There has been a lot of terrorist activity in Kabul since I arrived. My first night at RS, the team was dealing with media inquiries regarding the first American casualty from hostile fire since the beginning of the year. This didn’t occur in Kabul, but it was a significant event. Two nights later there was an attack on the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul. Then, two days ago, ‘the big voice’ called for a lockdown because of a twin suicide vest attack at the Afghan Ministry of Defence building, a location close enough that our advisors who work with MOD staff usually walk there for their meetings. One attacker detonated his vest near the entrance of the building during rush-hour and the second attacker detonated once there was a crowd of first responders; a coordinated attack to maximize casualties.
Later that night, a car bomb detonated in a neighborhood nearby. After they set off the car bomb, other shooters will hunker down in and around the blast site and patiently wait for first responders and Afghan police to gather at the site to help the injured and assess casualties and damage. In this instance, they were very patient and it resulted in an 11 hour shoot out.
The tactics of targeting civilians to draw in a firefight with officials are cold blooded and have garnered condemnation statements from many international officials. And, though tragic, the base I am on is so insulated I hardly knew any of it was going on. Here is how, sadly or thankfully, small my world of affect is in this war so far:
After the lockdown was lifted, our ‘lines to take’ written, official statement released and media inquiries answered, we got back to the tasks at hand. For me and my colleague Cpt Jessica Clark, USAF, the task was to continue scrambling to find a story or event for a local PBS correspondent whose trip with the general had recently been cancelled, but she still had a deadline for her first installment of a three part series on NewsHour updating what the US is doing in Afghanistan on the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. We had her and her cameraman booked on a military flight the next morning to visit TAAC-E (train advise assist command east), a forward operating base near Jalalabad. The PAO on the ground there was supposed to coordinate the trip with some training event or something with action visuals that would support a TV news piece.
Half of my job when receiving embed requests from reporters is managing expectations. They usually think an embed will look like it did in the last 13 years of this war, where they could follow a Marine or army unit into the field and document patrols or kinetic action. They always say they want to see ‘boots on the ground’ – the grunts in action. However, in 2013, the mission changed and now the Afghans are in the lead and our job is to enable them to defend themselves. Visually speaking, this is boring. Instead of firefights and explosions, visuals of the war now generally consist of classrooms or military advisors in civilian clothes meeting with Afghan generals in an office or conference room.
Late that night, but before the car bombing, we finally got flight times and somehow were able to coordinate the timeline to fit with observing an Afghan army non commissioned officer graduation. The TAAC-E PAO also lined up a few interviews with American enlisted soldiers to discuss their roles and experiences in Afghanistan.
By around 10 pm, things were starting to look like they will fall into place. I advise the reporter to meet me at the pedestrian gate at 6:30 am to allow time for the required security sweep and gate process and a one hour lead time for flight check-in. Then, at about 2 am, i get a text message from the reporter asking if the flights are cancelled because all the roads are closed in her neighborhood due to the car blast. I told her that flights weren’t cancelled as far as I knew, but I would call her if told otherwise.
The next morning I got up early, put on my vest and helmet and went out to the gate. On my way, the reporter called and said she would be late because many of the roads are closed so they’ll have to drag all their gear a few blocks to get to their driver.
Usually when I pick up media, the guards have me go through the gauntlet of turnstiles, t-walls (like the concrete partitions in the median of a highway only 10-20 feet tall and staggered to require you to zig zag around them), body scanners and x-ray machines that make up the pedestrian gate entrance. This time, they tell me to go out the exit, which is at the end of the gauntlet, or beginning if you go through it backwards like I usually do. So I walk out and realize that I am on a public street in Afghanistan by myself, the day after the city was hit with three bombing attacks. I take a deep breath and calmly walk the half block up the road to the gate entrance where I wait for the media to arrive.
The reporter and camera man end up ditching their driver because the road closures have caused gridlock throughout the city. They attempt about a mile walk to the base carrying two camera kits and vest and helmet for each. Luckily, a man with a car inside the perimeter of the closed roads offered them a ride and they made it to the gate with just enough time to go through security and check in for the flight.
The Afghan graduation and interviews all went really well and our previously disgruntled (because of the cancellation of the original trip) reporter seemed satisfied, which was a huge win for us.
Is it sad that even living in the combat zone, my affect of an extremely violent and cowardice act that occurs just down the road is merely the inconvenience of having to wait for someone who is delayed by subsequent traffic? Or is that part of the calice of being in a war for 15 years? Or is it just the nature of being a soldier (sailor) at war; focusing on accomplishing your task at hand, your mission, regardless of what is going on around you? I’m still not sure.