When Uncle Sam meets 'Stan

[amakihi akiapola alauahio]

Despite five years covering events in Afghanistan, nothing prepares Jason
Burke for life in Viper City on the Bagram air base. But at least this time
everyone's been watching the same movies...

Sunday May 26, 2002
The Observer

I am standing outside Tent Five in Viper City in Bagram air base on the
Shomali plains in north central Afghanistan. It is midnight and around me,
except for the soldiers out on operations or on guard, 5,000 fighting men
and their support staff are sleeping. For once it's quiet. There is a
live-firing exercise a mile or so away but the rippling of automatic
gunfire, swelling and dying away in the distance, is as soft and reassuring
as far-off waves. The helicopters that usually ferry Special Forces soldiers
in and out of the base during the night hours are silent. I can see them on
the airstrip about 70m away: the great, fat-bellied Chinooks, the squat
Blackhawks, the vicious little Apaches. The Chinooks are closest and I can
see the moonlight glancing off their huge, drooping 30ft rotor blades.
The moon came up four hours ago, huge and the colour of a malfunctioning
striplight on an office ceiling. Despite scattered clouds silvered by its
light, the moon is bright enough to read by and the tents, the helicopters
and the old steel stanchions that the Soviets used to mark the minefields
cast hard-edged shadows on the dusty ground. A huge C-130 transport plane
comes in to land. It is very low and has no lights on. I don't hear it until
it is very close. Even then I hardly hear anything at all.

Two sounds from Bagram: the distinctive, familiar and fantastically
evocative 'thwop thwop thwop' of the Chinooks. And the American soldiers and
their blithe, confident good-natured yell: 'Hoo Har!' Of course there are
many variations. You can't just holler, 'Hoo Har' at will or at random. For
example, the US Rangers, the specialist light infantry, shout: 'Hoo Har,
Rangers lead the way, sir' when they meet someone of a higher rank. They
make the two syllables very distinct. The US Marines, by contrast, mangle it
all into 'Hooonnngaaa' with a strangled half-glottal stop halfway through.
The Special Forces, being that cool, don't say it at all.

Technically, 'Hoo Har' derives from 'Heard, Acknowledged, Understood'. Thus
HUA. Less technically, it means, 'Yes, sir,' 'OK, sir,' 'Absolutely, sir,'
'Fucking A, sir,' 'Yes, sir I will go and clean the latrines or dig a ditch
or fill sandbags or jump out of a helicopter in the middle of the night and
stagger around big, dusty hills for days on end carrying a giant pack and
trying not to get killed searching for an elusive and fanatical enemy. Sir.'

And less technically still, it means the Americans in Afghanistan. It means
Cheesy Nachos on the Shomali plains. It means sealed packs of beef teriyaki
and bags of Hot Tamales chilli sweets (The Patriot's Choice) in the
mountains above Khost. It means Pop-Tarts and peanut butter in Kabul, Bibles
in tactical camouflage covers, the lone star of Texas flying over rows of
dusty tents on a heavily mined, deforested, ruined plain that the Soviets
fought for bitterly and never really conquered.

It means T-Rats and A-Rats and disembodied words over a loudspeaker
announcing 'the Large Voice' and QRFs (Quick Reaction Forces), M16s, SARs,
'friendlies' and 'jinglies' and 'bad guys' and the AMF (Afghan Military
Forces) 'who are fighting alongside us in our righteous war'. It means
Homeboy trying to raise T-Dog on the radio, Sharps half-per cent alcohol
beers and 'Born to Kill' scrawled on the insides of toilets. It means
19-year-old boys from Kentucky playing ball with M16s on their shoulders
before going off and kicking in the doors of local village houses as they
search for an elusive, highly motivated and well-armed enemy who looks like
everyone else. It means five helicopters flying in formation out of a
sunset. Sound familiar?

Welcome to 'the Stan'. Honestly, I kid you not, fingers uncrossed, that is
what they call it. 'The Stan'.

