Basetrack One Eight

8/13/2019 Basetrack One Eight

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Basetrack: one-eight


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Basetrack

one-eight

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tivadar domaniczky

Balazs gardi

teru kuwayama

rita leistner

omar mullick

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9 Preface

17 Two Brothers

25 Any Other Day

43 1/8 Helmand, Afghanistan 2010-2011

223 In Memoriam

227 A Marine to Civilian Tourists Phrasebook

233 Contributors

237 Acknowledgements


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9

Afghanistan looks like a success story.

It was 2004. I remember saying those words to

a young Marine officer one night in the Korengal

Valley. Captain Justin Ansel was a company com-

mander, on his first combat deployment, and I was

embedded with a hundred of his Marines in the

eastern mountains of Kunar province, just off the

Pakistan border. Along with us was Balazs Gardi, aHungarian photographer.

The Marines were the first conventional force to

enter the valleydropped in from Chinooks and left

to explore the ground on backbreaking, knee-crush-

ing, vertical hikes. At night, we slept in holes that

we dug in the ground. There were firefights where

the hillsides and ridgelines exchanged fire with

the valley, but it seemed that no one hit anything.

Youre safe, as long as theyre aiming at you, a

Marine once told me, assessing the enemys marks-

manship.

It felt almost innocent in those days. The Taliban

was a distant, spent force, and Afghans were lining

up around the country to vote in the first national

elections. 20,000 US troops in remained there, but

another war was underway and eyes had shifted to

the west.

Over the past decade Afghanistan has been the

Forgotten War, the Long War, and now, the Longest

War.

Today, almost ten years after the 9/11 attacks

on the United States, Osama Bin Laden is dead.

Yet 100,000 American troops remain in Afghani-

stan, fighting an amorphous enemy that shifts and

spreads across borders.

Public opinion polls indicate that the majority

of Americans believe the Afghan war is not worth

fighting. At the same time, the vast majority of

Americans have almost no direct exposure to a

conflict that has been fought by an all-volunteer

militaryone that constitutes less than 1% of thepopulation. To most Americans, a decade of blood

and treasure is an abstract, distant concept.

Last year, Balazs and I returned to Afghanistan

with the same officer, now Major Ansel, now on

his seventh tour. This time to Helmand province, in

southern Afghanistan, with 1/8the 1st Battalion,

8th Marine Regiment from Camp Lejeune, N.C. A

cross-disciplinary media team joined us in Afghani-

stan and worked with us from around the world to

connect more than a t housand Marines and Corps-

men to their families, and to a broader public. The

last team se nt dispatches from Kabul and Kandahar,

outside the battalions area of operations.

The photographs in this book are only a frag-

ment of the experience of 1/8. The most important

parts are yours to tell. The names, the places, and

the stories are for you to add and to share. Think

of this as a basetrack for you to layer, remix, and

transmit.

V/R

Teru Kuwayama

pf

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Kabul, 2002 Teru Kuwayama


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Korengal Valley, 2007 Balazs Gardi


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16 17

When ISAF forces frisk villagers during security

patrols, they almost always look at their palms. Its

easy to tell who has earned their bread by hard la-

bor on the fields or by choosing guns over shovels.

Gul reveals that although he worked briefly on

his fathers land, he spent most of his time studying

in both the local elementary school, and religious

school, or madrasa, in neighboring Pakistan. Clad

in cream-colored shalwar kamiz, he wears a gray

turban wrapped around a glittering burgundy Kan-

dahari hat, with a white Kandahari patu (shawl) dec-

orated with fine black lines covering his shoulder.

As I scrutinize his fairly new black-leather shoes, I

notice that he is constantly shaking his right leg

signs of nervousness. When he reaches for his old

and battered Nokia phone during our interview, Icannot help but see his meticulously cut nails and

soft-looking palms.

Raziq is three years younger but is the same

height as his brother (both seem really short for be-

ing fighters). And although neither is married, Raziq

wears a silver ring on his left hand. His face is a

bit chubbier compared to the sharp features of his

brother, and his palms reveal hardship and regu-

lar physical work: While Gul studied, Raziq worked

on the small family land attached to the three-room

adobe house they grew up in with their parents and

younger siblings. He doesnt remember when he

started helping his family cultivate wheat, potatoes,

beans, and almonds, but he remembers that he was

very young when his mother first asked him to de-

liver food to his father on the fields.

One night, about three and a half years ago,

American soldiers shot their cousin dead during a

night raid. Esmat was just an ordinary farmer, Raziq

recalls, killed while trying to leave his home sur-

rounded by U.S. troops.

A week after I meet the brothers, I visit Kabuls

Charahi Qambar refugee camp about 450 kilome-ters (about 280 miles) east of Kandahar. Four years

ago, this land was barren, with only a handful of

gypsies living on it. These nomads settled here with

their families and lived in tents for years. Through-

out, they were outnumbered by the internally dis-

placed who fled Helmand with their remaining

families after their homes got destroyed by air

strikes and the fighting between the British and

the insurgents, with the Marines later replacing the

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burning house where, he says, he lost most of his

loved ones but from which he fled himself as he did

not want to die.

Raziq admits that Gul is not the only one in Afghani-

stan to join the insurgency after losing a relative or

loved one to the frequent night raids or aerial bom-

bardments.

Our country is occupied by foreigners, Gul

says. What would you do if Afghan soldiers hu-

miliated, beat, and handcuffed you in front of your

family? he asks calmly. The Taliban at least an-nounce their arrests by releasing videotapes, unlike

[what happens to] the people who are taken from

their homes by the Americans during those night

raids, he says.

Gul was in the 12th grade when he joined the in-

surgency. Jihad is easyyou could do it wherever

you are. Its not hard to find the Mujahideen, he

says, adding, Every Muslims obligation is to fight

the occupiers. There are no formalities for joining

the Taliban, and its up to the person who wants to

join, he says. After a background check, he became

a driver and then, after some time, a bodyguard.

Later, he received a weapon and learned how to

make bombs from Afghan comrades. Improvised

explosive devices, or IEDs, became their weapon of

choice, as he put it. We are very succes sful in using

them, he says, but quickly adds what I have already

read in Taliban communiqus: We feel sorry for ev-

ery single dead or wounded American soldier. We

suggest they go home to their families and leave

us alone.

Some choose to make money, some choose to

be free, says Gul about the split feelings of his fam-

ily over his decision to join the Taliban. I will never

come back, he had told them when they asked him

to leave the house for fear of possible American

raids. I will tak e my last breath in the battlefield.

Although Raziq misses his family a lot, he has to

make do with his fathers occasional brief visits as

he cannot go back to the family house since joining

the Afghan National Police, or ANP, a year ago. As

the crops failed that year, it was his only option to

support his family. If he had a choice, he says, he

would have picked school over the uniform. Illit-

eracy is blindness, says Raziq, who wasnt as fortu-

nate as his older brother, who had the opportunity

to learn to read and write and even picked up a littleEnglish at school.

Raziq describes his father as a very poor and ag-

ing man with a brave heart who, he recalls, strug-

gled to provide food for his eight-member family.

