Twenty Years Later

I had intended to start a thread of blog posts on the 20-year anniversary of my first digital photos from my only tour in Afghanistan a few months ago with my first picture upon returning from leave with my brand-new DSLR…

Life happens, though.

Three days ago, as I took a break from scanning all of my hard-copy prints via the wonderful Epson FF-680W (best damn bulk scanner possible), I remembered my back-burner project and checked to see what – if anything – significant had taken place two decades prior… and I ended up laughing.

We had to drop some VIPs off for a meet-and-greet at Asadabad. Lovely flight – it always was… the Kunar river always bringing rich and vibrant green to the otherwise monochromatic tan and beige of the Hindu Kush…

After refueling, we repositioned and shut down as there was never any clear timeline we maintained; if the VIP wanted to linger and schmooze, so be it.

I won’t pretend to understand what daily life at Asadabad was like for months on end. Aside from the steady stream of Chinooks bringing whatnot, us bringing the reasons for sprucing up the place, the sporadic incoming rockets/outgoing tank rounds from Afghan version of counterbattery fire (a wheezy, museum-reject of a T-55 and a Ural with a ZU-23 bolted on the bed), and – occasionally – a monkey, I imagine the routine could have gotten perverse fairly quickly.

For us, though, none of that mattered. Aside from the Chinook bringing mail and the large gathering of kids being minded to by the handful of ANA soldiers on the hill to the west, it was quiet… normal. One of the SF guys came by to chat with our pilots about turning in his flight school packet and a possible mission for us in the future.

BAMbam!… BAMbam!… followed by the sound of automatic fire… close… very close. Close enough that the four of us suddenly found ourselves prone on the rocks; one pilot managing to get himself halfway under the Blackhawk as we frantically looked to see where the hordes of Taliban might be coming from.

The SF dude remained standing, though. Just thoughtfully looking to the west. “They’re going to fuck it up again,” he mumbled. “Fuckin’ ANA. How many times do we have to do the same damn thing?”

What he neglected to tell us prior to the moment of our panicked pronation, was that the ANA troops on the hill were starting another live-fire exercise where they had to assault and secure a small dirt compound in the valley 430 yards to our west. RPGs started the assault, followed by PKMs, RPKs, AKs, and whatever the hell else they had.

Twenty years later, I chuckle at the fact that the SF dude probably figured it would be as amusing as it was informative to see how we responded. In his position, I would have definitely done the same… for amusement and assessment.

The thing that struck me back then was why the kids were there… waiting. It became clear once the firing had stopped and the ANA guys with them lazily waved their arms – the kids were collecting brass for who knows what reasons… reloading, recycling, or just because that’s what kids do for fun in that war-ravaged part of the world.

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My wife asked me the other night about how the previous administration had worked a peace deal with the Taliban back in 2020 and whether or not any withdrawal from Afghanistan would have worked and how it may have gone better.

As for the peace deal, I wrote about it in Cynical Optimism:

Usually I am optimistic, but in this case… No.

Not even one bit.

What the Taliban has that we don’t: patience.

I said as much in late 2001; all that is needed is time… we would tire and forget.

On the “how it could have gone better,” there are so many different ways – all of which did not happen, obviously. Perhaps the biggest mistake was choosing Kabul to be the final scene of the tragedy for everyone involved and invested in the effort of trying to do the right thing. Instead of doing a reverse occupation, where the patrol bases collapse back to the forward operating bases, and then back to the main bases – Kandahar and Bagram – that course of action would have been better than trying to deal with the masses of those who wanted to leave with the last U.S. forces and the intangible but present threat of combatants blending in to the chaos. It’s like we learned not one damn thing about the adversary we were pitted against for twenty years – they have and had became (of course, one could easily change that to “can” and “will become,” depending on how much one pays attention to current events) anonymous faces until they deem the time is right for infamy and martyrdom.

So here we are… 20 years after those pictures and over three years since the end of “troops on the ground.” Notice I did not say “the end of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.” The omission is intentional… if you know, you know; if you don’t, I don’t know what to tell you.

What I can tell you is that, despite everything, I truly hope those kids, those soldiers, and our folks from these pictures ended up doing ok. Perhaps then, it would have all been for something.