I’m glad Rob is no longer in Kabul…this office is exactly where he worked while he was deployed. Let’s hope he doesn’t go over there again any time soon.
Attacks on Kabul…up close and personal
Our 24 hour ordeal is over in Kabul. No injuries just alot of tired people now ready for a good night sleep.
I usually walk over to the ISAF (NATO) HQ for lunch (better food and shorter lines) along with a nice green zone walk…yesterday that proved to be fateful as when I was finishing up around 1330, we got the word we were under attack. That usually comes in the form of a loud yell “Listen up!” Yesterday a German had that honor.
That means lockdown, you are going nowhere, and you never know for how long.
ISAF was attacked yesterday afternoon by a few insurgents with RPGs and a nice high building to fire them from. But as Ambassador Ryan Crocker said today an RPG fired from over 800 meters away is harassment not an attack.
Harrassment for us turned out to be a lockdown of about 21 hours but being in a chow hall we at least had plenty of food. There were about 200 hundred of us there and I was told over 500 in the ISAF gym not to far away. Lockdowns were in effect on my base at Camp Eggers and my housing area as well.
When you are on lockdown you realize quickly you have little say over your life for the time being. So think happy thoughts, read the paper and most of all support the young people who are out on the missions, guarding you. It rained here yesterday not making their day any easier.
It became clear pretty fast this was going to be home for the night so you just settle in. As night fell we learned there were still 2 insurgents holed up in the building not too far from us and many of the RPG rounds that were fired did not explode thus we had unexploded ordinance laying around out there. Not the kind of stuff you want to mess with in the middle of the night. So we had dinner and then tried to catch some sleep.
At dawn, the final assault on the insurgents began. As we stood outside we could hear a ton of iron being delivered upon our insurgent harassers.
Yes, that 20 minutes did not go well for them. Soon quiet was restored, breakfast was made and we got the all clear. We made our way back to our offices, told our respective stories and then searched for ways to get some real sleep.
As I watched the news stories from here today, talking about violent attacks, I tended to agree more with Ambassador Crocker. 27 Afghans died today, thus nothing funny about this but 7 insurgents are not going to do much damage to a HIGHLY guarded embassy or military HQ. Just the harrassment of days wasted, offices unmanned, soldiers now in harms way.
But this is a no alibi business. It only takes only one and for you to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, due diligence is a constant here.
As always you can be proud of the young people who represented you today. Outstanding performances no matter what their duties. Even inside our chow hall a young MP named SGT Mike Stone took charge, stayed in charge kept the gossip to a minimum, got us fed and all the others on guard post or in that gym fed as well. Not easy when 80% of the room out ranks you or is from another country. He was calm and in charge and thus so were we.
Americans working with Macedonians, Brits, Italians, French and who knows how many other nations kept the rest of us safe and out of harms way. They know their business and did not hesitate one moment to act.
Today was far from just another day in Kabul, you are always on edge until you learn the extent of the damage and injuries, you’re tired and heavy small arms fire is not what you normally wake up to even in Kabul.
The Taliban got another front page story…their goal in all of this…but all they really got were a bunch of dead foot soldiers which really insults the term soldier.
Mike Stone won’t get any headlines nor will the dozens of others who stood post all night last night and into this morning. But, tonight they will sleep well knowing they led when leaders were needed. Thus, we had no dead or injured.
As I always say there are two sides to the Afghanistan story. Far from the politics and debate of stay or leave (the why are we here) are young people who do not have ONE VOTE in that discussion but do vote everyday in the duty column…duty, what a neat four letter word