And although most of the time Raziq shared a room

with Gul, he cannot re call any good memories: We

were so occupied with hardship, we had no good

times together, he says.

Since Raziqs father cannot visit him at the out-

post where he lives, he sends more than half of

the 10,000 Afghani (about $230 USD) he earns to

his family through a friend. Once the war is over,

he would like to return to them, but most of Zabul

provincejust as his birthplace, the village of Ba-

zargan in Shah Joy districtis under Taliban con-

trol. Now, not only does he have to fear most of his

neighbors, but his own brother, too. Gul, who now

commands a 10-man-strong insurgent unit, visits

his family from time to time as well. Although he

doesnt get paid for being a Mujahideen, he says

that whenever he does receive payment from his

commander, he shares it with his family.

Government officials are hashish-smoking

thieves, says Gul, explaining why he chose the

British. Currently, around 800 familiessome with

40 members eachlive in makeshift mud huts on

the land.

Khan Mohammed came from Kunjak, Helmands

Musa Qala District. He stands in a small yard sur-

rounded by newly built s houlder-high adobe walls,

unwrapping a roll of dirty papers as we speak, and

shows me a photograph of four of his sons. These

are probably the only images he has ever taken of

them. They lie on the floor, one by one, eyes closed.

I notice bloodstains on all of them and ask naively if

they are better now.

They are all dead, he says, staring at my eyes,

as are 10 other members of my family.

Khan lost many of his family members, includ-

ing his father, in an air strike that hit his home a

night before Eid, the day of celebration that marks

the end of the holy month of Ramadan and also the

most awaited day by children in the Muslim world

as they rece ive gifts. Another photograph shows his

Korengal Valley, Kunar province, 2007 Balazs Gardi


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20 21

the same language as the Pashtuns of the south. He

summarizes it: People respect and support who-

ever does the job.

I did not know Mujahideens are such simple

people, Gul says, describing how impressed he

was when he met the fighters who left their fami-

lies behind to fight for God and freedom. When he

had to defend his decision to join the Taliban to his

father, he quoted from the Quran:

Nor will they cease

Fighting you until

They turn you back

From your faith

If they can.

Surah 2: Al Baqarah

The U.S. is helping us a lot. They train police

and deliver projects to the communities, but when

they leave, we will not be able to defend ourselves,


side he did. Aid money pours into Afghanistan, but

instead of being spent on development, it is stolen,

he says. Unless you pay the officials, they wont

work for you. Later, when we talk about whether

the Mujahideen recruits people, he returns to the

same analogy: Our doors are always open to any-

one, unlike those bureaucrats.

Raziq also mentions hashish smoking in a nega-

tive fashion, although he refers to his fellow police-

men when I ask him what the people in his province

think of the ANP. To my surprise, he doesnt even try

to defend his uniform. He is very aware that most

Afghans call policemen thieves for a good rea-

sontheyre known to constantly harass people.

But Raziq says his unit is different. He says that the

people in his provinceas in most southern prov-

incesrespect the ANA soldiers more than they do

the local policemen. Most of these soldiers are from

the northern part of the country, and as most are

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22 23

The words insu rgents, Taliban, and the op-

position were used to describe the armed move-

ment fighting coalition forces in Afghanistan, but

both brothers more often used the word Mujahi-

deen, or holy warrior.

This reportingand most of the journalistic work com-

ing out of the countrywould not be possible without thehelp of the brave, smart, and knowledgeable Afghans whoguide us through the labyrinth of Afghanistans current re-alitysometimes at great personal risk. The fixers, as thisprofession commonly refers to them, are the real journal-ists behind the scenes who find and break stories, organizemeetings, translate questions, and warn us about not tak-ing a certain answer for granted.

I am only one in a long list of foreign journalists whoshould thank Habib Zohori for sharing his extensive knowl-edge and for being a wise and kind companion along theroad.

Garmsir, Helmand province, 2007 Balazs Gardi

says Raziq, who was trained by fellow Afghans

rather than American mentors. They only showed

me how to shoot my rifle, he says. It did not tak e

so long.

The brothers know there is a chance they will

face each other on the battlefieldjust like many

Afghan brothers did, fighting as part of either the

Mujahideen or the Russians decades ear lier.

The story of Gul and Raziq isnt unique. There are

many other families in similar situations, but most of

them are ashamed to talk about it. Although Gul and

Raziq were interviewed on the same day in the same

town, each did not know that we would meet and

talk to the other. Kandahar is only two hours from

where the brothers live and fight. Both wore civilian

clothes for their interviews, as they were concerned

about their security, yet coming to this heavily milita-

rized city wasnt a problem for either of them.

Garmsir, Helmand province, 2007 Balazs Gardi


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24 25

On any other day, you would have been received

with the courtesy of kings.

And as my four-year-old son is wont to say: all

stories are better with kings, swords, and puppies

in them. But we will get to the swords and dogs

later.

For now, it is enough to wonder what you would

have made of this land were it not for war.

Someone commented yesterday about the books

you bring along to read and the variety of genres.

Well, you would love the poetry here: it is forthright,

muscular, and often addresses directly the object of

its attentionthe land, the writer, the Belovedand

the whole thing is held together by the musicality

of the language. All these fragments, thoughts, and

feelings jostling at the fore. And it is a public affair,

recited after Friday prayers at gatherings with friends.

I was meant to shoot you, hug the shadows and

shoot you in an unguarded moment, and I was sup-

posed to do this repeatedly all across the plains of

Helmand.

The irony was not lost on me: a Pashtun chasing

Marines chasing Pashtuns.

By that I mean I was supposed to shoot pho-

tographs, put faces to names, break the numbers

one-eight into first names and last namesnick-

names, evenlooks, voices, demeanors, individu-

al traits, all of that, a gait, the timbre of a voice, a

laugh. I was not sure that it would happen in the

few weeks we had planned for an embed, but I did

wonder if it would be possible to break things down

further into lives, even fragments of lives. I would

have settled for a few quirks, an anecdote even.

It is my first trip to this region in 25 years, and I

am bereft of the correct tongue, and my bloodlines

are tangled enough between Pakistan and Afghani-

stan that I am not sure what claim beyond an an-

cestral tug I have to the land. I want to know my

mothers side. I know that. To write this piece, I can

no longer reference my bookshelves back home,

and tuck this piece in others ideas. Now it seems I

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yet the same earth that pushed up my family tree.

Things get so complicated so quickly here. I know of

few things more tragic than that, to be introduced

to a place this way.

And what if we push on, heading southwest

toward Kandahar? There lies Ahmad Shah Durrani,

another king, a Pashtun warrior, who loved poetry

and language. His most quoted lines of Pashto po-

etry are from a piece called Love of a Nation:

By blood, we are immersed in love of you.

The youth lose their heads for your sake

I come to you and my heart finds rest.

Away from you, grief clings to my heart like a

snake.

I forget the throne of Delhi

When I remember the mountaintops of my

Afghan land.

If I must choose between the world and you,

I shall not hesitate to claim your barren deserts

as my own.

