Afghanistan
Downrange: An Informal Report on a trip to Afghanistan with Marine Gen. James N. Mattis
By Steven Pressfield | Published: March 13, 2010
[Part Two of Four]
6. Kabul is a Third World city, squalid as mud and dirty as hell. Every building that’s above the level of the people is built like a fortress; compounds with high walls topped with razor wire, AK-toting guards out front and security cameras atop Y-shaped posts. At the airport, guard towers are set in onion fields with police asleep or tending little vegetable gardens or heating tea over propane stoves. They’re keeping watch, supposedly, over cyclone fences topped with concertina wire and protected at ground level by rolls of the same, so no one can crawl under. Hesco barriers are squarish barrel-like containers made of super heavy duty cardboard and wire; fill them with rock or gravel or dirt and they make impenetrable blast walls. Stack them three or four high around a perimeter: instant Fort Apache. On bases, the quonset-shaped living tents are surrounded by sandbags piled four and five feet high. Checkpoint guards are TCNs–Third Country Nationals–from Fiji, Mongolia, Bangladesh. We circle Massoud Square again and drive past the famous Serena Hotel. “Why is it famous?” I ask SSgt Barr, our security team leader. “Because,” he says, “the Taliban keep trying to blow it up.”
The Marine Osprey aircraft can fly like a helicopter or a fixed-wing. That's BG Nicholson, back to us, in the foreground.
