In Marja...how we doing in Afghanistan?

A few days before my 49th birthday, waiting for the helicopter, teeth chattering at 3:30 a.m., about 25 degrees, my arms- gloved hands wrapped round for warmth, lying horizontal on a dusty bench near the flight line, looking silently up at stars that blanketed a beautiful night sky, no artificial lights near, every piece of clothing in my backpack and body armor on, fleece vest under a winter shell coat zipped to my mouth, a thick silk black bandana to my nose, clear protective eyeglasses, hood pulled up and over my kevlar helmet covering the wool cap on my head, ear plugs muffling most sound, and I thought, shivering, eyes straight vertical, "God, this is cool! Orion's belt is particularly stellar here and now."

I had spent that week in Marja, an important District Center in the Central Helmand Valley. Marja was carved with Helmand River irrigation from a dusty desert in the 1950s by USAID as a farming village with blocks, canals, and drainage ditches designed to optimize agricultural production. This particular area has been widely covered by the media this past year; the Marines went in last February and the fight has killed many. Held up by the U. S. and Afghanistan as an example of how we are going about this struggle, detractors have shown their light on Marja to demonstrate our effort in Afghanistan is doomed. Indeed, Marja presents somewhat in microcosm what we are trying to achieve here. I went there to find out for myself, something I learned on my trip to war-torn Nicaragua with Phil Neff in 1984: truth on the ground usually differs from how it is portrayed. Everyone has an agenda, me not excluded. Please let me share this openly with you, not as a representative of the United States. This is only my opinion and I request you treat it with the trust and confidence our friendship engenders.

No one would have guessed three months ago what I saw in Marja: a school opening in Balakino neighborhood where 200 kids, eager to learn, lined up to watch the district governor cut the tape to formally open the building. Fathers of the kids, with AK-47s, formed a neighborhood watch atop the school to protect it from those who would use violence and destruction. Yes, it has been a real threat. Insurgents have firebombed schools, threatened children who attend, thrown acid on girls, and done all they could to stop formal education of kids. Further north in Koru Chereh, another school, this one still a series of tents, where now 350 kids in 2 shifts per day attend. These kids beamed to be able to read, proudly standing at the front to recite their lesson in the mid day, comfortable sun. A resolute principal, who has faced, faces, and will continue to face death threats and murder attempts, stood strongly by, equanimous, neither smiling nor gloomy, present for the students, there to make sure they continue to learn. People in markets, teeming to buy and sell and walk in the streets. Most remarkably, there were women walking outside, in the markets. Of course, they wore burkas but they were out, which indicated an environment where women could walk. Conversations with locals, with authorities, with U. S. and British personnel revealed a remarkable change of tone over the past three months. 

When the Marines arrived last February, it took them eighteen hours to fight their way approximately 50 meters. And elders as late as October would not attend a shura (meeting) for fear they would be targeted by insurgents. I attended a shura with 70 elders where they began considering an agricultural processing facility. An older, white haired and long bearded man, pleasantly plump, entered the tent and all stood. He beamed with grandfatherly love, walked with a limp from Soviet bullets in his leg, his eyes went every whichaway, and, in the shura, honestly confronted the governor with the support of those in attendance. The governor will have to account for his actions with regard to this processing facility; this is how these people forge their future, the only true source of security. 

 

(Look closely for missing toofer! All I wanted for Christmas was one front tooth.Thanks, Heller!)

That is not to say we are done in Marja. While I was there, we lost a Marine, five blocks away from where I was at the time. And the loss affected me more than when I was on the carrier when we lost two fellow aviators, friends. Perhaps it is age but it seems to me that ground warriors have a much more intense experience of loss when one of theirs is killed. His name is Lucus Scott; I'll never forget it. I suggested to the authorities above me that we must wait until June before we characterize Marja for the fighting season returns after the poppy harvest in April. What will happen in Marja? An open ended question.

In Helmand, we have created time and space for six district centers to determine how they are going to live and they have reached out for a new way of life beyond threats, murder, intimidation, and destruction. However, these district centers are islands of opportunity in a swamp where insurgents continue to lurk and try to stay alive. If they survive, and the people do not reject them, then they will likely return to power. So the next step is to link the islands, the district centers, for people to move freely, for commerce, for ideas, for discussion to determine how these people want to live as a nation.

