structures will and will not work in situations like this. If they did, the previous flood wouldn't have destroyed most of the existing retaining wall. The most common "structure" around here is a stone masonry wall. With the possible exception of the one contractor we hired to rebuild this particular wall, I don't think I've run into a single person who has given any more structural thought to these walls (and much of their other construction) other than to expand the recipe by making the wall as large as the bank it has to hold back, generally with a shallow foundation (or none at all), poorly mixed concrete, and no reinforcement.
If you want a nice looking stone masonry wall or canal, Afghans - I should probably be more specific and say Panjshiris, since they're the only Afghans I've worked with - probably know better than anyone else on earth how to build it. It's just what they do. But if you want something that stands a chance of surviving a major flood, or that won't succumb to years of gradual undercutting and erosion and then eventually collapse and take a bunch of houses with it, more is required than just piling up a bunch of rocks, but nobody seems willing to acknowledge that because they've always done it their way. There are quantifiable, demonstrable physical realities to deal with, and there are ways to mitigate problems even if it means part of the wall is underground and you can't see exactly why it works better just by looking at it.
Like I said, I understand that if an outsider walked into my town and told me they were coming to help, but just to trust them, they know how it's done and I need to adapt and learn from them, I probably wouldn't be very receptive either. If the outsider was a 25 year-old "engineer" would looks like he's fifteen and couldn't grow a beard if he spent the next five years trying...you get the idea. I know why it's hard to accept, and we certainly didn't go down there telling them they were wrong and we were right. This whole thing gets to several much bigger issues: How much do people really want help? Is there any hope when people won't recognize a level of knowledge required beyond "we've always done it this way"? On a more abstract level, this actually reminds me of the fact that there are fundamental, unchanging physical laws that govern the way things work, and that rather than trying to mold them to the way we want to perceive the world (a problem certainly not confined to Afghanistan), it would be immeasurably better and more productive to try perceive the world in a way that fits the facts. It strikes me as resistance to reality, but I know that my approach probably appears the same way to them.
I know, I know, that's a really philosophical take on the fact that a bunch of people want to build a rock wall differently than we do. The fact of the matter - arrogant though this may sound - is that there are reasons why our way will work, even if they can't see it. And regarding the geography and climate, you would be surprised at how actively people can go out of their way to avoid acknowledging facts they've probably dealt with their entire lives. General Rajab worked for months and finally put the river back where it was, and it accomplished nothing. Next spring when the river rises, it's going to go right back to where it was originally, and all his time and effort are going to be an even bigger waste than they've already turned out to be. Similarly, the people the other day in Gulbahar asked us to have the contractor move the river to the other bank once the wall is done, even though as soon as the river rises in the spring it will go right back to the permanently low spot on the outside of the bend and will be exactly the way it was before.
What's the resolution here? I don't know. At this point, for me, the resolution is to work harder being more patient and more understanding. Not everybody is an engineer, and not everybody can (or even should) approach things from a strictly rational and scientific perspective. The best we can hope for is compromise, and for them to realize when the project is done that they and a lot of other people have benefitted as a result of trusting us and working together on this. It may not be perfect, but not much around here is.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Battlefield Fashion
There are quite a few things I’ve come to like about being deployed. Most of them have to do with the shared set of common experiences and the sense of community you get in a deployed environment. To go along with that though, the ridiculous political decisions tend to be magnified beyond all belief. I talked about some of those things in my Iraq e-mails, and this place definitely has its share of stupidity. Most recently has been the Air Force’s decision to issue new uniforms, essentially to keep up with the Army. I’ll caution up front that this is probably going to be a big rant session, and that there’s a good chance a few of you will think I’m making a huge deal out of nothing. There may be some truth to that, but there’s also some truth to the fact that even during a war, people don’t have anything better to worry about than whether the media will recognize me as an Air Force member when they take my picture. Bear with the history lesson; I think it’s worth giving you the background on this whole sad saga.