Yesterday, I stopped back at an IDP camp for fami-

lies from Helmand. The camp is on the outskirts of

Kabul. There are people there from both Helmand

and Kandahar. The reason I stopped back was that I

was restless. I was not satisfied with the initial ques-

tions I asked on my first trip there. I wanted desper-

ately to reach at something else beyond the awful,

mounting statistics of the dead. So I asked the man

who lost so many family members, mostly children,

what he would say he loved most about his city,

this name in current affairs so steeped in battle and

resistance. He listed three things: the wind, that

they have good elders, and the graves of pious

people. When he thinks of the saintly people buried

Badakshan, 2005 (L), Wakhan Corridor, 2005 (R) Teru Kuwayama

and try to stitch together something of a country of

the mind. I can barely write about what it is like to

be here, as I only just arrived.

In that sense, you and I are similar. We are see-

ing this region through narrow filters: you through

war, and me through memory and anecdote. I

yearned to be here; I suspect you yearned to be

home. We have these parallel longings.

Some one else yearned to be here, a ki ng.

You would have loved Babur. He inherited a

kingdom in 1495 when his father fell to his death

tending pigeons. He was only 11. His early years

were marked by repeated failure, one after the oth-

erall futile attempts to secure land. As he would

advance on one conquest, others would attack what

he thought was secure. A constant advance and re-

treat, but he never stopped, pushing on. Eventu-

ally, a landless child king, he turned his attention

to the south, and the whole thing opened like an

oyster with a pearl. The pearl was the subcontinent.

He birthed the Mughal Empire that held sway for

centuries, and the area he missed, when prompted,

was a small village north of Kabul, called Istalif. Of

it, he wrote: Few villages match Istalif, with vine-

yards and orchards on either side of its torrent, its

waters cold and pure. He wrote of its flowers, its

climate, and was critical of the women and food in

other parts of the empire. Everything paled by com-

parison.

You know it as the land just outside Bagram air

base. You have passed through it a thousand times,

the land that obsessed a King, who birthed a civiliza-

tion. And he wanted to be here more than anything.

What must you make of that?

The same earth that pushes up fire flowers now

that rob your friends and civilians of limbs. And

Bamyan, 2004 (L), Kabul, 2002 (R) Teru Kuwayama


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28 29

keep the puppy and lose him when she left for an-

other destination, or lose him now and still be sad.

And there we were, crafting and re-crafting his idea

of home. The country was increasingly riddled with

only more difficult choices. Faced with that, what

diamond clarity, then, to be grateful for the wind.

I needed to ask her, though, about this mans

remarks to know whether they seemed foreign, if

they translated, because they struck me too closely

like something my mother would have said. I once

complained to her about a dispute in grade school,

to which she responded: Be grateful that theywronged you, a nd you did not wrong the m. And

she lived lik e that. The matter was over.

I noticed this man at the camp when we arrived

because he left almost immediately to put on his

turban and then came back. He did not want to

greet a guest with his head uncovered. The gesture

moved me.

One more thing about him: his name.

Rahmatullah Rahmani.

When I asked him, he smiled at my reaction. I

felt dislodged. Rahmatullah meant the mercy of

God. Rahmani was a conjugated version of the

Arabics al-Rahman, the name used in the Quran

for God as the Most Merciful. But the I on the

end signified something else in Persian, the pos-

sessive. So, if you were from Kandahar, you would

be Kandahari. But here, his name did not denote

a geographic destination; it was saying unequivo-

cally that he was from God, the Most Merciful. He

had lost 14 members of his family, mostly childrenand relatives, and was displaced from his home in

Sangin, Helmand, yet beamed at me with the most

disarming of smiles. He loved that I knew his name.

You see, there is no avoiding it.

We are going to have to speak of lslam, and I

was unsure how to address it.

But I got a gift two days ago. I sat to dinner with

a new friend from Kabul, who navigates this terrain

Bamyan, 2004 Teru Kuwayama

in Kandahar, he cries. I dont really know what to

say about that. It resists comment. It either moves

you, or it doesnt. Then the man sitting next to him,

an elder, proudly said in Pashto, raising his hand

and surveying Kabul from the inside of this make-

shift mosque: I could walk 10 miles in this city, and

you could turn the streets to gold, and it would not

compare to 10 steps in my own city. He knew that

as certainly as he sat before me.

But I was still with his friend; I could not let go of

that earlier remark. He missed the wind, the ability

to draw good advice and the opportunity to prayand know that ones land was lived on by those

marked by piety. When I got home, to the guest-

house in Qalay Musa, Kabul, I told the rest of the

house what he said. I wanted to know whether it

moved me only because I had similar frames of ref-

erence, that I was perhaps familiar with the culture

from which this sentiment was born.

Erin, a young journalist from California, and

the sweetest of impromptu landlords, who chased

her passion for journalism and wanderlust from

Gaza to Kabul, sighed and said that his remarks

were worth remembering when we complained

about the Internet going down. She was right. We

laughed. I was relieved. But then it made sense:

she was sitting there, a little tired, tending to a lost

puppy that she and friends at the house rescued

from the snowy Kabul streets a few weeks ago. She

did not know what she would or could do with the

dog in the long-term, but she pushed on anyway,

nursing him back to health, not knowing where shewould be next month or next year. I liked that, and

was utterly moved by it: the commitment, day to

day, to help anyway.

And now, poor thing, having bonded with the

animal, she was contending with its departure.

I promised, if possible, to take the puppy back to

New York to my s on. I would give him a home. And

what choice for Erin? Both riddled with heartbreak:

Bagram, 2004 Teru Kuwayama


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30 31

she did not care to name it, her expression of the

Faith was the Pashtun version of it: limitless hospi-

tality, good manners, and an attempt to surrender

to the Divine when confronted with hardship.

The better angels of this cultural expression

meant that you would take your dignity over bread.

In Karachi, on another shoot earlier in the year,

I looked for people from Helmand at a soup kitch-

en, knowing I was heading to Afghanistan. I found

a boy, grinning at me from the corner of the foodline. He was a trash picker. He had made his way

to Pakistan two months ago with some friends, by

crossing over into Quetta and then making his way

to Pakistan. He picked trash by day and slept in the

dump with his friends, most of them from Helmand,

too. As I took some photos of him and his friend, I

noticed something around his neck: a necklace that

he was trying to hide. I told him to pull it out. Strung

together out of beads and handmade by him was a

pendant in the shape of an AK-47. He laughed, as

did the rest of us. A friend standing with me, who

was Pashtun from Swat, said: Topakzamaqanoon

From the gun comes rule of law.

But it is what happened next that disarmed me.

The boy reached around his neck a nd unclipped the

necklace and handed it to me. I reached immediate-

ly into my pocket to give him money. My Pashtun

friend grabbed my forearm and s topped me.It is a gift, he said.

It all telescoped in to that moment. Everything.

Call me a fool. But we did not get to risk the embed

together, even though I thought my risk would be in

Helmand with you, but I see now that my risk is to

be here, to connect with you. The courage is going

to have to take the form of a leap of faith with regard

to what I will share, how much I am going to risk in

Bagram, 2004 (L), Wakhan Corridor, 2005 (R) Teru Kuwayama

effortlessly. He told me he was an atheist. But he

said something very interesting right after that, and

he gave me my opening here. He said that he un-

derstood with no ambiguity that Islam was a part

of this country and culture, and inseparable from

it. So much so that while not believing in God, he

knew it was an intrinsic part of Afghan identity and

defended it whenever it was attacked.

