Entering the FOB
If you search for Jalalabad on googlemaps only one road shows up, Hwy A01, the Asian Highway, a.k.a. Kabul-Jalalabad-Torkham Highway. Â That road is the main drag of Jalalabad City, sporting twoish lanes of traffic flowing each direction, packed with tuktuks, motorbikes, donkeys, tracktors and toyota corollas, all jamming for space.
The main US army base in our region is FOB Fenty, located on the eastern edge of Jalalabad City. It’s a well-established base that’s been around for many years.  It’s main gate directly opens onto the Highway.  Part of the security protocol for handling entrances and exits to the base requires clearing the road in both directions for about 100 feet to prevent any opportunistic assaults. This tends to make for interesting traffic jams:
The main gate to the base is a 20 foot wide steel door with a large guard post on one side. Parked behind the steel door is an MRAP to further block the door should any one attempt to smash through it.
If any vehicle, including MRAPs, ANA pick up trucks, supply convoys, or personal cars pull up to the gate to enter the base, protocol requires that the area around the gate must be secure before it can be opened. This entails a dozen fully armed soldiers dispersing into the road and stopping traffic 100 feet back from the gate going both directions. Only once all the traffic on the main road in Jalalabad has been ground to a halt, can the security MRAP be backed up to allow the gate to open, and the vehicle to enter. Once the vehicle is safety in, the gate is closed, Â the MRAP has been driven back into place, then traffic can start flowing again.
Imagine if a highway you drove between home and work was intermittently blocked in both directions by guys cursing at you in a foreign language, “stop,  stay the fuck back” while pointing rifles in your face and occasionally firing warning shots.
How is this set up supposed to win the “hearts and minds†of the Afghan people?
The security procedures make sense as the base is often a target of attacks, but after years of this mayhem maybe the army should think about moving this heavily trafficked, highly secure entryway onto a side street, perhaps off the major highway running through town.