'I joined up because I watched Full Metal Jacket too many times,' the 10th
Mountain Division's combat photographer tells me. Later, admitting that he
had thrown away a Fulbright scholarship at college through partying too
hard, he talks about being mortared during the set-piece battle between
American troops and al-Qaeda and former Taliban fighters at Shah-e-Kot in
March. 'Now I can tell my grandchildren that I have been in the real shit,'
he says. The line was borrowed from the film. Later that day I heard a US
marine sergeant address a platoon. 'Listen in, ladies,' he began. He
explained how he wears a set of dog tags on his boots - as recommended by
Doc, the drill sergeant in Hamburger Hill - so that his corpse could be
identified if decapitated.

In her book An Intimate History of Killing , the historian Joanna Bourke
looks at the narratives men create to comprehend their own roles in war and,
more specifically, in combat. Apparently, soldiers in each war look to the
previous for a frame of reference. Those in the Pacific in the Second World
War looked to the First World War. Those in Vietnam looked to the Pacific
Theatre. No prizes for guessing where the men in Afghanistan were looking.

Thus the graffiti on the walls of the Portakabins where, if you got to them
later than 9am, you'd be greeted by a 5ft-high pile of soldiers' faeces:

Toilet 7: 'I am become Death, Destroyer of Worlds'; 'I am become Bored,
Destroyer of Motivation'

Toilet 3: 'Though I walk through the valley of death I shall fear no evil,
because I am the meanest motherfucker in the valley.'

Toilet 6: 'MARINE - Muscles Are Required, Intelegance [sic] Not Essential'

Toilet 2 (women only): 'I miss my cat.'

One day there is a ceremony to name the main road through the base Disney
Drive in memorial to Specialist Jason Disney, 20, who was killed on 13
February in a welding accident. It says his 'dedication, diligence and
dogged determination mark him as one of America's finest and is reflective
of the warrior spirit and warrior pride'.

Bagram was actually built by the Soviets as part of a Cold War aid package
for Afghanistan three years before they invaded. It was carefully sited at
an altitude of 5,800ft in the centre of the once fertile Shomali plains 30
miles north of Kabul. The main road from the capital to the north of the
country runs past the base before climbing towards the Salang Pass. To the
northeast is the mouth of the Panjshir, the beautiful high mountain valley
where Ahmed Shah Massoud held out against the Soviets and then the Taliban
until his assassination on 9 September last year. To the west are range upon
range of dusty, rocky hills. Beyond them, Bamiyan and Afghanistan's high,
desperately poor central plateau.

So the 10,000ft long airstrip, which the Soviets built large enough to take
both an international passenger jet and their biggest military transporters,
has big brown mountains on three sides. Even in May they are snowcapped and,
particularly in the evening, very beautiful. At about six o'clock I go for a
run: out of Viper City, turn right past the Spanish contingent and the
hospital they had set up (more than 1,000 locals treated a month), past the
Special Forces with the barbecues next to the barbed wire, through the
British 'Camp Gibraltar' with its Union flags and St Andrew's Crosses, and
then out on to the airstrip. The American troops run on Disney Drive,
keeping their guns with them. The British troops, largely Royal Marines, run
on the strip. One day the Norwegian mine clearers bring up a huge metal
mechanised flail, beat the mines out of the earth and lay out a football
pitch.

Every morning at nine, Major Bryan Hilferty and his British counterpart
brief the press. The Brits say little of any great interest. The Americans
are always good value.

Hilferty starts every briefing with a reminder of why we are all there.
'Today is the 233rd day since al-Qaeda terrorists murdered more than 3,000
innocent children when they attacked the World Trade Center in New York.'
And every day he reads out another short, potted obituary culled from the
New York Times website. So we had:

'One of those who died was Robert McCarthy, 33, a trader with Cantor
Fitzgerald who gave his wife six dozen roses on their anniversary. Five for
each year they had been married and a dozen for her colleagues. Every time
she looks into the eyes of her son Shane she sees her husband.'

A day later it was 'Ricardo Quinn, 40, a paramedic who loved to make
life-sized sand sculptures on Jones Beach, where he loved to go with his
family.'

Hilferty ends every briefing with: 'The hunt goes on. The war on terrorism
in Afghanistan continues.'

