Memorial Day at Camp Eggers

Memorial Day will never be the same for me again. On 20 May 2009, 1Lt Roslyn Schulte and Mr Shawn Pine were killed in an IED strike, while on convoy from Camp Eggers to Bagram Air Field. 1Lt Schulte happened to be Jewish, and by an amazing coincidence – some would say Providence - the one Jewish chaplain in all [...]

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Our Middle Names

For those of us who serve in NATO Training Mission and Combined Security Transition Command – Afghanistan, training and transition are our middle names. Training is what we do.   We train new soldiers and police, generating capable security forces.  We train staff members within the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of the Interior, developing [...]

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The 10 Dari Phrases You Need to Know

There’s an old saw that if you know three languages, you’re trilingual, if you know two, you’re bilingual, and if you know one, you’re American.  Most Afghans know a BUNCH…everyone knows Dari and  Pashto, and many also know Tajik, Uzbek, Russian, and English.  As a Coalition advisor in Kabul, I’ve found even a little Dari goes a [...]

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First Line of Defense

There’s no doubt:  At checkpoints, on patrol, and at duty stations throughout Afghanistan, the Afghan National Police (ANP) are in the fight. My directorate works with the Afghan Ministry of the Interior to build the communications capability the ANP needs to fight crime, fight terrorism, fight drugs, and fight corruption.     This includes installing radio and computer systems across the [...]

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Kudos from Afghanistan

I’ve got a GREAT team of Coalition Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines in my organization; here are three that really stood out recently: Senior Airman Taylor is a technician working in my Operations  section, connecting NTM-A and CSTC-A.  He is responsible for the installation, operation and maintenance of the classified Coalition network (called Afghanistan Mission Network, or AMN) at Camp Eggers [...]

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Afghan hands

Your slightly-cryptic but cool Afghan phrase of the day:  The hand is a flower. In America, wild flowers exist…fields of bluebonnets, columbine, and bear grass bloom without human help.  And fields of dandelions bloom despite human help! In Afghanistan, not so much.  There’s PLENTY of dirt here, but without nurturing Afghan hands, few – if any – seeds or bulbs would ever flower.  Thus, “[due to] the hand, [...]

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Veterans Day at Camp Eggers

As I’ve mentioned before, we don’t do many ceremonies here at Camp Eggers.  But Veterans Day (also known as Remembrance Day, Poppy Day or Armistice Day) last November was an exception. It’s a very powerful thing to pause, even for only a brief moment, and honor those who have served before us.  And it was even more [...]

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Gaining the momentum

Afghanistan: Not deteriorating! This is another slogan the Afghan Ministry of Tourism probably doesn’t need.  But ‘not deteriorating’ is REALLY good news for a country that – less than a year ago – seemed to be in a death spiral. Yesterday morning, the Stars and Stripes ran an article by Julian Barnes of the Chicago Tribune, quoting GEN McChrystal, [...]

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Lunch with the Candidate

Boy, it was nice to see the Afghans postpone their parliamentary elections.  Here’s my outsider perspective on elections in Afghanistan:  A few brave Afghans head to the polls.  An insane amount of fraud makes it almost impossible to tell who wins.  Our return on investment, after spending TONS of effort and money (personally, rolling out a BUNCH more [...]

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Airpower in Afghanistan

It’s been pretty amazing watching the transformation of airpower in Afghanistan over the last 9 years.  Initially, airpower was entirely about the Coalition and almost entirely about killing people.  On the first night of the war in Afghanistan, for example, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld described attacks by B-2 stealth bombers from the continental United States, B-1 and B-52 bombers from Diego [...]

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