Trucks, cars and humvees kick up plenty of dust at Kandahar Airfield.
For the past 10 days we’ve been down at Kandahar Airfield visiting S.C. National Guard troops and soaking up the sights, sounds and, er, smells.
The soldiers, members of the 218th Brigade Combat Team, appear to doing well. We spent some time at Forward Operating Base Scorpion, which is about five miles outside the gate. Then we rolled up to Qalat to visit the police mentoring team that Capt. James Smith, D-Richland, is a member of. We also covered a humanitarian aid mission at a village near Kandahar City, which is in the buckle of the Taliban belt.
Probably some of the most important work that’s going on in this part of Afghanistan is happening at Scorpion. It’s a regional training base for the Afghan army and police.
The Afghan army appears to be on the way of becoming a formidable force that the Taliban prefers to avoid.
The police, though, are struggling. They’re poorly trained, equipped and – for the most part – poorly led. An average of 10 cops are killed each week in the line duty, the victims of ambushes and direct assaults on checkpoints and stations.
It’ll be the job of the mentoring teams of Task Force Phoenix, which is under the 218th’s command, to fix the problem. No less than the security and future of Afghanistan depends on the mentors’ efforts.
Anyway, this entry is supposed to be about Kandahar or KAF, as it’s known in the world of military acronyms.
KAF is the second-largest base in Afghanistan, which a mix of U.S. and coalition troops. There are folks here from just about every NATO member, making KAF an eclectic brew of languages, cultures and uniforms.
(Or the lack of uniforms. Some countries allow their soldiers to wear civilian clothes when their off-duty. For example, the other day in the chow hall I spotted a female soldier wearing a pink jacket with an assault rifle slung over her shoulder.)
The sights here range from the various tactical vehicles that roll up and down the base roads to the different aircraft that launch from KAF’s runway: F-16s, Tornadoes, C-130s and C-17s, to name a few.
Then there’s the whop-whop-whop of Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters shuttling troops in an out of the base all day long.
By comparison Bagram Airfield, with its tree-lined streets and shopping center complete with rug shops and a Dairy Queen, looks like a base back in the States.
The only thing missing at Bagram is a golf course. I “grilled” Brig. Gen. Bill Hyatt, the wing commander at Bagram and former boss at Shaw Air Force Base, about this apparent oversight. He assured me that there are plans to build a putting course on the Air Force compound at Bagram.
Of course, there are some drawbacks to KAF.
Since Sunday, a suicide bomber reportedly drove through the gates and onto the base. Then the base was motared Tuesday night, and twice on Wednesday. And I understand there was a rocket attack about three weeks ago.
No one was hurt and there was no damage.
The troops here, though, seem to take these attacks in stride. On Tuesday night, we hung around the bunker and talked about the baseball playoffs and college football.
On Wednesday night, back-to-back attacks meant about 2½ hours in the shelter. Movies seemed to be the No. 1 conversation topic that night and the Jason Bourne series and “Borat” topped the list of favorites.
As you might imagine, troops resort to some pretty dark humor to cope with the stress.
On the wall of one shelter, someone has painted several rockets. Beneath each rocket is the date of an attack. It reminded me of the “bombs” I’ve seen painted below the canopy of fighter jets.
The smells at KAF, though, are a bit tougher to laugh off.
For some reason, it was decided to build troop housing near the sewage treatment ponds. Depending on the wind, the smell at this end of the base ranges from rancid to merely putrid.
But like the mortar attacks, the troops have a way of coping with the stink through humor. Apparently, according to an assortment of sources, some troops are contributing to a prize fund that’ll go to whoever dares to swim across the sewage pond. The jackpot is about $5,000 and so far there have been no takers. Stay tuned.
Then there’s the dust.
It’s everywhere and it seems to clog every pore in the body. Sometimes you need a Brillo pad when it’s time to scrub up.
The dust, though, isn’t necessarily the downside of having a base in the desert.
The roads at KAF are gravel. That means hundreds of vehicles – humvees, buses, SUVs, cars, and trucks – kicking up clouds of dust around the clock.
The command tries to keep the dust down by setting the speed limit at 10 mph and twice a day the roads are watered.
Given that water in these parts is more precious than U.S. dollars, seems like a good investment to go ahead and pave the roads.
Or maybe – if there are no takers – the troops will use the prize fund for the sewage pond swim and pay to pave the roads.
Staff writer Chuck Crumbo is embedded with the S.C. National Guard's 218th Brigade Combat Team.