One morning Hilferty brings Colonel Patrick Fetterman, a short, stocky man
with clipped grey hair and combat fatigues and clear blue eyes. He is there
to explain to us the role played by his unit, the 187th Battalion of the
101st Airborne, in the one 'contact' with the enemy in the last 10 weeks.
Four suspected al-Qaeda fighters were killed after they opened fire on an
Australian SAS patrol. Two hundred men from the 187th, the 'Quick Reaction
Force' who lounge around their tents in Viper City all day waiting for an
alert, were airlifted in when the shooting started.

The Colonel tells us: 'We landed on a hard LZ in very steep terrain above a
village. We moved down into it and found blood traces and three large caches
of ammunition. We had an overwhelming force and though some villagers were
not very happy about it, we asked them to unlock their doors and we went
through the village. Sometimes we had to break down doors, and that was hard
for my guys who are going from strong sunlight into interiors that could be
hostile. Any AQT [al-Qaeda and Taliban] elements would not have been able to
flee because we had air.'

He is very keen to stress that the mission was not to 'search and destroy'
but to 'clean and sweep'.

I ask him where he is from. 'I'm out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, sir,' he
says. 'God's Own Country.'

I spend an afternoon on the main checkpost on the way into the base. Flanked
by minefields, it comprises a tent, several machine guns, two Humvee
semi-armoured utility vehicles, lots of oversized, blast-proof sandbags,
five young American soldiers and an Afghan fighter they nicknamed Crazy.
Crazy has learnt three English phrases: 'Fuck you,' 'Suck my dick' and 'I am
a crazy Mo Fo.' He is very pleased with his English and uses it a lot.

The soldiers are doing 12-hour shifts. Though they are bored stupid ('Ain't
nothing a man can concentrate on for 12 hours 'cept pussy,') they are
unfailingly polite to the Afghan drivers whose battered, painted trucks form
a long queue in the dust. Two locals on painted bicycles - one with what
sounds like a Casio VL Tone playing My Darling Clementine fixed to a dynamo
on the rear wheel, the other with a spray of plastic flowers on the
handlebars - cycle up.

'Salaam, how you doing?' says Private Parker, a frame fitter in Oregon
before he joined the 101st Airborne a year ago.

Parker, who had never left America until January has recently been
transferred up from Kandahar, the southern desert city which was the
spiritual and administrative headquarters of the Taliban.

'Man, that place was where God took all the shit that was left over after
making the world and dumped it,' Parker says. 'The second battalion was_
scared out of there. They were telling some horror stories about going up
and down those mountains. Some of those guys got shot to shit.'

In the tent the soldiers are passing round a holiday supplement full of
pictures of beaches and palm trees and talking about Cuban women.

Parker is frisking more Afghans. 'You gotta say 11 September had some good
in it. Bad for us but good for these guys. Made us all think about the rest
of the world, and we ain't so good at that sometimes.'

Outside the gate of the base a small market has sprung up. Half a dozen
stalls selling carpets, traditional Afghan pakol hats, Soviet military
belts, Uzbek vodka and local hashish. They also stock hundreds of pilfered
ration packs, crates of maple syrup, giant tubs of Tang fruit-drink mix and
boxes of Patriot's Choice Hot Tamales. Most have been robbed from the PX,
the military mini-supermarket on the base, or salvaged from the sprawling
base rubbish dump.

The Americans' catering provisions are mystifying. Everything their soldiers
eat is cooked in Germany, flown 2,500 miles and then reheated and served on
disposable cardboard trays in a hangar. Unsurprisingly, the processed
'chicken pattie', the reconstituted scrambled eggs and the 'grits' are
virtually inedible. Lunch is an MRE (Meals Ready to Eat) - the American
field rations. There are 30 menus. The best is no 21, Chicken Tetrazini, in
which, along with the main meal, you get a packet of Skittles sweets, a
plastic sachet of processed cheese with jalapeño peppers, some crackers and
'ice tea' powder with added sugar. In every MRE there is a miniature bottle
of Tabasco sauce, a moist face towel and a chemical pad that reacts with
water and partially heats things.

