I spent much of this summer with Canadian, Afghan, British, and US forces in southern Afghanistan. Here are some of the resulting dispatches.
Filed under: Atlantic Monthly, Afghanistan, military, war
28 February 2009 • 12:54 am 0
Body Shots
Originally appeared at The New Republic.
Let Us See the Angel Flights
U.S. Marines, not noted for their sentimentality, call the flights that carry their dead comrades home “angel flights.” I witnessed my first of these at a remote airfield in Anbar province, Iraq, in 2005. For about an hour, all activity on the tarmac ceased, including my own unloading of a 727 in my job as a commercial shipper. A furious Marine officer ran to confront me and demand that my pilot cut the 727′s engines. The pilot protested–his plane was nearly unloaded, and he wanted to fly to a safer airport as soon as possible–but the Marine permitted no debate. The engines powered down, and in the desert silence, from a distance of a few hundred feet, I could hear the clopping of individual boots as hundreds of Marines filed in to stand at attention and watch the chilled metal box proceed slowly into the belly of the plane. Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: New Republic, Afghanistan, Canada, military
22 January 2009 • 5:18 pm 0
Law and Disorder
Originally published in Abu Dhabi’s The National.
At the entrance to the Afghan police and military base in Zhari district, half a dozen wrecked police trucks sit in a small dirt lot. As a first sight greeting visitors to the base, they are a poor recruitment tool for new policemen. The most intact truck is missing its windscreen and a door, and has caked blood on one seat; it will never drive again. The worst off is a twisted clump of metal, scorched so badly that any blood would probably have cooked away in the fire that followed the initial blast of the roadside bomb that did it in. Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: National, Afghanistan, Canada, war
7 January 2009 • 12:21 am 0
Security Blanket
Originally appeared in the January/February 2009 Atlantic.
Mullah Masood Akhundzada, guardian of the Shrine of the Blessed Cloak of the Prophet Muhammad, in Kandahar, is wary of guests. When his brother was the guardian, 13 years ago, he accepted an insistent visitor. Today, a youngster with a Kalashnikov shadows Mullah Masood around the shrine, just in case the visitor, Mullah Omar, or any of his friends return. Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: Atlantic Monthly, Afghanistan, religion, war
2 December 2008 • 10:08 am 0
Policing Afghanistan
Originally appeared in The New Yorker.
Letter from Pashmul
An ethnic-minority force enters a Taliban stronghold.
In late 2007, in Pashmul, a tiny cluster of villages in southern Afghanistan, Muhammad Khan began his tenure as the police commander by torching all the hemp in a farmer’s field. Farmers in the area had grown plants up to seven feet tall, and, being teetotallers, like many Afghans, they smoked hashish constantly. Afghan soldiers and policemen in the area also smoked, to the exasperation of the NATO troops who were training them. But Khan wasn’t from Pashmul and he didn’t smoke. He ordered his men to set the harvest ablaze, moved upwind, then turned his back and left, with an expression of indifference. Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: New Yorker, Afghanistan, Canada, war
14 August 2008 • 5:26 pm 0
An Air-Conditioned Nightmare
In Afghanistan, some soldiers are pampered. Should they be?
KANDAHAR AIRFIELD—Being on a big military base, even one in a relatively dangerous spot, can feel a bit like being on a cruise ship. Grand exertions are made to ensure comfort, and leisure is organized: basketball at six, bingo at 11. B-list celebrities, armed with camera-ready smiles, are on deck to shake your hand. The food is rich and plentiful, and cooked with the primary goal of not sickening anyone. And there’s no exit, other than jumping overboard, or over the concertina wire. Base life is, as Samuel Johnson might have said, like being in prison, with a chance of being mortared. Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: Atlantic Monthly, Afghanistan, Canada, military, war
