Nad-e Ali Blog 3: Are M&Ms TLAs?

So many things happen in a week here. Time flies by. It's hard to keep track. Ground Hog Day. Up about 7, quick brekkie (always beans, powdered eggs and porridge), meetings, emails, meetings, emails, lunch at noon, emails, err, meetings, dinner at 6.30, more meetings and collapse into bed about 11pm. Then start again. We work 7 days a week and it makes no odds whether it's Saturday, Wednesday or whatever. The only day I can vaguely spot is Sunday: the cook house does a roast dinner. Other than that I usually have no clue what day it is. But then many of my former colleagues from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) would say I never did..... so nothing new there, right? 

A couple of recent highlights: US 4-star General David Petraeus, the Commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), visited our patrol base recently. For the military, a 4-star general is about as close to God as it gets. We civilian "STABADs" try to be slightly less reverential. We usually fail. The general was impressive, easy to talk to - almost a bit like your really clever uncle - and, clearly, as sharp as a tack. I had to smile when he kept asking the military briefers to explain what they meant when they used those dreaded TLAs - Three-Letter Abbreviations. What a hoot when the head military man doesn't understand them either. Maybe there is hope for me. Actually, let me share a secret with you, in meetings I am going to start making them up. It'll be great fun. I'll let you know if anyone ever says, "what?".....  

Friday - well I think it was Friday - it was off by helicopter to the Brigade HQ for one of the Brigade Commander's meetings. I am always struck by Brigade HQ: hundreds of staff officers in a Tardis of a room huddled around hundreds of laptops creating Powerpoint slides. How did Wellington cope at Waterloo without Powerpoint? I always admire the conceptual intelligence of many staff officers. Well-written staff papers packed with carefully crafted, third-person judgments which exude clever analysis and logical argument.  I do find it difficult sometimes though to see how these actually translate to the reality on the ground.  It's like HQ is working in a different Afghanistan to the one I see daily. Maybe that is always the way those out in the field see HQ. And HQ probably thinks I'm an unshowered, dust-covered, thickie.  Well as Meatloaf sang, "Two out of three ain't bad....". Just as well the hard-pressed troops on the ground are being assisted by more than clever staff papers.

On another day it was off with the District Governor to an "outreach shura" in a nearby community. This was the first time we have been able to make such a move without using helicopters - 3 Para having done amazing work on clearing insurgents from the area. Happily they had cleared the IEDs too. IEDs = Improvised Explosive Devices = mines. Riding, firmly strapped-in, surrounded by a heavily armoured vehicle is fairly reassuring. But I'm told an IED going off under the wheel of a Mastiff (see picture) makes your ears really ring - and you get flipped around a fair bit (hence the strapped-in, 4 point seat-belt).  That's one experience I would be happy to miss. And I wish many of the ISAF troops had missed it too. This particular aspect of the "asymmetric warfare" that is Afghanistan has been especially unforgiving. The bravery of our counter-IED guys is a story for another day.

The shura (local word for a meeting) went well. The District Governor (see picture) was in his usual cracking form urging the community to turn their backs on the Taliban, get their young men to join the Afghan National Police (extra manpower is much needed), not grow poppy - and send their kids to school.

The DG didn't miss a beat when several bursts of automatic weapons fire crackled from about 200-300m away. The local kids dived for cover, yours truly discretely put his helmet back on (can you be discrete with a helmet?) and checked exactly how close my bodyguard, Sam, was. The DG, bless him, just continued. Did he even notice? He's an ex-policeman and I sometimes wonder what people like that have gone through during 30 years of war: Soviet invasion, civil war, Taliban - and now ISAF. Well at least we're not invaders - and happily the DG points that out. He's one tough guy - but, me being an ex-diplomat, found his weakness: M&Ms.  I buy bags of them from the NAAFI and smuggle them to him when his colleagues aren't watching. He claims they are for his daughter.... hey, you don't have to make excuses, DG. M&Ms: my favourite Three-Letter Abbreviation.  Especially when there is automatic gunfire crackling around......