I had posted a couple of photos while I was overseas in my build thread and now that it’s been over a year since i’ve been back and I’m sorting through thousands of pictures and videos on my HD I thought I would share a few more.
I’m not going to dump them all at once since that dilutes their significance. Instead I’ll post just a few and let people post questions and comments. I’ll post up more as certain things come to mind.
If you have your own pictures from a foreign land, feel free to post them up here.
The main airbase that we started off and ended up at. No tricks in this photo, the sun is setting behind a dust cloud.
The forecast didn’t change a single day that we were there. At one point I wondered if they even updated it. The ground was so dry I felt compelled to take a picture of the one spot of green in my entire area:
We moved into a pretty nice FOB about an hour south of the airbase. The only downside was that there was both Afghan private security contractors and an Afghan Army Infantry unit living with us. This was during a year when there were 62 “green on blue” attacks
We were there to facilitate the transition from NATO led to security to Afghan independent security. This meant we had to evaluate the security forces and the threats, train them, lead them, eventually follow their lead with backup, and finally walk away. I was assigned the National Police unit who secured 80 miles of highway 1.
This process started by visiting with each checkpoint, talking to the police commander, check point commanders, and the elders of each village. This is where the thousands of pictures came in, I put my camera on “full auto” and handed it off to either my RTO or interpreter depending on what we we doing. We had pictures of every person, building, vehicle, and weapon.
My job really turned into an interviewer of sorts. Trying to interpret translations and read between the lines of what was being said. There was always something going on; an angle being played.
My company was supposed to stick within 5 miles of the highway,
Italians and Slovenians shared the AO farther off the highway into the desert and mountains,
the Brits and US Marines were at our southern limit,
American fuel was being shipped in enormous convoys 4 days a week from Tajikistan past me to the south and south east,
the fuel was insured by NATO, driven by afghan civilians, and protected by Afghan private security (pictured in my 2nd post),
the Afghan Army was constantly running operations just about everywhere,
the ANP (National Police) were responsible for the highway (partnered with me)
NDS (quasi intelligence agency) were everywhere in between
and SF/Marine Recon did whatever they wanted. Typically they could be found handing out AKs to civilians in my AO to try and setup local police.
