Share The life of an advisor can hardly be called “normal.”   However, as anyone in Afghanistan can attest, there is a sameness that settles in, a point at which there is a sense of “Groundhog Day.”   It’s the repetition of the actions, the same trip made over and over again, that cause this impression.   So, what’s a daily mission with the SFAT like? I’ll spare you the personal rituals of the morning.  Wake-up, showers and the like.  Everyone does that, and having to walk a hundred meters for a shower is not that serious that it requires examination. Today I’m going to try to put you in the Multi-Cam uniform, in the turret behind the machine gun as you roll through the outskirts of Mazar-e Sharif on your way to work as an advisor for the Afghan Border Police.   In a later post I will try

Share The average day of the 5th Zone ABP Mentor Team (the SFAT, or Security Force Assistance Team) is comprised of making our way to the 5th Zone Headquarters, near Mazar-e Sharif (MeS), and working to make slow, incremental changes to the way that the staff there works.  But sometimes we get to do some pretty cool missions that take us far afield.   My post on the unsuccessful mission to Badakhshan was an example of what we call a “non-standard” mission.  Non-standard missions are the most interesting, and the most fun.  We don’t plan them because they are fun, though.   They serve a purpose… but they just happen to be fun and interesting as well. The mission to Khwahan, Badakhshan, had been planned for weeks and the purpose was two-fold.  First, we were attempting to have a KLE (Key Leader Engagement) with the leadership of the 5th Zone

Share Each deployment is a marathon, and this is my third in five years.  I recognize the cycle.  We were even briefed on it.  Each deployment has its phases, and there is a phase of irritability, restlessness and discontent.  That has been the past month or so.  It makes it hard to write, because although there are stories of missions to tell, it’s hard to tell them in a voice that does not drip of that same restlessness and discontent.  Especially when changes to our force protection posture means that we can get even less done.   I can’t talk specifics about that at this time because of OPSEC (Operational Security), but our capabilities have changed, and not to make our work easier. One thing I noticed during our abysmal train-up at Camp Shelby was that a briefing had been added that described these phases.  I recognized them, and the

Share It had been a brutal winter in Badakhshan.   One of the hardest winters in years had descended upon northern Afghanistan, and the farthest northeastern province had taken the worst of it.  Rugged and mountainous, the snowfall had lain heavy upon the slopes and closed off the passes.  Some valleys, accessible only by foot or by donkey, had run dangerously on supplies; especially the Afghan Border Police.  Several outposts were in dire need of airlifted supplies.  With Afghan airlift capacity, their wait would be long indeed.   COL Mollosser agreed with the 5th Zone commander, a brigadier general, to try to provide some needed sustenance to one of the hardest hit outposts.  He got buy-in from the American general who controls air assets in the RC North.   Thus began a saga that would span weeks. Four previous attempts had been shut down by bad weather.   Members of the team,

Share As mentors, we go where our counterparts go and we do their missions with them.  Sometimes we are teaching, sometimes we are recommending, and sometimes we are being supportive.  We are also sharing their experiences and taking in their world.  You can’t really advise and mentor very well when you don’t understand the world of the man whom you are trying to help develop as a professional.   The mission to the checkpoint was one of those missions.  I took along others on that mission, partly for communications, partly for security, and partly because if I didn’t, the mission would have been stopped. Another such mission was our mission recently to the Aquina Border Crossing Point (BCP).   Aquina is out west in Faryab Province, on the border with Uzbekistan.    It’s about 160 miles from Marmal.   The ABP Zone Commander, a General and the mentee of COL

Share Mentoring can be a hoot. The incidents of the past few weeks, little helpful things done by my fellow Soldiers, have made life a bit more… interesting. I mean that in the Confucian sense. That being said, my mentee is a Hajji, having returned from the obligatory pilgrimage only a few months ago. He is a literate, committed Muslim. His viewpoint on the Quran burning was summed up with, “We have illiterate people in our society, too.” He assumed that such ignorance of Afghan values could only come from illiteracy. I didn’t burst his bubble. Part of mentoring is going where your mentee goes. COL Shiripir* and I were having a conversation about going about his normal business while I am with him. I was beginning to feel like he felt that he had to treat me as a special guest and that this perception was keeping him from

Share It’s been cold a lot here in Mazar-e Sharif (MeS, pronounced, “mez” in the shorthand of English-speakers in Afghanistan).   On my first tour, I think I got rained on a grand total of six times.   On my second tour, there was a lot more rain.  I even got rained on a few times in Helmand.   I think we have had precipitation of one sort of another at least half the days I’ve been in country so far. For water availability year-round, it’s more important to have snow stay on the mountains, especially where I have been before.  In Kapisa, there were mountains that held snow right up to the beginning of July.  The mountains around here seem to be just as massive, but lower in elevation overall.  The snow on the mountains right here near MeS doesn’t seem to stay much longer than the snow on

Share The last several days have been sort of a blur, and there has been little time to write when I wasn’t too tired to actually do it.   The RSOI training was okay.  The IED training was worthwhile, even if the only real new news was the tendencies in the RC North.   Getting a chance to check the zero on the weapon is always time well spent. Many team-related things needed to be shaken-out.  Plans have been changed by reality, so there were realignments and modifications.  I’m happy with how that shook out, but again, it took time.  There is always the setting up of email accounts and user access; yay. Then there were the environmental issues.   We are in Alaska tents (named after the manufacturer), in a sub-compound of the larger American zone at the German-run base at Marmal, which is in the Mazar-e Sharif area of northern Afghanistan. 

Share I’ve arrived at Marmal, a German Air Base near Mazar-e Sharif.  Now that the movement is over, I can say that the brigade trickled into theater over the course of about a month.  Some of the brigade has been on the ground here for just over a month.  Others have just arrived.  Most of my team has been in place for several weeks at least.  I was on the third to last (out of a bunch) movement to country, which was passed by the second to last and finally entered country at the same time as the final movement arrived.  Throughout the long, painful movement into Afghanistan, I kept in touch via email with the Lieutenant Colonel, LTC Grass* who is the deputy team chief for the Security Force Assistance Team (SFAT) that I am a part of. A couple of years ago, SFAT’s were called ETT’s or PMT’s.

Share For those of you who have read my writings before, it’s good to write for you again.  For those of you who haven’t, thanks for stopping by.  In the next few days I will begin my journey back to Afghanistan for the third time.  This is my first time deploying as part of a brigade-sized unit.  A brigade from my home state of Ohio, the 37th Infantry Brigade Combat Team (IBCT), is in the process of deploying to northern Afghanistan after training for several months at Camp Shelby, Mississippi.  How I came to be with them, to volunteer again, is a longer story.   The train-up period seemed to drag on forever, with a certain degree of fatigue having set in before the actual deployment begins. My uniforms, weapon and equipment surround me here in my billet.  Some of my gear is already in Afghanistan waiting for me.  Myself and