Everywhere I turned, it was threaded through

the culture. In line at the passport office, I saw aman and his throat bobbing with the remembrance

of God, and the prayer beads shifting quietly in his

hand. In fact, I saw this everywhere; in the taxi, the

leather-jacketed stoner driver telling me that he, like

all other Pashtuns, was not afraid to die because he

trusted in God. When I looked at the turbans, I saw

to a tee the description of how a turban was tied by

the Prophet: two cubits long, one specific narration

saying that one strand hung between his shoulder

blades as he prayed with the other strand in fr ont.

And then the legendary hospitality and the treat-

ment of guests, something war will have cloaked

for you, perhaps. A trust that no matter what little

you had to eat, it was still not yours and that pro-

vision came from elsewhere. Dhost-e-Khuda, the

driver said to me: guests are the friends of God.

There was a code. And as displaced as I was

from the region, it was transmitted through prac-tice, person to person. My mother cared little for my

obsession with where we came from, was even per-

haps mildly annoyed with it. In her lifetime, she had

seen the failure of nation building, corruption at

every level, and was raised by a single mother and

herself raised four children. Our family story, like so

many, was just another chapter in constant move-

ment. It was the survivor mentality. But as much as

Wakhan Corridor, 2005 Teru Kuwayama


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32 33

may have shared similar night visions, the sword

had swiftly become a gun, a specific gun commonto these streets . The culture is evolving with war.

So what was lost? What is the country that I

never saw and that you will not have seen? Us dis-

persed like the wind that only a God-fearing man

would be grateful for.

Perhaps it is even something that only an elder

could pass on?

Here is one perspective: I have an old friend

back home whose family is from Kabul. They lived

in a typical house in the city: a four-walled com-pound with a central courtyard. Uncles and aunts

also lived there. My friends father would not leave

the house in the morning without kissing the top of

his sleeping mothers feet. He did not know whether

he would be back at the end of the day. The Quran

speaks of heaven being at the feet of your mother.

His gesture says enough. My friend says he was a

young child, and was a time of jihad. There were

Kabul, 2007 Balazs Gardi

order to engage. You see, I forgot, momentarily, our

code. I forgot that sometimes people want some-thing more than bread. Some times they want dig-

nity, autonomy, their way. They want to wear their

turban and feed you something from their home in

an IDP camp. I know the bread-and-butter political

analysis of the masses and how crowds move, but

sometimesand at least here we lose something

of a nuance when we fail to see there is something

in the best of the culture that is born of faith that

even money and a bullet cannot move. He wanted

to give me a gift, and I, weaned on my fancy foreigneducation, was going to muddy it with cash. I took

the necklace then thanked him.

I was not there to teach him that day. I had noth-

ing for him. He had gifts to give.

I think of my son as I write this. Perhaps you

have a child? My son was half this boys age at least.

He is in Pennsylvania, lost in dreams of swords and

puppies. And whereas once this boy from Helmand

Kabul, 2007 Balazs Gardi


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34 35

second blade was being used to see whether they

could cauterize the neck and make the body still

move after the head had been severed. This was the

sport of men after war.

He said he knew then that he would have to

leave. Or something at the center of him, some-

thing wordless, something worth saving would be

lost. It was not the same country he had known. He

implored me not to come.

I took his name for my son: Sayf al-Rahman.

The Sword of the Most Merciful.

He named his son Gul al-Rahman:

The Flower of the Most Merciful.

And I was now standing in Kabul after 25 years

away from this region in front of Rahmatullah Ra-

hamani, who invoked mercy in every syllable of his


guns strewn on the ground. His father was increas-

ingly involved in the liberation of the country. One

night, there was a knock at the door. The city was

under siege, and they had now come for his father.

They took his father and brothers and led them

away. My friend never saw his father again.

He told me later that he would walk the streets

of Kabul as a young teen filled with rage. He said

he prayed to see someone, anyone who looked like

a foreigner. He wanted revenge. One day, he went

to the marketplace and saw a video store. On the

countertop was a video. The video was of a behead-

ing. In it, fighters returning from the jihad against

the Russians were now turning on each other. In the

video, one person heated a machete over fire and

kept the other one free to behead a man. The hot



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36 37

you have seen, or pinned on hooks on the back wall.

You feel the shoulders and chests heaving as grown

men sob, the best of them, surrendered in those

moments of prayer. And I have heard this weeping

drown a room, with nothing else discernible exceptthe sound of a breakaway voice from the front re-

citing the Quran, the voice suspended above the

crowd like the most impossible of birds.

In those moments, you are meant to ask for for-

giveness and supplicate for your needs, trusting in

the infinite mercy of God.

And there it is again: mercy.

When I was in Pakistan, I would steal away to

go to the Pashto Cinema to photograph something

that blew me away. There, an oasis of Pashtuns,

displaced from Helmand, Kandahar, Swat, would

gather to watch the cheapest of B movies in their

own tongue. The narrative was broken up every 10minutes by a new song. When the song came on,

young men would leap up onto the stage and dance

along with the music, blocking part of the projec-

tion on the screen. No one complained. In fact, they

were cheered on. It was transcendent. A small part

of this picture was that the few men who congre-

gated at the front of the screen were gay. Once,

when photographing a portrait of a Pashtun from


name. His only complaint? That when employers in

Kabul saw him and his friends from the camp with

their turbans, they were treated like dogs.

Even the dogs in my sons dreams have evolved

into a curse thrown at men.There is a Pashto proverb: Dont give us your

alms; just save us from your dogs.

Who are the dogs here?

If we have courage yet to follow this line of

thought, every one is damned and it is a short path

to tragedy. These people are fed up, perhaps, with

religious zealots importing a twisted version of the

faith into their ancient Islamic tradition. They are fed

up of us. And they are fed up of being treated like

animals themselves. That leaves a wolf pack fight-

ing with no discernible fence.

If I could show you something now about these

people, it would be to see them at their most dis-armed. Their most vulnerable. The only two places

I can think of that I have seen thatand you are

free to laughare at the mosque and at the movie

theater. There is a part of Ramadan around the 27th

night when the Quran is being completed in the

prayer recitation a nd men are s houlder-to-shoulder

at the mosque. Their pattus, which are the tradi-

tional shawls are either swathed around them, as


Ka daha i his a m jacket shal aa a d back Whe m so s a dfathe assed a a he


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38 39

Kandaharin his army jacket, shalwaar, and back

turned Kandahari capI asked him a question, ex-

pecting some thing harsh, So what do you make of

the guys at the front of the screen who dance. You

okay with that?

He tore open a pack of cookies and then looked

at me, Arent they Gods creatures, too?

Maybe it is not too late to save something.

A man said to me yesterday, it is time for people

of Qalam now. I asked him to clarify because I did

not hear him clearly. It is time f or people of the pen

now, not the sword.

How am I going to hear your end? Receive yourgifts.