Several years ago the Army developed the Army Combat Uniform (ACU), in order to replace the older Battle Dress Uniform (BDU) and Desert Combat Uniform (DCU) that most of the services shared for quite a few years. BDUs were the woodland green and brown camouflage pattern that most people are probably familiar with. The ACU is a grayish-green digital camouflage pattern that’s a substantial change from BDUs in both appearance and functionality. I was skeptical of the pattern initially, but it’s surprisingly versatile and works well in urban and remote environments. Most importantly, the ACU is functional. It’s not designed for style, and it’s not the type of uniform that’s likely to be turned into an inspection item by an overzealous commander. There are pockets on the sleeves that would probably prevent a crease, and the boots are rough-side-out tan leather that doesn’t need to be polished or really maintained at all. All of the pockets also have Velcro rather than buttons, something else I was initially skeptical of but am now a convert to, since the Velcro and the ergonomic pockets actually allow things to be accessible, and although Velcro wears out eventually, it’s a lot less likely to fall off or be torn off than a bunch of buttons.
The reason I think I can speak intelligently about the Army’s uniform is that I’ve been wearing it for the past five and a half months, as you may have noticed from the pictures I’ve sent and posted to my blog. The reasoning behind Air Force members wearing Army uniforms is that individuals like me, working in joint “outside-the-wire” assignments, shouldn’t stand out from each other. Once the Army adopted the ACU, that left the Air Force in DCUs, and since so many Air Force people are filling Army positions for the foreseeable future, Air Force members doing these Army jobs stood out significantly on the battlefield.
For a while the Air Force resisted the idea of its people wearing Army uniforms, until somebody at some level came to the realization that being different in a hostile environment is probably a bad thing, and that it would be better not to flag all of these Air Force people as targets. There are differing opinions about just how much more likely it is that somebody might get shot because they’re wearing DCUs and everybody else is in a different uniform, but to me it makes intuitive sense, and it seems to have been at least a contributing factor in several Air Force members being targeted and shot while out on missions.
Recently, the Air Force did an impressive round of late-in-the-game bandwagon-jumping that has actually been almost four years in the making. The Air Force has been trying to develop a BDU/DCU replacement since sometime around 2004. The first version came out while I was at the Academy, and was a striped blue and green pattern that was absolutely hideous, both tactically and aesthetically. Thankfully, they scrapped the prototype and presumably started work on a better version.
The eventual evolution of the blue/green uniform was the Airman Battle Uniform (ABU). It’s close to the same color-scheme as the ACU, except that it’s “tiger-stripe digital” rather than purely digital like the ACU. It also lacks the overwhelming majority of the functionality of the ACU. Except for the new pattern, the only differences from the former BDUs/DCUs are five additional pockets and two pen pockets. None of them are particularly useful. As far as I can tell, they took the old winter-weight BDUs, added several non-functional pockets, and changed the pattern. Don’t forget, this “modernization” was a multi-year process.
After almost six months in ACUs, I can definitively say they are the best uniform I’ve worn so far. They’re functional and ergonomic, and well suited to a hot desert environment. When wearing body armor, the sleeve pockets are handy, since every other pocket is covered by the armor. The collar is squared off, so that when it’s flipped up it wraps around your neck and seals out most dirt and debris, which makes body armor more comfortable around the neck and is particularly useful if you’re ever around helicopters as they land or take off. Possibly most importantly, it’s light and it breathes well. These are uniforms that see their harshest use in desert environments, so lightness and breathability are valued assets. All in all – and I’m not one to praise the Army too often – they did something right and produced a functional uniform in nearly every respect.
And then there’s the ABU. After a week wearing ABUs, I can tell you they were not developed by anybody who makes a habit of getting out from behind their desk, or who makes a habit of listening to people who do get out from behind their desks. The fabric, inexplicably, is the thickness of the old winter-weight BDUs. Strike one. The breast pockets, aside from being inaccessible without unbuttoning at least the top two buttons, are completely useless when wearing body armor. In places, they also add three layers of fabric (heavy fabric) to the overall thickness of the already hot uniform. Strike two. The pockets on the calves are about the right size for a cell phone, which I don’t make a habit of keeping accessible on a convoy. They’re almost the perfect size for a 30-round magazine, except they’re an inch too short, so you can’t button them, and as a result, if you try to run with magazines in the calf pockets, they fall out. Strike three. No pockets on the sleeves, except for a place to keep two pens. This was explained as a result of the Air Force trying to maintain its “heritage”, and since traditionally Air Force enlisted members have worn their stripes on their sleeves, the ACU-style shoulder pockets aren’t possible. Strike four. The list could keep growing, but you get the point.
