Eideard

Members of the US army’s 502nd Regiment fire a mortar during 2010′s Operation Hamkari in Kandahar, Afghanistan. This image is part of a winning portfolio for the army photographic competition 2011.

Bravo.

Fast food joints where soldiers wolf down burgers and pizza will soon be a thing of the past at bases in Afghanistan, as the U.S. military reminds soldiers they are at war and not in “an amusement park.”

In the sprawling military base at Kandahar, the fast food outlets facing the axe include Burger King, Pizza Hut, and the U.S. chain restaurant T.G.I. Friday’s that features a bar with alcohol-free margaritas and other drinks — all set along the bustling “Boardwalk” area of the base.

On any given day, the giant square-shaped walkway features the surreal sight of soldiers sipping gourmet coffee and eating chocolate pastries with guns slung across their shoulders, while Canadians play ice hockey at a nearby rink and fighter jets thunder overhead.

The U.S. military says its beef with the burger joints is that they take up valuable resources like water, power, flight and convoy space and that cutting back on non-essentials is key to running an efficient military operation.

“This is a war zone — not an amusement park,” Command Sgt. Maj. Michael Hall wrote in a blog earlier this year.

“Supplying nonessential luxuries to big bases like Bagram and Kandahar makes it harder to get essential items to combat outposts and forward operating bases, where troops who are in the fight each day need resupply with ammunition, food and water…”

A motley crew of other stores selling Afghan books, jewelry and phone cards and the busy Canadian Tim Horton’s outlet that sells coffee and doughnuts will stay on.

Har!

The shops run by locals will continue. You know – the people we’re there to save? The Tim Horton’s is run to benefit a charity dedicated to Canadian vets.

Under the Taliban, chess was forbidden.

Residents of Kandahar have been taking part in a chess tournament in an attempt to revive one of the city’s former cultural pastimes.

Under the Taliban, chess was forbidden, but the city’s older residents hope this tournament will reintroduce the game to a younger generation.

The event was held at the Kandahar Coffee Shop which also hosts other cultural activities.

Kandahar is a key battleground for the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.

But Rahim Akrami, a local journalist in the city who watched the tournament, says it is important for younger people to rediscover this once forbidden activity….

“It is very important for us to have something recreational to do that enlightens the mind and is fun as well,” [Aman Ullah, a member of the Kandahar Students Organisation] told the BBC World Service….

A poster saying: ‘It’s better to battle with minds than fists and bullets’ lines the wall.

Mohammed Naseem, the owner of the Kandahar coffee shop, says he wants to provide a place for young people in the city.

“I am trying to create an atmosphere where the youth can hang out and learn something,” he says….

We are trying to show the world that this kind of thing can be done.”

Of course the Taliban would oppose chess, a game of rational thought where, as Lasker said, lies and hypocrisy do not survive long.

Afghan interpreter and U.S. Marine working at route clearance
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Ahmad Shakib says he knows he is risking his life to work for U.S. troops in Afghanistan, but with a casual shrug and an idiomatic American twang, he laughs off the danger.

“Afraid of the Taliban? No, I’m the man,” said Shakib, 22, one of thousands of Afghans recruited to work with U.S. and NATO forces as interpreters, or “terps.”

Terps have been killed alongside U.S. and NATO colleagues on operations, and others have been targeted by militants who accuse them of collaborating with foreign forces.

The U.S. government offers military interpreters the prospect of an immigrant’s visa to the United States after two years. Shakib says that’s what tempts some. But he’d do it anyway. “I like this job. I like helping the people, helping the Americans. The way they do their job, I just love it,” he said…

His job means he can no longer go back to Kandahar, the southern city that was the birthplace of the Taliban in the 1990s, where he went to school and his brother still lives.

“(A relative) could say ‘oh by the way, my cousin is an interpreter, he’s working with the Americans’. So they (the Taliban) will be like let’s go and pop him,” Shakib said, using U.S. slang for an assassination…

Captain Christopher Garvin, who trains the Afghan army in Farah, a desert province on the Iranian border, says he relies on his terps for more than just the language.

“Coming here the first challenge was to fully understand the culture and how they like to operate,” said Garvin. “Having a good interpreter is the key.”

RTFA. The military has always come up with field expedients like this to compensate for lousy preparedness and all the other political crap that surrounds imperial hubris.

Fortunately, good officers learn early on about smart solutions. If they’re going to survive in the field.

SAYDABAD, Afghanistan: Not far from here, just off the highway that was once the showpiece of the U.S. reconstruction effort in Afghanistan, three U.S. soldiers and their Afghan interpreter were ambushed and killed six weeks ago.

The soldiers died as their vehicles were hit by mines and rocket-propelled grenades. At least one was dragged off and chopped to pieces, according to Afghan and Western officials, the body so badly mutilated that at first the military announced it had found the remains of two men, not one, in a field.

The attack on June 26 was notable not only for its brutality, but because it came amid a series of spectacular insurgent attacks along the road, which have highlighted the precariousness of the international effort to secure Afghanistan six years after the United States intervened to drive off the Taliban government…
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