One of the pleasant things about Bagram was the view of the mountains. Bagram lies in a bowl of snow-capped, green mountains just as beautiful as the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. This beautiful mountain scenery was contrasted by the base itself, which seemed quite like a pockmarked, eyesore strewn with dirt streets and military equipment. Of course, Bagram is a huge military base in a war zone (or so the guy at the PAX terminal said), so one can expect a preference for function over form. Little did I know at the time, however, that my C-130 would serve the same function as Alice’s looking glass and deposit me into a world very much in opposite of Bagram.
On disembarking the plane at Kabul, the first thing noticed is that everything is brown (except, of course, me in my tiger-stripped green and gray uniform). The mountains are brown, the airport terminal is brown, the vehicles are covered in a thin coat of brown dust. As we loaded my gear into an armored Toyota Landcruiser, I began to see that dirt and dust is a recurrent theme. This thought is reinforced by our drive through the airport compound. Brown dirt sticks to everything much like humidity hangs in the air on a hot August night in Georgia. Rolling through numerous heavily guarded checkpoints, the scene remains the same; dust covered, armed men in brown uniforms. The flat landscape leading up to the brown mountains also retains a brown, parched look.
On entering Kabul, the brown is broken up by the gray of the buildings. The dirt, however, continues to be ubiquitous as there is not a blade of grass to be found. Even the few trees seen lack any leaves. In the absence of grass is trash. Kabul is very much a city trying to find its way into modernity. It is a battle that is being won (particularly through a youth that is becoming more connected to the outside world through social media), but it is a hard fight. This fight is aptly demonstrated by the billboard advertisement for BlackBerry beneath which was a goat eating from a trash pile. It appeared as if I had left the dichotomy of Bagram, with its beautiful mountains contrasted by the base itself, for a singular world wherein there was no pleasant contradiction to the dirtiness thus far witnessed.
The contradiction, however, lay with my new home for the next year; the US embassy at Kabul. Now, before describing this oasis, you must realize that the embassy is not a military base; it is run by the Department of State. I emphasize this lest the reader think our military is spending its budget in this fashion. The first thing I noticed on moving past the enormous amount of security into the actual compound was the green grass. This must be the only place in Afghanistan with green grass, I thought. Indeed, Bagram has instituted three-minute, combat showers while the embassy gardener has enough water to keep the grass green. Everything else, aside from a bit of construction, is somewhat glamorous comparatively speaking. Department of State employees enjoy single bedroom apartments, a coffee shop, tennis court, and pool. Yes, you read correctly, a four-lane, 25-meter swimming pool a mere few hundred yards from the epidemic poverty that is Kabul. Of course, a few folks were employed to keep the pool clean and operational so that counts for something.
All of this, and more, is housed within a very high wall with numerous, heavily guarded checkpoints that extend quite far from the compound. Indeed, the extent of the security measures cannot even be discussed given their classified nature and the existence of a very real threat. This is why the US Embassy in Kabul, or the Kabul Kondos, is referred to as the world’s most exclusive gated community. Compared to how most US forces in Afghanistan live, the conditions here are, as one friend described them, “posh.” Of course, I will not spend all of my time at the embassy, so I should be able to get a good idea of life “outside the wire.”
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