If my son does what I did, and follows his

mothers family line, he will find people of great

honor, people of extraordinary strength and an un-

swerving code. He is Pashtun on my side, but on

his mothers side are European immigrants from

Poland. His grandfatherwho passed away last

year, whom he misses and who promised him a

puppy when he turned fiveplayed the organ at his

church for 40 years. They bronzed his slippers when

he retired. He served with all four of his brothers in

the military; three were wounded in war. They were

a military family.

Salt of the earth.

The generation above them lived in a mining

town in Pennsylvania. I knew the great-grandfatherbefore he passed away. His mother slipped and

died carrying an apron of apples into the house for

her children, and he went to the mines at age 14. He

never left the house without his blazer, and when

his daughter, my sons aunt, passed away, he would

not attend the funeral without his jacket. My sons

mother would not leave his house without him slip-

ping $5 into her hand, even when she was an adult.

When my sons grandfather passed away, he

was given a military funeral. It was raining. The

ground was hard. My son, as is our tradition, raised

and cupped his hands in prayer.

We may not have met. But we are not so far

apart.

These days, I make my way back home to Qalay

Musa in Kabul, searching out the citys secrets, itch-

ing to get out and see more, the bigger dream to

be of some use. It is cold and rains a lot these days.

About this time, you are readying to go home. Are

you seeing the same faces and streets in this not-

so-barren earth?

I come home with fresh naan from the bakery two

doors down the street, where my broken language

skills make us laugh. The bread still warm, folded

under my arm. I wish I knew more Pashto poetry.

I am yet to see Kandahar. I think of my son. And I

want to go home soon. I have a promise to keep

about a puppy. When I get past the gate, the secu-

rity man smiles, and the food vendor tries to tell

me that I do not need to pay because I am his guest

in this country. We are all trying to preserve some-

thing, it seems. As I step on to the wet pathway to

the house through a typical Kabul courtyard, I see

behind the glass a now-familiar sight.

Six weeks old, with his pink paws still unscuffed

by the rough earth. Not a curse or warning, but as ifpulled from the dream of a boy.

My job is to protect that vision. And I know it.

He is in the window now, tail wagging.

Abandoned but resilient, a dog.

March 6, 2011

Kabul

Mazar-e-Sharif, 2004 Teru Kuwayama


22/122

40 41


23/122

42 43

1/8Photographs by Tivadar Domaniczky,

Balazs Gardi, Teru Kuwayama, Rita Leistner

1st Battalion, 8th Marines

Musa Qala and Nowzad districts

Helmand province, Afghanistan

2010-2011 deployment

More photographs, credits and detailed caption

information can be found at:

www.flickr.com/basetrack

All photographs available to the public

under Creative Commons Non-Commercial,

Attribution, No Derivatives license.


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Joshua S. Ose

Lance Corporal (posthumously promoted), USMC

Age 19

Hernando, Mississippi

KIA September 20, 2010Small arms fire

Edwin Gonzales

Hospital Corpsman, US Navy

Javier Ortiz Rivera

Staff Sergeant, USMC

Age 26

Rochester, New York

KIA November 16, 2010IED

Stacy A. Green

Staff Sergeant, USMC


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222 223

Age 22

North Miami Beach, Florida

KIA October 8, 2010

IED

Raymon Johnson

Lance Corporal, USMC

Age 22

Midland, Georgia

KIA October 13, 2010

IED

Age 34

Alexander City, Alabama

KIA December 10, 2010

IED

Jose A. Hernandez

Lance Corporal, USMC

Age 19

West Palm Beach, North Carolina

KIA December 14, 2010

IED


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224 225

pb

AO: Area of Operations; the territory inwhich a force conducts activities or forwhich it is responsible.

AOR: Area of Responsibility.

ABP: Afghan Border Police.

ANA: Afghan National Army.

ANP: Afghan National Police.

an enemy attack or a military strike.

Blue on Blue: AKA friendly fire, wherecoalition forces accidentally fire upon

other coalition forces.

Boot: a new Marine, fresh from bootcamp, with basic training but no combatexperience.

Boot Camp: the initial training for amilitary service member; U.S. Marines

friendly forces who are in close proxim-ity to the targeted enemy forces.

CentCom: U.S. Central Command; the

U.S. military authority responsiblefor operations in the Middle East andCentral Asia.

CERP: Commanders Emergency Re-sponse Program; discretionary spendingmoney given to military commandersfor supporting local projects, which may


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ANSF: Afghan National Security Forces;includes military, police, and bordersecurity forces of the Afghan nationalgovernment.

Battle Rattle: [slang] the full kit ofequipment and gear worn and carriedby troops, which includes body armor(ceramic plates, helmets, and eye protec-tion) and combat gear (weapons, knives,harnesses, ammunition magazines,grenades, etc.).

Battlespace: the holistic area of conflict,including not only the physical geo-

graphic terrain, but the entire spectrumof contested arenas, including humanterrain, public opini on, and informationand communications networks.

BDA: Battle Damage Assessment; theafter-action investigation conducted todetermine the results or effectiveness of

undergo recruit training at either ParrisIsland, South Carolina, or San Diego,California.

Burn Shitter: [slang] toilet facilities inwhich human waste is collected in metaldrums and disposed of by burning.

Camp Leatherneck: the primary logisticalhub used by U.S. Marines in Helmandprovince and one of the largest coali-tion military bases in Afghanistan; it isconjoined with the U.K.-led base calledCamp Bastion (abbreviated as LNK andBAS).

Camp Lejeune: a 246-square-mile Marinebase in North Carolina, home of the 2ndMarine Division; approximately 40,000sailors and Marines are stationed there.

CAS: Close Air Support; refers to firefrom aircraft on enemy forces to support

include construction projects like wells,canals, or roads.

CF: Coalition Forces; refers to a rangeof more than 40 nations allied withthe United States, including NATO andnon-NATO foreign military forces, OGAs,and ANSF.

Chow Hall: [slang] a cafeteria in a U.S.military facility; generally referred to as aDFAC on larger bases.

Civil Affairs: military units acting as aliaison between the military occupa-

tion force and the local population; civilaffairs officers are often reservists withrelevant expertise drawn from their civil-ian careers.

CLIC: Company Level Intelligence Cell.

CO: 1. Commanding Officer: the senior

GWOT: a global war on terror, a/k/a Waron Terrorism, the Long War; the interna-tional military campaign led by the U.S.and the U.K. in response to the attacksof September 11, 2001, under the admin-istration of George W. Bush; also usedto refer to a broad campaign, beyondmilitary action, against networks andregimes associated with terrorist organi-zations; the term was discontinued withthe advent of the Obama administration,and replaced with the term GlobalContingency Operations.

Haji: an honorific title for a Muslimmale who has made the pilgrimage toMecca; often used by U.S. troops as avaguely derogatory term for a Muslim,or anything associated with the localMuslim population, e.g., Haji-truck orHaji-mart.

Hearts and Minds: refers to the popularsupport and confidence of the people inan occupied territory; originally associ-ated with the British military occupationof Malaya in the mid-20th century.

Hesco: collapsible, fabric-lined, wire-mesh cages, filled with sand and usedlike oversize sandbags to build defensivewalls

IED: Improvised Explosive Device; abooby trap, mine, or homemade explo-sive device.