The sleeve pockets warrant another critique, since I suspect enlisted stripes are only half the story about why they weren’t included on the uniform. As I mentioned for ACUs, there’s no practical way to crease the sleeve because of the shoulder pockets. BDUs had been adulterated to the point that the standard of how much “pride” a Soldier or Airman took in their uniform was how sharply the sleeves were starched and creased, so along with the rough-leather boots that don’t require shining, uncreased sleeves are actually a significant departure from previous style cues. I suspect the Air Force couldn’t bear the thought of all the flat-sleeved Airmen running around without sharp edges on their arms, because although the ABU is claimed to be permanent press and that ironing is neither necessary nor recommended, the sleeves and pants come with built in, pre-pressed creases that I’m hoping fade after a few washings. This is not indicative of a uniform designed with battlefield functionality in mind, and it makes me certain that the Air Force is significantly more concerned with fashion sense than functional, field-tested input.
As far as the heritage claim is concerned, the Air Force is full of shit. We’re the youngest service, and although our sixtieth birthday has us in the throes of an attempt to reclaim our “heritage”, we’ve been quick all along to throw out whatever has proved to be unpopular, as my time at the Academy amply proved. You want heritage? The Air Force used to be the Army Air Corps; give us ACUs with the Air Force digital tiger-stripe pattern. Hell, you can even sew on all the patches (or get rid of them, like the ABUs) rather than Velcro them, I really don’t care. Instead of being so wrapped around the axle about heritage (read: style), give us a functional battlefield uniform that will actually serve the “Airmen-Warriors” filling true battlefield roles. They’re also redesigning the service dress uniform to look more military-like, rather than the business suit trend that came around in the nineties. I’m all for that, because service dress is about appearance, and if they want to make a fashion statement out of it, that’s fine. Unfortunately, they’ve decided to make the same fashion statement with a uniform that has “Battle” as part of its name, and they’ve succeeded in creating something with none of the functionality that the Army and Marines achieved with their new uniforms.
As if this fashion-show game of catch-up wasn’t bad enough, here’s where it really gets stupid. Several months ago I received an additional set of Nomex ACUs, which are flame retardant, for use on convoys. This is a growing trend to help alleviate burn injuries caused by vehicle fires that can follow IED attacks. Nomex is hotter and less breathable than the standard ACU material, but having seen and helped bandage IED-inflicted burns, I can tell you that whatever minor discomfort Nomex might cause during a convoy pales in comparison to skin grafts and reconstructive surgery.
Now that the Air Force has provided us with uniforms that are fairly similar to ACUs when viewed from a distance, they have also decided that Air Force personnel on convoys should no longer be wearing Nomex ACUs. The alternative? Tan Nomex flight suits.
There are two safety issues at hand: blending in well enough not to be a distinct target (which ABUs accomplish), and burn resistance in the event of a vehicle fire (which Nomex accomplishes). For day-to-day operations outside the wire, blending in is the only relevant issue. For convoys, blending in and burn resistance are the two relevant issues, and there’s no correlation between the two. Why, if they have been issuing Airmen ACUs for the past year to alleviate the safety issue of being targeted for wearing a distinct uniform, would the Air Force decide that now that we have ABUs, we can start wearing another distinct uniform – the tan flight suit – during high-threat operations like convoys?
It’s important to note that a Nomex flight suit isn’t just another distinct uniform. It’s a distinct uniform that also turns me into a high-value target. I’m not an Intelligence Officer, but it shouldn’t take one to realize that jumping out of a vehicle during a convoy and looking like a pilot instantly makes my teammates and I more appealing targets. Do the Taliban know the difference? Maybe not, but it doesn’t matter. I guarantee they know what a pilot looks like, and even if they’re smart enough to figure out how unlikely it is for a convoy passenger to be an aircrew member, it’s still a propaganda win for them to capture or kill someone in a flight suit. If the next captive video you see on CNN is somebody in a tan flight suit, how many Americans do you think are going to take the time to understand the long and sad chain of idiotic decision-making that led to a civil engineer wearing a flight suit on a convoy?
I’ll be the first to admit that this is a worst-case scenario, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility. The Air Force recognized it as enough of a possibility that they authorized ACUs for over a year, and now that we have ABUs, giving us back our “heritage” and “service identity”, all of the old safety concerns are forgotten and the Air Force decides that it’s okay for us to become distinct (and, I maintain, high-value) targets again. The inconsistency required to make this sort of decision is absolutely staggering. More troubling is the willful and knowing disregard for a previously acknowledged safety risk to Airmen traveling on convoys.
