In Memory of Those who Went Before

In Kabul time, a lot can happen in a month, especially when your whole tour is only twelve months.  So much can happen politically, and the security situation can change overnight.  Socially, if you leave for two weeks, you might come back way behind the curve on who said what to whom, who is spending time with whom, etc.  As one friend said, "In college equivalent, three months means we are sophomores already!" 

In the last two months since writing, I took a vacation to England, organized a return trip to Mazar (more on that below), and nailed down my onward assignment with EAP/MLA back at main State starting September 2015.  My Nanny (maternal grandmother) passed away, and my sister gave birth to the first child of a generation.  So I don't have grandparents here on earth anymore, my parents have become grandparents, and I'm now solidly in the "grown-ups" group.  

In his graveside eulogy, my uncle quoted Tom Brokaw on The Greatest Generation: "They may walk with a little less spring in their step, and their ranks are growing thin, but let us never forget - when they were young, they saved our world." 

When my grandparents married in 1945, they were young First Lieutenants, with a war not yet won and facing the prospect of invading Japan, which they might not have survived.  I don't know which challenges were harder, theirs or ours today.  Global state on state war, or the chaos of states disintegrating faster than we can prop them up?  All I know is, there's important work to be done here in Afghanistan and I'm glad to be here at this time.

One of the projects the Department of State funds here is Conventional Weapons Destruction (CWD).  An NGO with specialized skills in this field responds to call-outs from the army, the police, and local communities when UXO or weapons caches are discovered.  Last month the grants officers from Washington visited, the security situation held, and we finally got our site visit up in Mazar-e-Sharif.  No helos this time, but we drove 30 minutes outside the city to a detonation site to watch the team in action:

Anti-personnel landmines, one giant anti-tank landmine, and a lot of mortars whose measurements I can't remember.  Pretty terrifying stuff to see all collected together, and enough explosive material to cause this: 

When the team was ready to detonate, we got in the armored vehicles and withdrew about 500m.  First we saw the black cloud go up, then we felt the car shake and heard the explosion.  Wow!  Grants money literally up in smoke - but saving lives.

With the retrograde process marching on and military outposts closing rapidly, this kind of trip might not happen for me during the rest of the tour.  We'll see.  But I'm thoroughly glad to be serving here and supporting Afghanistan's transition.