So down south, which is a different Afghanistan from the north, we are achieving measures of success. Up north, my friend James tells me we are seen as supporting a government in which the Afghans have lost hope. But if we are going to stay until 2014, the next election cycle, then we have a commitment to a new government beyond the current administration here. That tells me something, what exactly am still not sure. 

Am going to sign off now. Please feel free to ask questions. I will answer them as honestly as I can. It will help all of us if you come to your own conclusions about this place called Afghanistan, what and how we're doing here. You are why we are here in this cold, hot, flat, globular, crowded, lonely world, where all we really have is each other and The One. Love, Tim

 

Pigeon Games

Let me share my yesterday afternoon stroll with you. An American businessman friend, James, and I walked through Babur Gardens, around the mountain from Kabul, near the University. Air temperate and comfortable, much like a later afternoon in Denver, about 55 degrees, warm in fleece, walking, talking, enjoying space and time away from the thick pollution that smugs the rest of Kabul. Am not going to write some didactic macro history summary about Babur, a 16th century Moghul emperor from India who insisted on being buried here in a non grandiose manner, writing, "If there is a paradise on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here." Neither will I try to describe the quaint and proportional marble tomb and mosque, whose intricate archways create such a beautiful sense of motion as you walk by. Nor risk the words to fall short of the marble ribbon watercourse that bisects the gardens, trees, rose bushes (some with leaves and half emerged blossoms waiting just a slight sustained upturn in temperature to burst), and large grass lawns that form descending terraces down the slope of a mountain. A few Afghans shared the park with us, walking about peacefully. Instead, let me project what was going on with the pigeons.

Envision multiple flocks of pigeons flying about, not directly above but off to the side of the gardens over the high wall that separated the garden trees from the houses that escalated along the contour of the rising slope, stadium seating if you will, where the garden is the stage for the neighbors on their roofs and balconies. The pigeons circulated about the homes on the northwest side of the stadium. What caught our attention was whistling and then flag waving that accompanied the flights of the pigeons. James soon recognized this as a game that Afghan men play late in the day this time of year. Various pitched whistles, different colored flags moving back and forth like metronomes, the launch and gyrating flights of birds from separate balconies, morphing patterns of wing flapping specks forming new rounding flock shapes, expanding and contracting, now dense now rarefied, turning and turning, landing then launching again with a flag wave, each flock flitting around the most beautiful pigeon. Indeed the game centers on this pigeon. Looking closer, each had a central pigeon whose colors distinguished her: browns, creams, and whites in unusual patterns. In the market, a prize pigeon can garner between US$5,000 and US$6,000, James advises.

The goal of the game is to garner more pigeons for your flock with the beauty of your pigeon. The human element comes in when they land on your balcony and you tend to them, feeding them, caring for them, treating them well. The ultimate score is for the beautiful pigeon from another flock to join yours and end up on your balcony or rooftop so you can nurture them. I don't think it's a game where one Afghan neighbor gets in his neighbor's face or talks smack about how his pigeon kicked butt on another the night before. Rather, it's a game of gathering, in the end, uncontrollable birds flitting about in the late afternoon wind, treating them well such that the beauty within chooses to nest on your rooftop or balcony. Unlikely this game would ever catch on in the West for how does a human control how a pigeon perceives beauty? And without more control over the factors at play, how can there ever be fair competition? James and I watched, fascinated, for some time. Then we heard loud dog barks and growls accompanied by human cheering which told us another Afghan sport was at play: dogfights. We moved on.

James drove me back to the embassy through teeming crowds in multiple markets and chaotic traffic circles of Kabul, people running out right in front of us, traffic jams, pot holed streets between dilapidated and bombed out buildings left standing, spiral staircase skeletons reaching to nowhere, bullet pock marks in the walls, everything and everyone stained with a particular Afghan look, rugged and surviving, can't call it unclean or dirty because the beauty of these people is that they continue living through all of it, not giving up. They do not smile. They look back squarely and state their hope by continuing to live.

Am back on the plane, bound for Camp Leatherneck, about to land and return to work after three weeks of being with family and friends and love in Colorado, Jordan, and Bahrain. Tears well up in my eyes as I think of home, you, our mountains and the beauty of our mutual lives, how precious in this world of ours, how blessed you and I are. Am grateful for this job, pleased to no end that this power of emotion which has brought me to tears connects me with you through time and space, allows me the privilege to sign with genuine Love,

Tim

p.s. below is a picture in front of the library at the University of Kabul with my Afghan friends, Syed is to your left and Shuja is to your right.