Afghan Sitrep

MSG Keith expands on his trip last week up the Panjshir. If you need to catch up - here and here.

I know I sent some photos out for the 14 Mar trip out to the Panjshir Valley, but here's a couple more things I did. 16 Mar: Grand Opening of the Panjshir National Army Volunteer Center.

On Monday we drove up to the Valley to scope out the center. On wed we flew out for the grand opening. I went on the advance party. We flew in a UH-60 Blackhawk. There was a lot of fog at the airport so we left real late. By the time we landed in the Valley, the sun was shining. The Blackhawk and our escort, an Ah-64 Apache, flew off and headed back to Kabul. Our landing zone was a soccer field at the bottom of the Valley floor, next to the Panjshir river. As I stood there in awe, I realized that this was probably one of the most, if not THE most, beautiful spot I had ever been in, anywhere. The sun was shining, reflecting off of the snow on the mountains, the river was bubbling by. It was unbelievable. Trying to find the words is difficult. It's like looking at a photo of a breathtakingly beautiful woman, and trying to describe what you see. It was mesmerizing.... The three photos, On the ground 1, 2, 3 are what I saw as I stood there. And they don't even begin to do justice to the actual scene. Mesmerizing... After about 45 minutes the general's CH-47 Chinook appeared over the ridge, escorted by another Apache. It was cool to see them appear over the ridge... The Russian leftovers are Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers that didn't make it out of the valley...

22 Mar: The opening of the National Military Academy Afghanistan (NMAA)

This school is their equivalent of our West Point. Approx 120 18 and 19 year olds signed up to get a four-year degree in Engineer, Political Science or Foreign Language. The commandant of West Point was there as were a lot of Afghan big wigs. Afghan President Karzai was supposed to be there, but went to Pakistan instead. And I was all set up to get a good photo of him too... There were speeches and presentation of a sword from the west point commandant to the NMAA commandant. The cadets passed in review, as well as the ANA and the Turkish bands. Here's where it gets interesting. The Turks were supposed to be part of the academy. They never showed up until the day before the cadets completed their basic training, about a week before the ceremony. The Turkish guy demands that the Turkish band be the one who plays, not the ANA one. He demands that the ANA cadets wear Turkish uniforms. To give credit to the NMAA commandant, he told the Turkish guy, that 1, the Turkish band will play AFTER the ANA band, and 2, that they were in Afghanistan, they would wear Afghanistan uniforms. The Turkish guy then holds a press conference and says how much the Turkish government had been part of the forming of the school. Then to top it off, the day of the ceremony, the NMAA commandant wants a photo with one of the US colonels from West Point that had been helping for almost nine months. Right before the picture is taking, the Turkish guy walks up from behind and nudges the US guy out of the way so that he is standing next to the NMAA commandant in the photo. 24 hours later the Turkish guy and his bags are on a plane to Turkey, sent home by the Afghan government.... Gotta love these guys. They've been at war for 25 years. They don't put up with crap...

The photos are from the ceremony. The Turkish band had four guys dressed in chain mail armor. They looked cool.

That's all for now. 44 days and a wake up and I'll be headed back to the US of A. I'm going to miss this place...

MSG Keith