Let me take one more swing at this, in a more concise manner: Nomex flight suits have coincided exactly with the fielding of ABUs, for no reason other than a political decision made by people removed from the front-lines who are more concerned about style points and a sense of heritage that only seems to exist above the rank of colonel either behind a desk at Bagram or somewhere in the halls of the Pentagon. Is that a clear enough statement of my take on the matter? I hope so, because I can’t express my disappointment and disgust any more clearly.
While I’m at it, indulge me for a brief fraud-waste-and-abuse tangent. Aside from the incomprehensible decisions being made about the wear of these uniforms, let’s look at it from the standpoint of your tax dollars. I was issued four sets of DCUs before I left McGuire. Then I was issued for more sets of DCUs at Fort Bragg during training, along with four sets of ACUs. Then they gave me one set of Nomex ACUs, followed last week by four sets of brand new ABUs, which are now the sole uniform I am authorized to wear, except for the tan flight suit that they assure me will be showing up any day. That’s eighteen sets of uniforms in less than eight months, thirteen of which are now unauthorized and are to be disposed of in an operationally secure manner (which means they should be burnt, a unique challenge for the Nomex ACUs). Thousands of dollars per person per deployment is a tiny fraction of billions spent weekly to fight two wars, but this is the type of senseless waste of money the Air Force would do well to avoid, considering that we’re cutting 40,000 positions (in the middle of two wars, mind you) so that we can afford to buy new planes.
And now that I’m on a roll, indulge me for one more tangent. Last week I was a driver for a one-day trip to and from Bagram, where I only spent about five hours actually out of a vehicle and free to roam around the base. Lest I offend the sensibilities of all the people on Bagram who have been wearing ABUs for the past six months (as opposed to me, the guy outside the wire who only get them a week ago), the first thing I had to do after we parked the vehicles was go to my room and change out of my Nomex ACUs. This won’t change once I get my flight suit, because the people who made that decision didn’t bother to acknowledge that without nametags, patches, or rank a flight suit isn’t a complete uniform and can’t be worn to the dining facility (or anywhere else outside of a vehicle), so if my convoy leaves around lunchtime, the last thing I have to do, in the midst of prepping and loading vehicles, attempting to grab some food, and receiving a convoy briefing, is to go to my room, change, and then run back out so we can leave.
Does it require any more than ten minutes to go change before and after a convoy? No, not really. It’s still infuriating though, because all of the money that has been spent, all of the policy letters that have been written, all of these hoops that we have to jump through now are purely for the sake of appearance. When the leadership and the public see pictures of us in the media, they can feel better about the fact that they know for certain we’re in the Air Force, so that the service gets the credit it deserves. Never mind that ABUs offer no functional improvements over the old uniforms, never mind concerns about being targeted, never mind the failure to issue (or, to the best of my knowledge, even manufacture) associated ABU items required for cold weather. Rest easy: We’re distinct again, and the Air Force is going to get the credit it deserves.
Several years ago the Army developed the Army Combat Uniform (ACU), in order to replace the older Battle Dress Uniform (BDU) and Desert Combat Uniform (DCU) that most of the services shared for quite a few years. BDUs were the woodland green and brown camouflage pattern that most people are probably familiar with. The ACU is a grayish-green digital camouflage pattern that’s a substantial change from BDUs in both appearance and functionality. I was skeptical of the pattern initially, but it’s surprisingly versatile and works well in urban and remote environments. Most importantly, the ACU is functional. It’s not designed for style, and it’s not the type of uniform that’s likely to be turned into an inspection item by an overzealous commander. There are pockets on the sleeves that would probably prevent a crease, and the boots are rough-side-out tan leather that doesn’t need to be polished or really maintained at all. All of the pockets also have Velcro rather than buttons, something else I was initially skeptical of but am now a convert to, since the Velcro and the ergonomic pockets actually allow things to be accessible, and although Velcro wears out eventually, it’s a lot less likely to fall off or be torn off than a bunch of buttons.
The reason I think I can speak intelligently about the Army’s uniform is that I’ve been wearing it for the past five and a half months, as you may have noticed from the pictures I’ve sent and posted to my blog. The reasoning behind Air Force members wearing Army uniforms is that individuals like me, working in joint “outside-the-wire” assignments, shouldn’t stand out from each other. Once the Army adopted the ACU, that left the Air Force in DCUs, and since so many Air Force people are filling Army positions for the foreseeable future, Air Force members doing these Army jobs stood out significantly on the battlefield.
