The Los Angeles times has a terrifyingfascinating reconstruction of a US airstrike that killed 23 (or 16 if you believe the US military) afghan civilians on 21 february 2010. The reconstruction focusses on the role played by the pilot and camera operator of a predator drone that observed three ‘suspicious’ vehicles whose passengers had the misfortune crossing paths with a team of US special operators early on February the 21st.

The article documents how the drone operators (in Nevada), the the commander of the Special operations team (on the ground in Afghanistan) and a team of video screeners (in Florida) interacted in falsely determining that the Afghanis were armed insurgents (in reality they were unarmed villagers). One of the most intresting aspects of the article is the insight it provides into the communication patterns between the different actors involved on the US side:

The Predator’s two-man team — a pilot and a camera operator — was one of the Air Force’s most-experienced. […] Also stationed at Creech were the Predator’s mission intelligence coordinator and a safety observer. In addition, a team of “screeners” — enlisted personnel trained in video analysis — was on duty at Air Force special operations headquarters in Okaloosa, Fla. They sat in a large room with high-definition televisions showing live feeds from drones flying over Afghanistan. The screeners were sending instant messages to the drone crew, observations that were then relayed by radio to the A-Team. On the ground, the A-Team was led by an Army captain, a veteran of multiple tours in Afghanistan. Under U.S. military rules, the captain, as the ground force commander, was responsible for deciding whether to order an airstrike.

So you have a ground commander who cant see the the target who is in radio contact with the drone operator who gets most of the image analysis provided by screeners in another state who provide their assessments via direct messages and emails containing image stills) but without having access to the radio traffic with the ground commander.

As it turns out this is about as much a recipe for disaster as it sounds… [read the full article here]

Just finished watching the award winning war documentary restrepo. hard not to be impressed with this documentary (gives a whole new meaning to embedded journalism) and hard not to feel empathy with the soldiers who served more than a year at the end of the world (or as they themselves refer to it, ‘the valley of death’)

Aside from the firefights and the portraits of the (extremely young) soldiers restrepo perfectly illustrates the futility of the US-led war in Afghanistan. the whole film shows that that there is absolutely no reason why the US should be in Afghanistan in the first place, their presence there simply makes no sense at all. It appears that the heavily armed twenty-somethings and the red-bearded, toothless village elders inhabit parallel universes. unfortunately for the red bearded, toothless village elders they are getting shot at (and their cows get killed) from the other universe, without there being any meaningful means of recourse for them.

Fortunately for the village elders the US retreated from the Korengal Valley in april 2010. If restrepo serves as an indicator the US would be wise to retreat from the rest of the country as well (before they are forced to do so)

p.s. this picture pretty much makes the same point:

The city of Kabul (and Afghanistan in general) is still pretty high on my list of places i want to visit. Unfortunately, the closest place to Kabul that i got to so far is Delhi. Fortunately, however, there is the fabulous internet where Safi Airways ‘the international airline of Afghanistan’ is publishing PDF versions of it’s fabulous in-flight magazine. Browsing through the three available issues only reinforces my desire to go and visit the place.

As far as the standards of such publications are concerned the Safi Airways in-flight magazine boasts a number of rather unconventional topics (dog fighting, opium addiction) and a somewhat chaotic layout (a story about ‘man eating lions’ is run right next to an article about Kabul’s christian cemetery). Among the quirky stories and hidden in-between a fair amount of ads for armored cars are some real gems like this one about a olympic-size swimming pool on a hill overlooking Kabul that was never filled with water ‘due to the difficulties of pumping water uphill’:

Some of the parts of the magazine are outright amusing. This is especially true for the section of the publication that serves as a city guide for Kabul. The (apparently expat) copywriters seem to have inherited a certain casualness from their work in Kabul which readily expresses itself in the descriptions given in shopping section that covers everything from shopping malls:

Kabul city center is Afghanistan’s first modern style indoor shopping mall that opened in 2005. it is approximately 9 stories tall and is located in downtown Kabul

… to open air bazars offering counterfeit entertainment products …

Chicken street is famed for it’s tourist fare (carpets, carvings knifes etc) and pirated CD/DVD’s

… to sellers of misappropriated goods:

Karimi Supermarket […] make sure to head upstairs for some great stuff that’s fallen off some PX trucks.

Another area where the copywriters really shine are directions to restaurants and shops that are provided alongside these descriptions: The ‘Red Hot & Sizzling” restaurant can be found after making …

… a left at the next traffic circle. slow down, the first gate to the right used to have a red chili pepper hanging up on a pole. Not easy to find.

And in order to get to the ‘Corner Pizzeria’ you have to …

… head down the barricaded street to almost the end. You’ll see big misspelled banners showing you the way.

Update (6 sept): Spiegel online has an interview (in German) with the editor in chief off the in-flight magazine. turns out that the whole thing is intended to be ‘honest’ (as opposed to all other in flight magazines out there).

So the Atlantic has another well written article (‘The Things He Carried‘ by Jeffrey Goldberg) that shows the absurdity of the security theater that we endure at the airports (note that the situation in europe is a bit different, as they do check your boarding pass against ID at the boarding gate), which among other things illustrates that no-fly lists are a rather dumb instrument if you want to catch Terrorists.

So if the ‘terrorists’ are not on the no-fly watch list, where are they then? Conventional wisdom seems to suggest that they are in Afghanistan hanging out with the Taliban. Nir Rosen (who apparently has in inclination for hanging out in and reporting from dangerous places) has hung out with them as well and documented his trip into the Taliban controlled province of Ghazni for the Rolling Stone (‘How we lost the war we won‘). Along his trip he also managed to take some beautiful photos:

Now of course the Taliban do not really qualify as ‘terrorists’ either but that does not deter both US presidential candidates from making plans for sending more troops to Afghanistan [and possibly Pakistan]. If you want to understand why this is a rather dumb idea, Rosen’s article is a good place to start…

I have had my own share of mobile phone operatorsloosing it a bit when it comes to geography, but yesterdays fuck up by Monica’sprovider is equally noteworthy:

Yes that reads, ‘have a pleasant stay in Afghanistan’ which is especially noteworthy as she got that message when we were leaving the basement of the American Book Center in central Amsterdam.

Good news coming from the mysterious world of online banking. According to my bank (Rabobank in the Netherlands) it is again safe enough to transfer money to Afghanistan. Don’t really know what they were worrying about before? Me giving osama a little bit of pocket money? Or them war lords hijacking my transactions? In any case this is an important step towards fully computerized opium ordering…