Rest and Relaxation with the Taliban

My digs at the DFIP.  I totally could ski down those mountains.

Under Air Force policy, we’re entitled to four days of rest and relaxation during a six-month deployment.  In Iraq, a lot of Air Force dudes got to spend their four days in the United Arab Emirates or Qatar.  At the very least, they got to hang out for four days at their camp, doing absolutely nothing.  That same policy, however, leaves it up to the deployed commander’s discretion as to whether we’ll actually get those four days. And naturally, since I’m deployed with the Army, the commander has exercised his discretion to my detriment.  So no days off for me.  War is hell. 

Lookin' relaxed after a
restful time with the Taliban.

But I did get the next best thing—two weeks at the Detention Facility in Parwan (DFIP).  Sure, sleeping in a tent near one of the busiest runways this side of O'Hare and sitting in the same room with a bunch of Taliban may not sound relaxing, but it is the closest I’ll get to a vacation in Afghanistan.  I was filling in as a legal advisor to the detention review boards that determine whether the “poor farmers” picked up from the battlefield should be continually interned at the DFIP, released to the Afghan authorities for criminal prosecution, or released back into the wild.  I can’t say much about it—it’s all secret squirrel stuff—but it was a mostly fascinating two weeks. 

The best part of each hearing is when the detainee is brought in and given an opportunity to present his side of the story.  I heard “I’m just a poor farmer and nope, I have no idea why my hands tested positive for military-grade explosive residue” at least three dozen times.  But we also had the guy who said that, if released, he would have sexual relations with President Obama, Michelle Obama, the entire Bush clan, and even the board members.  I was flattered.  Oh, and there was the guy who refused to answer whether he was born in Pakistan because “there are no borders in Islam” and that “all land belongs to the Muslims.”  My mortgage company would beg to differ about that last point, but he was kind of scary so I didn’t say anything.  Other than getting to meet interesting people with long beards and sunny dispositions, another bonus of being a legal advisor at the DFIP is we were usually done working by 6 p.m.—and we had all of Fridays off.  A whole day off!  Having worked 12 hours a day for the past five months, getting to call it a night at 6 and having an entire day off is a luxury.  Of course, there was nothing to do at the DFIP—I was living in a transient tent with a bunch of truly smelly human beings, I had stupidly left my laptop at Camp Eggers, and I didn’t want to work out at the gym too much because I still want to be able to fit into my uniform.  So I pretty much just ate a lot of ice cream, read books at the little library in the morale building, and popped two Tylenol PMs by 9 p.m.  It was glorious.


It was so nice that I didn’t want to go back to Eggers by the time my two weeks were up.  Sure, I missed my bed and my bootlegged copies of “Modern Family”—and I had been woken up at 3 a.m. by enough scrambled fighter jets and exploding mortar shells to last me a lifetime—but the DFIP chow hall offers six flavors of ice cream and I was really becoming a regular in the library.  After a while, the morale staff even stopped making me sign in every time.  And yeah, sure, I was running out of underwear and out of patience with the “poor farmers” who kidnapped American civilians, but I really didn’t want to have to come back to Eggers and deal with all of the Eggers crap.  Like the 200+ colonels who don’t have any real work to do, so they create nonsensical projects so they’ll be able to put something on their performance reports.  Or the Afghans JAGs who lie to me on a daily basis but very kindly offer me cups of tea I don’t drink.  Or COL Knuckles.

I hadn’t been back to Eggers for more than an hour before I ran into him.  He was at the dining facility, chatting up two strangers who looked like they were ready to kill themselves.  Despite my best efforts, I made eye contact with him … and because I was by myself, I really had no choice but to sit next to him.  He was telling the strangers about his office back home.  “Yeah, there’s a guy in my office who they’ve been trying to fire for years,” said COL Knuckles.  “He’s lazy and extremely incompetent.  Nobody knows what he does all day, and we all have to do his work for him.”  At this point he paused, and then in a conspiratorial tone, he whispered, “But they can’t fire him because he’s Native American.”

I was tempted to ask Knuckles what tribe he belonged to, but I showed uncharacteristic restraint.  Maybe it’s because I didn’t want to get physically assaulted again.  Or maybe it’s because the buzz of spending two weeks with the Taliban hadn’t quite worn off yet.  Either way, I missed even the afterburners, the exploding mortars, and the poor farmers with explosive residue on their hands.

 

Camp Sabalu-Harrison (DFIP)



The .50 caliber machine gun mounted
on my ride to the DFIP.