For a while the Air Force resisted the idea of its people wearing Army uniforms, until somebody at some level came to the realization that being different in a hostile environment is probably a bad thing, and that it would be better not to flag all of these Air Force people as targets. There are differing opinions about just how much more likely it is that somebody might get shot because they’re wearing DCUs and everybody else is in a different uniform, but to me it makes intuitive sense, and it seems to have been at least a contributing factor in several Air Force members being targeted and shot while out on missions.
Recently, the Air Force did an impressive round of late-in-the-game bandwagon-jumping that has actually been almost four years in the making. The Air Force has been trying to develop a BDU/DCU replacement since sometime around 2004. The first version came out while I was at the Academy, and was a striped blue and green pattern that was absolutely hideous, both tactically and aesthetically. Thankfully, they scrapped the prototype and presumably started work on a better version.
The eventual evolution of the blue/green uniform was the Airman Battle Uniform (ABU). It’s close to the same color-scheme as the ACU, except that it’s “tiger-stripe digital” rather than purely digital like the ACU. It also lacks the overwhelming majority of the functionality of the ACU. Except for the new pattern, the only differences from the former BDUs/DCUs are five additional pockets and two pen pockets. None of them are particularly useful. As far as I can tell, they took the old winter-weight BDUs, added several non-functional pockets, and changed the pattern. Don’t forget, this “modernization” was a multi-year process.
After almost six months in ACUs, I can definitively say they are the best uniform I’ve worn so far. They’re functional and ergonomic, and well suited to a hot desert environment. When wearing body armor, the sleeve pockets are handy, since every other pocket is covered by the armor. The collar is squared off, so that when it’s flipped up it wraps around your neck and seals out most dirt and debris, which makes body armor more comfortable around the neck and is particularly useful if you’re ever around helicopters as they land or take off. Possibly most importantly, it’s light and it breathes well. These are uniforms that see their harshest use in desert environments, so lightness and breathability are valued assets. All in all – and I’m not one to praise the Army too often – they did something right and produced a functional uniform in nearly every respect.
And then there’s the ABU. After a week wearing ABUs, I can tell you they were not developed by anybody who makes a habit of getting out from behind their desk, or who makes a habit of listening to people who do get out from behind their desks. The fabric, inexplicably, is the thickness of the old winter-weight BDUs. Strike one. The breast pockets, aside from being inaccessible without unbuttoning at least the top two buttons, are completely useless when wearing body armor. In places, they also add three layers of fabric (heavy fabric) to the overall thickness of the already hot uniform. Strike two. The pockets on the calves are about the right size for a cell phone, which I don’t make a habit of keeping accessible on a convoy. They’re almost the perfect size for a 30-round magazine, except they’re an inch too short, so you can’t button them, and as a result, if you try to run with magazines in the calf pockets, they fall out. Strike three. No pockets on the sleeves, except for a place to keep two pens. This was explained as a result of the Air Force trying to maintain its “heritage”, and since traditionally Air Force enlisted members have worn their stripes on their sleeves, the ACU-style shoulder pockets aren’t possible. Strike four. The list could keep growing, but you get the point.
The sleeve pockets warrant another critique, since I suspect enlisted stripes are only half the story about why they weren’t included on the uniform. As I mentioned for ACUs, there’s no practical way to crease the sleeve because of the shoulder pockets. BDUs had been adulterated to the point that the standard of how much “pride” a Soldier or Airman took in their uniform was how sharply the sleeves were starched and creased, so along with the rough-leather boots that don’t require shining, uncreased sleeves are actually a significant departure from previous style cues. I suspect the Air Force couldn’t bear the thought of all the flat-sleeved Airmen running around without sharp edges on their arms, because although the ABU is claimed to be permanent press and that ironing is neither necessary nor recommended, the sleeves and pants come with built in, pre-pressed creases that I’m hoping fade after a few washings. This is not indicative of a uniform designed with battlefield functionality in mind, and it makes me certain that the Air Force is significantly more concerned with fashion sense than functional, field-tested input.
