Today I got to shoot photos of an opening ceremony to kick off Rule of Law and Legal Issues training for Afghans. The photo shoot itself wasn’t exciting; I generally hate taking pictures of people at a podium speaking to a group, or the grip-and-grin posed shots. But this event was exciting because it took place at the Afghan Ministry of Defense. The advisors who work with the MOD staff regularly have to walk about 1.5 kilometers outside the wire to get to the MOD compound. So I joined a bunch of JAGs and legal advisors, and a Marine guardian angel, for a nice morning walk in the city of Kabul, in full battle rattle with weapons red (condition 1) and in a staggered formation.
Since I learned about the MOD hump movement during training in Poland, I have been curious and hoped for the opportunity to experience it, but I was slightly nervous about it today. Yesterday was the last day of Eid Mubarak, a 3 day Muslim holiday celebrating Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son in the old testament, or Koran, with animal sacrifices and days off of work. Notoriously, there is an uptick in attacks following the holiday. All roads outside the green zone are black – deemed unsafe for travel – for the next few days because of it. MOD is just inside the green zone so the route is approved for us to walk. I tried not to think about the attacks everyone is anticipating and focused on taking in the scenery and the experience while vigilantly maintaining situational awareness.
It was a nice walk, no perceived threats, and it seems like a shorter distance and more secure than I expected. Once inside the MOD compound, the scene transforms from views of traffic, checkpoints and razor wire to something similar to an arboretum, museum grounds or a small university back home. The grounds have beautiful landscaping, marble water features and one impressive new modern building and several older, but well-maintained, buildings throughout.
When you first enter the gate to the compound, there is a glass enclosed booth on the left. Inside the booth sit 5 or 6 Afghan soldiers in dress uniforms with white shoulder cords. I could not figure out what they were there for. I thought maybe they were a special lookout, but when I looked around, there was nothing for them to see; the booth is situated inside the gate and faces a small building on a hill, not a vantage point in anyway. I asked one of my translator friends and he said it’s probably just for show.
The Afghan concept of military pomp is kind of fascinating to me. In front of the new MOD building stand two sentries, also in dress uniforms including white spats and gloves and rifles with polished bayonets and chrome magazines. Yet the two sentries were leaning against the wall and engaged in conversation with each other; hardly an effective watch.
The event went well. I photographed many Afghan general officers, including the two-star who is in charge of the rule of law officials in the country, and the 4-star he answers to. And on the advisory side, we had the US 2-star in charge of EF-3, the department of Resolute Support that advises on rule of law, and the rest of his legal advising staff. Not much a photographer can do to make a speaker at a podium and an audience listening to the speaker an interesting set of photos, but hopefully the shots will serve their purpose.