Adventures in Helmand: Freezing Half to Death Among the Taliban and the Poppy Fields

Traveling in Afghanistan is no fun.  Just ask these guys.

I finally went on my first trip here in Afghanistan.  On Sunday night a team of us flew down to Helmand province with General Karim (the Afghan Judge Advocate General) and two members of his staff to conduct a field inspection at the 215th Corps.  The fiercest fighting in the war right now is in Helmand, but fortunately the base complex we were visiting—Camps Leatherneck, Bastion and Shorabak—are in the middle of a desert plain where you can see the bastards trying to kill us for miles.  And because the U.S. Marines’ area of responsibility is Helmand, we were relatively safe.  The place was positively crawling with Marines, and that didn’t even include the guys who are out fighting village to village, trying to root out the Taliban insurgents.  Helmand is in the southwest of the country and it’s one of the driest places around.  It’s also the single largest biggest opium producing region in the world—hence the Taliban’s desire to hold on to it, since opium means more money for more guns.  We’ve tried encouraging the local farmers to plant other crops, including saffron.  But a few months ago, the Turkish truck drivers who were delivering the saffron seeds were pulled over and decapitated right there on the road, which kind of put a damper on the locals’ enthusiasm to grow saffron.  Message received.

Camp Leatherneck.  Yep, there are Marines there.

Helmand is an interesting place for another reason—it’s the site of a major U.S. effort to modernize Afghanistan in the 1950s and ’60s.  We tried to dam the Helmand River, with the idea that the Afghans could use some hydroelectric power and irrigation for their fields.  Only, the Afghans didn’t have fields or any need for irrigation since they were traditionally a nomadic people who chased goats from place to place.  Regardless of this minor detail, an American engineering firm was granted a U.S. government contract and came into Helmand, even planning an entire city called Laskar Gah (which is now the provincial capital).  The company built houses for the Afghan workers, and different U.S. agencies worked with the local farmers to grow and harvest grapes.  Irrigation canals started to crisscross the dusty plains.  But there was a problem: for some reason the goat herders didn’t appreciate the prefabricated housing or the finer points of grape-growing, and the entire project crumbled.  It turned into a disaster and the U.S. abruptly left, especially after the Soviets started thinking they could turn Afghans into farmers—not with irrigation projects but with AK-47s.  The American irrigation canals are still there.  It’s how the poppy farmers water their crops.

I suppose just about every province in Afghanistan has some sordid history, an interesting story to tell of how it contributed to the crumbling of an empire.  But going to Helmand for my first trip was in some ways a big bite to try to swallow.  Fortunately, everything went well.  I was responsible for getting us all there and back, not the easiest feat in a war zone.  But most of all, I was supposed to keep the Afghan general and my Army colonel boss happy.  Also hard to do in a war zone.

We almost didn’t make it out of Kabul.  We arrived at the airport and went to check in for our flight on a British Royal Air Force C-130.  Only we weren’t on the list of manifested passengers—despite what our local air liaison officer had told me earlier in the day.  Several frantic calls to the ALO later and everything got worked out … only to be told that the falling snow was going to result in the flight being cancelled.  The British pilot informed us that if there was a long enough break in the snow to get the plane de-iced, we could try to take off—but, he said, it wasn’t likely and then he nervously mentioned the Munich air disaster back in the ’50s, when half the Manchester United football club was killed when their plane crashed due to ice on the wing.  Those crazy Brits and their dry senses of humor. 

I slipped out of the waiting lounge, said a few prayers, updated my will, and made lodging arrangements for us there at the coalition camp located at the airport.  In the end, there was a break in the weather—we were hurried out to the plane, quickly loaded, and we almost immediately started taxiing to the de-icing equipment … which seemed to be set up halfway to the Iranian border.  The plane got de-iced and we were on our way.  It was my first experience flying in a C-130, which is a turbo-propped driven cargo plane.  Flying in a C-130 is about as comfortable as being stabbed repeatedly in the back—there are no seats, just plastic netting and seat belts.  It’s so loud you can’t think about anything, other than wondering if there is an epidural in the first-aid kit lashed to your body armor.  (Unfortunately, there’s not.) 

On the C-130.  Smile disappearing in
3 ... 2 ... 1 ...