As far as the heritage claim is concerned, the Air Force is full of shit. We’re the youngest service, and although our sixtieth birthday has us in the throes of an attempt to reclaim our “heritage”, we’ve been quick all along to throw out whatever has proved to be unpopular, as my time at the Academy amply proved. You want heritage? The Air Force used to be the Army Air Corps; give us ACUs with the Air Force digital tiger-stripe pattern. Hell, you can even sew on all the patches (or get rid of them, like the ABUs) rather than Velcro them, I really don’t care. Instead of being so wrapped around the axle about heritage (read: style), give us a functional battlefield uniform that will actually serve the “Airmen-Warriors” filling true battlefield roles. They’re also redesigning the service dress uniform to look more military-like, rather than the business suit trend that came around in the nineties. I’m all for that, because service dress is about appearance, and if they want to make a fashion statement out of it, that’s fine. Unfortunately, they’ve decided to make the same fashion statement with a uniform that has “Battle” as part of its name, and they’ve succeeded in creating something with none of the functionality that the Army and Marines achieved with their new uniforms.
As if this fashion-show game of catch-up wasn’t bad enough, here’s where it really gets stupid. Several months ago I received an additional set of Nomex ACUs, which are flame retardant, for use on convoys. This is a growing trend to help alleviate burn injuries caused by vehicle fires that can follow IED attacks. Nomex is hotter and less breathable than the standard ACU material, but having seen and helped bandage IED-inflicted burns, I can tell you that whatever minor discomfort Nomex might cause during a convoy pales in comparison to skin grafts and reconstructive surgery.
Now that the Air Force has provided us with uniforms that are fairly similar to ACUs when viewed from a distance, they have also decided that Air Force personnel on convoys should no longer be wearing Nomex ACUs. The alternative? Tan Nomex flight suits.
There are two safety issues at hand: blending in well enough not to be a distinct target (which ABUs accomplish), and burn resistance in the event of a vehicle fire (which Nomex accomplishes). For day-to-day operations outside the wire, blending in is the only relevant issue. For convoys, blending in and burn resistance are the two relevant issues, and there’s no correlation between the two. Why, if they have been issuing Airmen ACUs for the past year to alleviate the safety issue of being targeted for wearing a distinct uniform, would the Air Force decide that now that we have ABUs, we can start wearing another distinct uniform – the tan flight suit – during high-threat operations like convoys?
It’s important to note that a Nomex flight suit isn’t just another distinct uniform. It’s a distinct uniform that also turns me into a high-value target. I’m not an Intelligence Officer, but it shouldn’t take one to realize that jumping out of a vehicle during a convoy and looking like a pilot instantly makes my teammates and I more appealing targets. Do the Taliban know the difference? Maybe not, but it doesn’t matter. I guarantee they know what a pilot looks like, and even if they’re smart enough to figure out how unlikely it is for a convoy passenger to be an aircrew member, it’s still a propaganda win for them to capture or kill someone in a flight suit. If the next captive video you see on CNN is somebody in a tan flight suit, how many Americans do you think are going to take the time to understand the long and sad chain of idiotic decision-making that led to a civil engineer wearing a flight suit on a convoy?
I’ll be the first to admit that this is a worst-case scenario, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility. The Air Force recognized it as enough of a possibility that they authorized ACUs for over a year, and now that we have ABUs, giving us back our “heritage” and “service identity”, all of the old safety concerns are forgotten and the Air Force decides that it’s okay for us to become distinct (and, I maintain, high-value) targets again. The inconsistency required to make this sort of decision is absolutely staggering. More troubling is the willful and knowing disregard for a previously acknowledged safety risk to Airmen traveling on convoys.
Let me take one more swing at this, in a more concise manner: Nomex flight suits have coincided exactly with the fielding of ABUs, for no reason other than a political decision made by people removed from the front-lines who are more concerned about style points and a sense of heritage that only seems to exist above the rank of colonel either behind a desk at Bagram or somewhere in the halls of the Pentagon. Is that a clear enough statement of my take on the matter? I hope so, because I can’t express my disappointment and disgust any more clearly.
While I’m at it, indulge me for a brief fraud-waste-and-abuse tangent. Aside from the incomprehensible decisions being made about the wear of these uniforms, let’s look at it from the standpoint of your tax dollars. I was issued four sets of DCUs before I left McGuire. Then I was issued for more sets of DCUs at Fort Bragg during training, along with four sets of ACUs. Then they gave me one set of Nomex ACUs, followed last week by four sets of brand new ABUs, which are now the sole uniform I am authorized to wear, except for the tan flight suit that they assure me will be showing up any day. That’s eighteen sets of uniforms in less than eight months, thirteen of which are now unauthorized and are to be disposed of in an operationally secure manner (which means they should be burnt, a unique challenge for the Nomex ACUs). Thousands of dollars per person per deployment is a tiny fraction of billions spent weekly to fight two wars, but this is the type of senseless waste of money the Air Force would do well to avoid, considering that we’re cutting 40,000 positions (in the middle of two wars, mind you) so that we can afford to buy new planes.