Everyone supplements their diet from the PX. It sells 6lb bags of pretzels
and beef jerky and you can buy PlayStations (with Soldier of Fortune to play
on them) and magazines ranging from Sports Illustrated to Shotgun News .
There are Stars-and-Stripes pendants, keyrings, cards and posters and
'Operation Enduring Freedom' T-shirts showing a New York fireman standing in
the ruins of the World Trade Center handing an American flag up to a
soldier, with the words: 'Over to you, buddy.' There are 'Moist Toilet
Wipes', tactical towels and Special Forces headscarves as well as Afghan
necklaces and handmade carpets with a map of the country surrounded with
carefully stitched pictures of guns and helicopters.

One Friday evening we hear that Donald Rumsfeld, the American defence
secretary, is coming to Bagram to rally the troops. So at 11am we are all on
the runway waiting for him. Major Hilferty has stuck white tape to the
concrete to form a press pen. He points out a transport plane 100 yards
away, its nose bulbous with surveillance equipment.

'We have sensitivities towards that aircraft,' he says. 'I don't know what
the fuck it is but we have sensitivities towards it. So don't film it.'

At 11.05 two huge C17 jets circle in from the south. Rumsfeld walks swiftly
past us. I notice he is not a big man and that the trouser legs on his black
undertaker's suit are too short.

A stage has been built in a hangar, where several hundred troops are waiting
beneath five regimental pennants. American concert rock and country and
western are blasting out of several huge speakers. Many of the songs are
about 11 September.

The chorus of one is:

'I am just a singer of simple songs
I am not a real political man,
I watch CNN but I am not sure
I would tell you the difference
between Iraq and Iran,
But I know Jesus and I talk to God
And I remember this from when
I was young,
Faith, hope and love are some
good things he gave us
And the best and the greatest is love.'

Rumsfeld speaks for about 15 minutes. He talks about Afghanistan and the war
on terrorism and how the country must be rebuilt so it never provides a safe
haven for enemies of the US and the free world. He tells the soldiers that
the 'Afghan theatre' is a testing ground for future operations and hints
heavily that an attack on Iraq would come next.

'This is a momentous time,' he says. 'And you have a momentous mission.'

'Hoo Har!' the men shout back.

'You have been commissioned by history.'

'Hoo Har!'

'When the war is over, and it will be over, you will be able to say I fought
with the coalition forces in Afghanistan.'

'Hoo Har!'

For us, the journalists, there is little in the way of news. This is not a
problem. It is nice and cool in the hangar, out of the midday sun. A sense
of torpor has settled over Bagram. In the afternoon we sit in the stifling
press tent and try to work. Apparently a local warlord has offered
substantial amounts of money to anyone who successfully attacks the base. No
one is very concerned. An occasional helicopter hovers over the strip as
pilots perform routine checks and manoeuvres; by the gate the Afghans hawk
their Soviet bayonets and their necklaces and rummage through the rubbish;
anyone who has been out on operations overnight or on guard duty is asleep.
It is very hot and the flies are getting bad.

This evening, as usual, the soldiers will jog with their M16s on Disney
Drive, muffled R&B will drift tinnily over the tented lines of Viper City,
the chow queue will shuffle through the dust, the Royal Marines will play
football, Private Parker and the soldiers on the gate will still be bored,
more anatomically extraordinary pornographic drawings will appear on the
toilet doors, the men in the tent next to ours might ask me again if I can
get them some 'liquor', the hacks will probably watch Full Metal Jacket for
the seventh time and pass around a bottle of bootleg Johnny Walker ($100 a
bottle from Kabul) and the Special Forces units will get ready to move out
to whichever chunk of Afghan mountain the 'sweep-and-clean' operations are
in this week.

And in the night Colonel Fetterman will dream of 'God's Own Country', the
distant sound of live firing exercises will ripple around the perimeter of
the base, the occasional mine will go off with a dull pop and, if the clouds
clear, the fat, heavy, sickly moon will gleam off the long, drooping rotor
blades of the Chinooks.

Then it will be a brand-new morning in Afghanistan.