When we finally approached Helmand, the pilot turned us into a few sharp banks and descended quickly.  Just before we landed, the loadmaster shot some flares out the back of the plane just in case anybody thought about shooting a heat-seeking missile at us.  I didn’t realize what was happening when the flares were first popped—out of the corner of my eye, I suddenly saw a huge fireball, following quickly by another.  I thought the loadmaster had somehow caught spontaneously combusted.  As I trying to process all of this—made all the more difficult by the fact is was 1 in the morning, I had hardly slept the night before, and was being slowly suffocated by my body armor—two more fireballs erupted from the other side of the plane.  A few seconds later, we touched down … which is always startling when you’re sitting in a completely dark plane with no windows.

For being in the middle of the desert, Helmand was surprisingly cold.  As soon as the loadmaster lowered the back cargo door, the cold wind smacked us in the face.  We scrambled out into the dark cold and, for the first time since I arrived in November, I saw stars.  We grabbed our bags and, luckily, the rides I had coordinated with the Marines were waiting for us.  COL Carozza, our interpreter Sohail, and I were billeted in the “Distinguish Visitor” tent—which, surprisingly, turned out to be an oxymoron.  The only difference between the DV and regular tents is the DV version had plywood partitions that divided the tent into different rooms.  The problem with this is the plywood partitions are extremely effective at blocking the heat pumped into the tent.  I shivered as I got dressed in my Air Force pajamas and unrolled by sleeping back on the bed of nails that doubled as a lower bunk.  I checked my watch—it was 3 in the morning. 

I climbed in my sleeping bag and discovered it was designed for someone no taller than 5’6.  The damn thing barely went up to my armpits.  I tried to curl up, but it was a mummy bag, so it tapered at the end.  The bag was so damn narrow at the end that I didn’t have room to bend my legs.  I nearly froze to death.  And every time I rolled over, the little pieces of metal that had once been bed springs stabbed me in the back and squeaked like a mid-sized animal in distress.  Morning couldn’t come soon enough, even when crawling into bed at 3.

Camp Shorabak -- Dari for
"Muddy Hellhole."

After a shower in an adjoining tent and a quick breakfast, we met up with General Karim over at the ANA side of the complex—Camp Shorabak.  I believe “Shorabak” is Dari for “muddy hellhole.”  We met with the deputy corps commander, who told us that his unit didn’t have an AWOL problem because most of the guys who would go AWOL just never showed up to Helmand in the first place.  But once they got to Helmand, there wasn’t anywhere to go.  After all, he said, you go a few miles in any direction and you’re probably going to set off an improvised explosive device or get kidnapped by the Taliban.  I thought it was a novel way of looking at unit morale.  We also met with the chief judge and got a tour of his courtroom, which was a small office in the old firehouse, and got a briefing from the staff judge advocate, who read his entire 45-minute speech while I wondered what was for lunch.  I was impressed that he could read, though, since we know there are many ANA officers—including attorneys—who are illiterate.  So, hey, mission success.  After lunch, we split off from General Karim and I spent the next little while begging, borrowing and pleading with the Brits to get us out of Helmand later that night and back to Kabul.  I was particularly motivated by thoughts of sleeping in my midget bag for another night.  I also didn’t want to tell the general or my boss that the next flights out of Kabul, assuming we didn’t get the one later that day, would be two days later. 

Fortunately, we got on the flight.  Of course, it didn’t go completely smoothly—the flight we were supposed to be on got cancelled, but there was another one leaving at the same time.  Except this flight was stopping in Kandahar for an hour or so before continuing on to Kabul.  This meant an extra few hours sitting in a C-130 with all of our body armor on.  My lower back hurts just thinking about it.  But the key is we got out of Helmand without wasting any time.  We even got to see most of the replay of the Super Bowl, which we had missed while turning into popsicles in the DV tent.

  

We didn’t get back to Camp Eggers until 2 in the morning—meaning I hadn’t truly slept in something like 48 hours.  I crawled into my bed here and it never felt so comfortable.  I cranked my electric blanket to “5” and promptly passed out.  I had a dream about the loadmaster self-combusting and some idiot called my cell phone at 5 a.m., but it was the best night’s sleep I think I’ve had since I arrived in November.  And now I can check Helmand off my places to visit.

Fighting a war is hard work.