And now that I’m on a roll, indulge me for one more tangent. Last week I was a driver for a one-day trip to and from Bagram, where I only spent about five hours actually out of a vehicle and free to roam around the base. Lest I offend the sensibilities of all the people on Bagram who have been wearing ABUs for the past six months (as opposed to me, the guy outside the wire who only get them a week ago), the first thing I had to do after we parked the vehicles was go to my room and change out of my Nomex ACUs. This won’t change once I get my flight suit, because the people who made that decision didn’t bother to acknowledge that without nametags, patches, or rank a flight suit isn’t a complete uniform and can’t be worn to the dining facility (or anywhere else outside of a vehicle), so if my convoy leaves around lunchtime, the last thing I have to do, in the midst of prepping and loading vehicles, attempting to grab some food, and receiving a convoy briefing, is to go to my room, change, and then run back out so we can leave.
Does it require any more than ten minutes to go change before and after a convoy? No, not really. It’s still infuriating though, because all of the money that has been spent, all of the policy letters that have been written, all of these hoops that we have to jump through now are purely for the sake of appearance. When the leadership and the public see pictures of us in the media, they can feel better about the fact that they know for certain we’re in the Air Force, so that the service gets the credit it deserves. Never mind that ABUs offer no functional improvements over the old uniforms, never mind concerns about being targeted, never mind the failure to issue (or, to the best of my knowledge, even manufacture) associated ABU items required for cold weather. Rest easy: We’re distinct again, and the Air Force is going to get the credit it deserves.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Khoob nay
The Dari expression for "No Good" is Khoob Nay, khoob meaning good, nay meaning no. The kh sound is pronounced like you're hacking something up, rather than with a hard k. Khoob nay has taken on kind of a profound meaning around my office, since most of us know little more Dari than those two words, and since we seem to invoke them so often. The reason I mention this is because of the picture, which, if you couldn't tell, is a recently poured concrete column on one of our projects. This column embodies the most profound meaning of khoob nay.
I'm sure everyone has something they can think of at work that gives them a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of their stomach. As an engineer (a stretch, I'll admit, but my job title says civil engineer, so I'm a civil engineer, Dammit!), this column is one of those things. If it was just one column, it wouldn't be so bad. Unfortunately, there are about twelve more columns on this site, and the combined effect is something like a funhouse. Nothing is straight. Brick walls veer to the outside, columns tilt left and right, and nothing except the floor is truly horizontal or vertical. And let's not even get into the materials and techniques they used to construct these drunken columns, since basically everything they did was in violation of the contract specifications.
If you're curious, the building is eventually going to be a big hangar to house and maintain the equipment owned by the Department of Public Works. If you remember from a previous e-mail, this equipment may or may not actually exist, since it was charitably given away to one of the governor's buddies. As a result, this project may or may not actually serve a purpose.
Okay, that's me being cynical. It is a legitimate project, even if the Department of Public Works is lacking both leadership and equipment. It builds capacity, it gives them a place to store and maintain what little equipment they do have, and it should help to grow as a developing organization.
This type of thing is what makes the work around here challenging, because all this happened within the past week. I'm extremely fortunate to be on a team located in a place free enough to travel around and visit all these projects and catch these problems early. Other PRTs have to organize convoys and travel through IED-infested roads just to see project sites once a month, and I can't imagine how they are able to produce lasting projects. This building is actually a sort of success story, since if Panjshir wasn't so safe and the government so capable (if still somewhat mafia-esque), the columns would probably have gotten plastered over, nobody would have known the difference, and the lifespan of the building would probably be shortened to some degree.
For those of you wondering, the solution is to tear down and rebuild the columns, which is unfortunate, but better discovered and fixed now.
I'm sure everyone has something they can think of at work that gives them a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of their stomach. As an engineer (a stretch, I'll admit, but my job title says civil engineer, so I'm a civil engineer, Dammit!), this column is one of those things. If it was just one column, it wouldn't be so bad. Unfortunately, there are about twelve more columns on this site, and the combined effect is something like a funhouse. Nothing is straight. Brick walls veer to the outside, columns tilt left and right, and nothing except the floor is truly horizontal or vertical. And let's not even get into the materials and techniques they used to construct these drunken columns, since basically everything they did was in violation of the contract specifications.