Indig: [slang] indigenous person. (SeeLN.)

Insurgency: a rebel force acting againstan established authority; broadly encom-passes a wide range of anti-state actorswho may have different motivations orgoals.

IO: Information Operations; a broadspectrum of activities related to the gath-ering and dissemination of informationand ideas; includes Propaganda, PsyOps,Public Affairs, Influence Operations.

ISAF: International Security AssistanceForce; the multinational coalition forcetasked with stabilization and military op-erations in Afghanistan; approximately140,000 foreign troops, primarily fromNATO nations, serve under ISAF com-mand, including 100,000 U.S. troops.

Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan: a/k/athe Afghan Taliban, also sometimescalled the Quetta Shura Taliban, or QST,because leadership is believed to bebased in the Pakistani city of Quetta

Jingle Trucks: [slang] civilian cargotrucks, common across South Asia, usu-ally decorated with ornate, hand-painteddesigns, and jingling chains and chimes.

JTAC: Joint Terminal Attack Controller;U.S. military personnel who directsoffensive actions of combat aircraft froma forward position on the ground. (SeeFAC.)

KAF: Kandahar Air Field; the main baseof operations and logistical resupply forcoalition forces in Regional CommandSouth.

Kinetic: refers to conventional militaryactions employing violence; also some-times referred to as direct action, asdistinguished from non-kinetic militaryaction such as information operations,or reconstruction and stabilizationoperations.

KLE: Key Leader Engagement; typi-cally refers to a meeting with importantfigures in a community, such as political,tribal, or religious leaders.

Klick: kilometer.

LN: Local National; typically refers to

military officer in a unit. 2. Commis-sioned Officer, distinguished from anon-commissioned officer by specifictraining, rank, and designated authority.

COC: Combat Operations Center; a com-mand node from which operations aremonitored and directed.

COIN: Counterinsurgency; refers to themilitary strategy designed to supportthe recognized government of a nationor to suppress insurrection against thegovernment.

Command Det: Command Detonated;describes an IED that is triggered re-motely by the bomber, such as by radiosignal or a physical wire.

Contractor: civilian companies andindividuals hired to provide services andsupport to coalition forces, ranging fromsecurity and sanitation to catering andlaundry services; civilian contractors inAfghanistan outnumber U.S. militarypersonnel. (See PMC.)

Controlled Det: Controlled Detonation;the deliberate triggering of explosives,typically to destroy uncovered IEDs,explosive materials or weapons caches

Direct Fire: usually refers to small-armsfire, theoretically with a clear line ofsight; in reality, it may be blind, with fireexchanged between combatant forceswho do not have a clear visual fix oneach others positions; as opposed toindirect fire, such as a rocket or mortarfire from beyond eyesight, that targets ageneral area.

Doc: [slang] refers to the medicalpersonnel attached to combat troops;while the U.S. soldiers are tended to byMedics, U.S. Marines are accompaniedby U.S. Navy Corpsmen, whose MOS isdesignated as Hospitalmen.

DOD: Department of Defense.; a/k/a thePentagon.

Downrange: [slang] refers to a forwardarea of operation, outside the securityperimeter of a central base. See outsidethe wi re.

DST: District Stabilization Team; an ISAFteam of military and civilian personnelof various backgrounds (i.e., develop-ment, finance, agriculture, commu-nications) who work to improve localconditions through non-military means,such as economic growth governance

Fat-bitching : [slang] the practice of eat-ing the dessert portion of an MRE beforethe main course.

FET: Female Engagement Team; smallgroups of female Marines, attached toall-male infantry battalions, assignedto interact with and gather intelligencefrom Afghan women, assess needs,and foster improved relations betweenAfghan communities and ISAF.

Fixed Wing: propeller and jet aircraft,other than helicopters.

FOB: Forward Operating Base; counterin-tuitively, these are the largest, most cen-tral, or rear-guard bases in the forwardtheater of conflict; sometimes referred toas superbases, their populations mayrange in the tens of thousands.

Fobbit: [slang] derisive term for troopsstationed on large, protected FOBs orsuperbases, deemed out of touch withthe realities and hardships of combat.

G-BOSS: Ground-Based OperationalSurveillance System; a ground-basedvideo surveillance system that usestower-mounted cameras to observeareas surrounding military bases


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walls.

Host Nation: the country being occupiedby foreign forces, i.e., Afghanistan, Iraq.

Human Terrain: refers to the anthropol-ogy of a given territory and the matrixof tribes, ethnicities, and cultures thatreside within it.

IDF: Indirect Fire; any sort of ordnancethat is fired at an enemy from a positionwith no direct line-of-sight view of thetarget, though it is often guided by aforward observer; mortars and rocketsare standard indirect-fire weapons, but

even large-caliber machine guns canproject indirect fire by aiming upwardand plunging fire down on a target atthe end of the parabolic arc of fire.

based in the Pakistani city of Quetta(although other shuras exist i n Peshawarand Miram Shah); titular leader is MullahOmar.

Jacksonville: a city with a populationof approximately 100,000; adjacentto Camp Lejeune in North Carolina;demographically the youngest city in theUnited States.

Javelin Missile: man-portable shoulder-fired missile; originally designed asan anti-tank weapon, but also used inAfghanistan to penetrate fortified targetssuch as mud wall compounds.

Jihad: in Arabic, literally, struggle, as apersonal, spiritual matter, or as politicalor armed action in defense of Islam, orIslamic principles.

LN: Local National; typically refers toAfghan civilians.

The Long War: in the 21st-centurycontext, refers to the broad-spectrum,open-ended efforts to combat terrorismand state failure across the globe.

LZ: Landing Zone used by helicopters;can be a static, fixed position on militarybases, or an improvised area used inthe field.

MARPAT: Marine Pattern; refers to thedigital pixel-style camouflage worn byMarines in the field.

MATV: Mine Resistant All-Terrain Vehicle(MRAP-ATV).

MI: Military Intelligence.

explosive materials, or weapons caches.

COP: Combat Outpost; a midsize base,typically a satellite of a FOB.

Counterinsurgency : the actions takenby a recognized state or authority, or itsallies, to suppress an insurgency.

CT: Counter-Terrorism; as opposedto COIN, it generally refers to kineticmilitary strikes against insurgent, or ter-rorist groups.

DC: District Center; the administra-tive headquarters for a subprovincialmunicipality.

DG: District Governor; Afghan politicalleader in charge of a subprovincial areaequivalent to a U.S. County.

DI: Drill Instructor.

such as economic growth, governance,and infrastructure development.

ECP: Entry Control Point or Exit/EgressControl Point.

Enemy-centric: focused on killing andcapturing enemy forces.

Enlisted: refers to ranks below com-missioned officers and warrant officers,including non-commissioned officers.

EOD: Explosive Ordnance Disposal;specialist units dealing with bombs,explosives, and IEDs.

Eyepro: eye protection; ballistic gradesunglasses or eyeshields.

FAC: Forward Air Controller; a mili taryoperator on the ground who directs firefrom aircraft. (See JTAC.)

areas surrounding military bases.

GIROA: Government of the Islamic Re-public of Afghanistan; the official U.S.-allied government of Afghanistan, led byPresident Hamid Karzai, whose recentre-election was marred by widespreadallegations of fraud and vote-rigging.

