military

Would you Fund a Mercenary / Documentary Film Maker?

Matthew VanDyke with the PKT machine gun he used in com­bat in Sirte, Libya “Have you want­ed to do some­thing to help the Arab Spring but weren’t sure how? This is your chance. In Sep­tem­ber, 2012 two famous free­dom fight­ers from the Libyan rev­o­lu­tion, Amer­i­can Matthew VanDyke and Libyan Masood Bwisir, will trav­el togeth­er to Syr­ia and join the rebels on the front line against the dic­ta­tor Bashar al-Assad. ” “What is the pur­pose of this project and what will VanDyke…

Afghan Security Forces to Be Reduced after 2014

Afghan Defense Min­is­ter, Gen. Abdul Rahim War­dak said on Tues­day that the Afghan secu­ri­ty forces (ANSF) will like­ly be reduced from its peak strength of 352000 to 230000 after the NATO with­draw­al from Afghanistan in 2014. This will be a sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tion in the Afghan Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Forces. Now, some might argue that these 122000 per­son­nel will be unem­ployed. No, they will not. The ques­tion is who will con­tin­ue employ­ing them beyond 2014? The Tal­iban is long­ing for an opportunity…

From Missouri to Nangarhar

Video cred­it: AFAfghan Mis­souri Agri­cul­ture Devel­op­ment Team has helped farm­ers in Kama dis­tricts and equipped some of them with advanced tools of farm­ing. They’ve also taught new approach­es of farm­ing and how to har­vest more healthy crops.

A “Step Backwards” for America in Afghanistan

A video post­ed online last week show­ing US Marines uri­nat­ing on the corpses of unknown Afghans was tru­ly deplorable.  Asia Times Article

Unite or Perish

Iron­i­cal­ly, on the bar­rel of this tank it say, “Unite or else we’ll per­ish.” Peo­ple say a lot of things. Our politi­cians spend hours when they are on the stage giv­ing talks but there is very lit­tle action. If we did 40% of what we say we would­n’t be in the bad con­di­tion that we are today. When I lis­ten to can­di­dates talk­ing to peo­ple dur­ing their elec­tion cam­paigns it almost makes one believe that Afghanistan will be like a…

Officially for Sale

I spot­ted an old man sit­ting in a crowd­ed bazar, sewing army and police patch­es onto uni­forms. I hag­gled and picked up a dozen.

Entering the FOB

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.  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…

Etymological Weaponry

Two rep­re­sen­ta­tive sym­bols of Afghanistan, grenades and pome­gran­ates, come from the same ety­mo­log­i­cal root. We dis­cov­ered yes­ter­day that the word “grenade” is tak­en from the French “pome-grenate.” French sol­diers gave the hand­held explo­sives their name because they looked like the seed­ed fruits, both in their round shape topped with a crown, and in their inner work­ings con­sist­ing of lots of small seeds, prepped for activation.  We keep a stock of both at the Taj. Mean­while, “RPG” is usu­al­ly miss-tran­s­lat­ed as “rock­et pro­pelled grenade.” Its a mem­o­rable term…