If you're curious, the building is eventually going to be a big hangar to house and maintain the equipment owned by the Department of Public Works. If you remember from a previous e-mail, this equipment may or may not actually exist, since it was charitably given away to one of the governor's buddies. As a result, this project may or may not actually serve a purpose.
Okay, that's me being cynical. It is a legitimate project, even if the Department of Public Works is lacking both leadership and equipment. It builds capacity, it gives them a place to store and maintain what little equipment they do have, and it should help to grow as a developing organization.
This type of thing is what makes the work around here challenging, because all this happened within the past week. I'm extremely fortunate to be on a team located in a place free enough to travel around and visit all these projects and catch these problems early. Other PRTs have to organize convoys and travel through IED-infested roads just to see project sites once a month, and I can't imagine how they are able to produce lasting projects. This building is actually a sort of success story, since if Panjshir wasn't so safe and the government so capable (if still somewhat mafia-esque), the columns would probably have gotten plastered over, nobody would have known the difference, and the lifespan of the building would probably be shortened to some degree.
For those of you wondering, the solution is to tear down and rebuild the columns, which is unfortunate, but better discovered and fixed now.
Friday, September 14, 2007
I'm still here
Don't worry, I'm still around, and no, I haven't given up on this thing after only a week and a half of posting pictures. Weeks go by like days around here, and up until about two days ago it was a busy ten days. The biggest event recently was the memorial service for the anniversary of Massoud's assassination, which took place on September 10th. We had two generals come, so I spent the day playing driver and security guard. More than anything else we've done since we've been here, I think a lot of people on the team were nervous about that event. It was by far the most people we've seen in one place - at least several thousand, probably more - and it was the type of emotional event where we suspected everyone might have been a little touchy. Fortunately, everything stayed quiet and peaceful.
Ramadan started Thursday, which wasn't such a big event, but I suspect it will affect the pace of work for the next month. I expect things to slow down, since it seems likely that a construction crew fasting for the entire workday (to include not drinking water) will cause a decline in productivity. To coincide with the start of Ramadan, our network at the office crashed. It seemed like a lot of the local communities shut down waiting for Ramadan to start, and since we couldn't get online at the office, Thursday was kind of an early start to the weekend, which was nice in a way. Things should be mostly back to normal tomorrow.
Not much else is new. The Air Force gave me four brand new sets of uniforms last week, and although that probably doesn't sound so exciting, it's exactly the type of political debacle that serves as fantastic e-mail fodder. Hopefully in a few days I'll have something posted about it. The short version is that a few years ago the Army did something right for a change and produced a functional and comfortable uniform that I've been happy to wear for the past six months, while the Air Force spent four years developing a supposedly comparable new uniform that turns out to be nothing more than a winter-weight version of our old uniform, with five more pockets, only one of which is useful in any meaningful way. It's a semi-pixelated, tiger-striped business suit masquerading as a "combat" uniform. These people never cease to amaze me.
Like I said, I'll post more about it in a day or two, with some pictures included.
Ramadan started Thursday, which wasn't such a big event, but I suspect it will affect the pace of work for the next month. I expect things to slow down, since it seems likely that a construction crew fasting for the entire workday (to include not drinking water) will cause a decline in productivity. To coincide with the start of Ramadan, our network at the office crashed. It seemed like a lot of the local communities shut down waiting for Ramadan to start, and since we couldn't get online at the office, Thursday was kind of an early start to the weekend, which was nice in a way. Things should be mostly back to normal tomorrow.
Not much else is new. The Air Force gave me four brand new sets of uniforms last week, and although that probably doesn't sound so exciting, it's exactly the type of political debacle that serves as fantastic e-mail fodder. Hopefully in a few days I'll have something posted about it. The short version is that a few years ago the Army did something right for a change and produced a functional and comfortable uniform that I've been happy to wear for the past six months, while the Air Force spent four years developing a supposedly comparable new uniform that turns out to be nothing more than a winter-weight version of our old uniform, with five more pockets, only one of which is useful in any meaningful way. It's a semi-pixelated, tiger-striped business suit masquerading as a "combat" uniform. These people never cease to amaze me.
Like I said, I'll post more about it in a day or two, with some pictures included.
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