Global Contingency Operation: GWOT, asrebranded by the Obama administration.

Green on Green: allied host nation forces(i.e., ANSF) firing on each other.

Green on Blue: allied host nation forces(i.e., ANSF) attacking ISAF/NATO forces.

Guerrilla: Spanish for small war; refersto irregular fighters, often politicallymotivated, who typically fight a largerconventional force by means of sabo-tage and harassment.

with civilian reconstruction experts,tasked with nation-building activities;personnel are generally co-located withISAF military forces, or vice versa.

PSD: Personal Security Detail; privatesecurity contractors or the element ofMarines or soldiers responsible forthe personal security of a person ofimportance.

PSY-OPs: Psychological Operations,or psychological warfare (PSYWAR); abranch of the military devoted to usinginformation operations to influenceenemy behavior.

PT: Physical Training; athletic exercises.

PTSD: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Public Affairs: the military branch taskedwith media relations and distribution ofinformation to the public on behalf ofthe military.

QRF: Quick Reaction Force; a unit onalert and ready to respond in case an-other unit is attacked or needs support.

Rat-fucking: [slang] the practice of open-ing an MRE, selecting only the preferred

SecDef: the Secretary of Defense; cur-rently, Robert Gates, who was appointedin 2006 to replace Donald Rumsfeld andis expected to retire in 2011.

Shadow Government: in Afghanistan,refers to the covert governance imposedby the insurgency, which may includefunctions normally associated with anestablished government, such as taxa-tion, courts of law, prisons, etc.; alsoreferred to as parallel government.

Shitbag: [slang] unprofessional, sub-standard personnel.

Shura: a gathering of community lead-ers; can include most adult male mem-bers of a village. (See also KLE.)

Sitrep: Situation Report; a status assess-ment or update.

Small Arms: portable weapons, suchas rifles and machine guns, carried byindividual troops; NATO defines smallarms as including weapons firingrounds up to .50 caliber ammunition.

Small Wars: refers to guerrilla war andinsurgency conflicts whose charactersmay resemble police activities; as op-

Uniform Violation: refers to infractionsof dress code regulations, ranging fromimproper facial hair, rolling of sleeves,blousing of trousers, choice of boots,color of undergarments, etc.

USAID: United States Aid and In-ternational Development; a federalgovernment agency responsible foradministering civilian foreign aidincluding economic, development, andhumanitarian assistance; operates asan independent agency under guidancefrom the U.S. Secretary of State.

VBIED: Vehicle Borne Improvised Explo-sive Device; a car bomb.

Victim-operated : an IED that is manuallytriggered by its target, generally by a tripwire or a pressure plate.

V/R: Very Respectfully. Commonly usedas a closing remark in correspondence.

VTOL: Vertical Take Off and Landing;refers to the ability of an aircraft to riseand descend straight up and down;generally used in reference to anaircraft that can also fly in a conven-tional forward-propulsion manner; VTOLaircraft used by the U.S. Marine Corps

Mike: minute.

MISO: Military Information SupportOperations.

Moondust: [slang] refers to a fine sandwith a powder-like consistency, com-monly found in southern Afghanistan.

MOS: Military Occupational Specialty,referring to the area of expertise that aservice member has been trained for,i.e., rifleman, mortarman, radio operator,hospitalman/medic.

MRAP: Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protect-ed vehicle; an armored vehicle specifi-cally designed to protect passengers andcrew from IEDs and landmines.

MRE: Meal, Ready to Eat; standardmilitary rations for forces in the field;designed to deliver a high-calorie mealand withstand extreme storage and han-dling conditions; packaged in heavy-dutyplastic bags, they remain edible for aslong as three years and can be cookedwith individual heating elements that areincluded in the MRE package.

Mujahid, Mujahideen: one who under-takes jihad; commonly used to refer to

Nation-Building: refers to the efforts toconstruct the identity and the infra-structure of nation states, particularlyin territories where governments arenewly formed, transitional, or newly in-dependent; notably in the emergence ofpostcolonial nations in Africa and Asia.

NATO: North Atlantic Treaty Organiza-tion; the military alliance of Europeanand North American nations foundedin 1949; Article 5 of the NATO charterarticulates the principle of collectivedefense, whereby an attack on a mem-ber nation is considered an attack on allmember nations; in response to the 9/11attacks of 2001, NATO exercised Article 5for the first time in its history.

NCO: Non-Commissioned Officer.

NIPR and SIPR: internal telephone andcomputer networks used by the military;NIPR (Non-classified Internet ProtocolRouter Network) handles all unclassifiedinformation, and SIPR (Secret InternetProtocol Router Network) handles cer-tain classified information.

NJP: Non-Judicial Punishment; refers todisciplinary action against servicemem-bers for offenses not considered severe

OFP: [slang] Own Fucking Program;refers to eccentric, independent, orunusually autonomous behavior.

OGA: Other Government Agency; canrefer to any of a range of civilian orparamilitary actors such as the CIA, DIA,FBI, DEA, etc.

OP: Observation Post.

PAT: Police Advisory Team.

Patrol Base: A smaller base, typically asatellite of a COP.

PB: Patrol Base; a small outpost, typi-cally a satellite of a COP.

Piss Tube: [slang] a makeshift field urinalconstructed from PVC tubing inserted inthe ground.

PMC: Private Military Contractor, PrivateMilitary Company, Private Military Cor-poration. (See Contractor.)

PMT: Police Mentor Team.

POG: [slang] Persons Other than Grunts(pronounced pogue); a derisive termreferring to rear-echelon support troops


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g g y pitems and discarding the others.

RC: River City; a communicationsblackout imposed to prevent news of acasualty from leaking before official noti-fication has been made to next-of-kin.

REMF: [slang] Rear Echelon MotherFucker. (See PO G, Fobbit.)

Rotary Wing: refers to helicopter aircraft.

RPG: Rocket-Propelled Grenade.

RTB: Return To Base.

SA: Situational Awareness; knowledge ofthe environmental factors that supportgood judgment and decision-making.

y p pposed to conventional warfare betweennations.

TCN: Third Country National; refers toa contracted employee from a nationother than the contracting nation or thehost nation.

TCP: Traffic Control Point.

TIC: Troops in Contact; hostile engage-ment between forces.

Tracking: [slang] following, observing,and understanding.

UAV: an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, a/k/aa drone, used for surveillance and attackby the U.S. military in Afghanistan, andby the CIA in Pakistan; Predators andReapers are specific types of UAVaircraft.

y pinclude the MV-22 Osprey and the H ar-rier jump je t.

Wadi: a dry creek or riverbed.

Warrant Officer: an officer with special-ized technical expertise in a field such asaviation or ordnance.

The Wire: [slang] refers to the securityperimeter surrounding a military instal-lation.

Zulu: also known as UTC (coordinateduniversal time); the time standard by

which time zones around the world aremeasured.

j yfighters in the Afghan resistance move-ment against the Soviet Army in the1980s, but increasingly used by the con-temporary insurgency in Afghanistan.

MV-22 Osprey: a tilt-rotor aircraft, withtwo helicopter-style rotors, mountedon a fixed wing; capable of verticaltakeoff and landing, like a helicopter,and long-range forward-propelled flight,like a fixed-wing airplane; classified asa rotary-wing aircraft, used primarily byU.S. Marines in Afghanistan and Iraq. Asimilar aircraft is used by U.S. Air ForceSpecial Operations.

MWR: Morale, Wellness, and Recreation;refers to leisure activities or supportsystems provided to troops, includingInternet, telephone, and library services.

enough to warrant court martial.

NVGs: Night-Vision Goggles.

OCS: Officer Candidates School; thetraining program that produces commis-sioned officers.

OEF: Operation Enduring Freedom;generally used to refer to U.S. militaryoperations in Afghanistan that began inresponse to the attacks on September 11,2001, but also includes broader militaryoperations across the globe, includ-ing the Philippines, Africa, and Central

Asia; most U.S. military operations inAfghanistan have been absorbed underISAF command, but some U.S. forcescontinue to operate independently ofISAF, under the OEF designation.

g pp por non-infantry personnel.

Population-Centric : focused on providingsecurity to, and winning the allegianceof the civilian population, as opposed tokilling enemy forces.

Pos: Position; refers to the physical loca-tion of a unit or individual.

PPE: Personal Protective Equipment;includes body armor, helmet, ballisticeyeshields; a/k/a RBA (regulation bodyarmor).

Pressure Plate: the component of an IEDthat triggers the explosion when steppedon or driven over.

PRT: Provincial Reconstruction Team;cross-disciplinary personnel from themilitary and civilian government, along

b

Teru Kuwayama is a photographer from

New York. His work over the past decade

has focused on Afghanistan, Pakistan,

and Kashmir. He was the 20092010

Knight Fellow at Stanford University and is currentlya 2010 TEDGlobal Fellow and a 2010 Ochberg Fel-

low at the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma.

He received a 2010 Knight News Challenge Award to

launch Basetrack: One-Eight.

From 2006-2009 he worked in Israel and the Pales-

tinian Territories for Time magazine and the Interna-

tional Committee of the Red Cross.

Rita Leistneris a photographer and writ-er based in Toronto. In 2003, she crossed

into Iraq on foot, traveling with Kurdish

smugglers from Turkey. She later spent

four months embedded with the United States Cav-

alry during Operation Iraqi Freedom. She has won


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Balazs Gardi is a photographer based in

Mexico City and Dubai. He first traveled

to Afghanistan in 2001, in the first days

of Operation Enduring Freedom, and

has repeatedly returned to Afghanistan and Pakistan

since then. He has received the Prix Bayeux War Cor-

respondents Award and the Alexia Award for World

Peace. His ongoing project, Facing Water Crisis, doc-

uments water related crises and conflicts around the

world.

Tivadar Domaniczky is a photographer

and audio artist. After working as a pho-

tojournalist for Hungarys leading po-

litical newspaper, he relocated to Gaza.

12 Canadian National Magazine Awards and co-au-

thored two books: Unembedded: Four Independent

Photojournalists on the War in Iraq and The Edward

Curtis Project: A Modern Picture Story. She teaches

photojournalism at the University of Toronto.

Omar Mullick was born and raised in

London, and studied politics, philosophy,

and economics at the University of Penn-

sylvania. He lives in New York. He spent

six years in fashion photography and the film indus-

try, shooting music videos and commercials before

turning to documentary photography. His long-term

project Cant take it with you explores the lives of

Muslim Americans, and has been published in the

Sundev Lohr is a Salt Lake City-basedWeb programmer. He creates websites

used by communities in order to share

geo-located data. Using Web-enabled

devices, mapping software like Google Maps, and

his own drawing tools, he creates spaces for like-

minded individuals to easily share location-depen-

dent information in a Wiki-style format.

Laszlo Malahovszky is the Budapest-

based co-founder and manager of TEDx-

Danubia, and a co-founder of Sense/Net,

a software development company. He

studies institutional barriers to freedom of speech

and eDemocracy and supports Basetracks efforts

to set up and share free and fair online communica-

tions systems.

Shazdeh Omari is a New York based

freelance editor, currently working for

The Village Voice. Previously, she taught

English at Western Connecticut State

U i it d d d di f t i t

Amy Pereira is the Senior Photo Editorat Newsweek International. During her

tenure at Newsweek, the international

edition has been awarded numerous

honors for its visual content and use of photography.

She studied cultural anthropology at New College of

California in San Francisco and lives in New York.

Habib Zahori began working in journal-

ism as a fixer and translator for for-

eign journalists in Afghanistan. He has

since published his own articles in the

Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the

McClatchy newspapers. He continues to work ex-

tensively with John Lee Anderson, Steve Coll, and

Dexter Filkins, and most of the major international

news organizations in Afghanistan. Prior to workingin journalism, he graduated from Kabuls Medical

University.

New York Times and National Geographic. He has re-ceived fellowships and awards from the M100 Foun-

dation, the Western Knight Center for Journalism,

and the Annenberg Foundation.

Monica Campbell is a New York based

journalist. She was based in Mexico City

for six years, reporting for US newspa-

pers and magazines, and as a consultant

for the Committee to Protect Journalists. She was

2009-2010 Neiman Fellow at Harvard University. She

is the recipient of a grant from Harvards Carr Center

for Human Rights to research the escalation of vio-

lence in Ciudad Jurez, Mexico.

Matt Farwell is a writer who served as

a soldier in the US Army from 2005 to2010. After infantry and airborne train-

ing at Fort Benning, Georgia, he was as-

signed to the 10th Mountain Divisions 2nd Battalion,

87th Infantry, and was deployed to Afghanistan for

16 months, where he earned the Combat Infantry-

B d

design collective that designed and implementedBasetracks online presence. He is working on a proj-

ect that connects the landscapes of the Middle East

and the United States by using their seismic activity

to robotically play musical instruments. He is a 2010

TED Global Fellow and a 2011 Eureka Fellow.

Sadika Hameed is a DC-based research

associate with the CSIS Program on Cri-

sis, Conflict, and Cooperation, and works

on issues related to security and terror-

ism in South Asia. Prior to joining CSIS, she worked

as an economist and governance specialist with the

World Bank and the US Agency for International De-

velopment in Afghanistan and Pakistan. She earned

an MA in international policy studies from Stanford

University, an MS in economics from the Universityof Manchester, and a BA in economics and finance

from the University of Manchester.

Eugene Kuo is a New York-based graphic

designer. His work spans a range of

di i l di b k b it d


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University and produced radio features as an intern

at United Nations Radio. She has worked on a num-

ber of professional journals and books, including the

Committee to Protect Journalists annual reports, At-

tacks on the Press.

mans Badge.

Peter Gardi is a multimedia producer and

industrial designer based in Budapest,

Hungary. He works with Basetracks em-

bedded correspondents to optimize their

photos and video in the post-production phase. He

has also prototyped ruggedized hardware for use by

the Basetrack field operators in Afghanistan.

David Gurman is a San Franciscobasedartist and designer who makes real-time

memorials that use live data feeds to

connect viewers to conflict areas. He is

the art director and technical lead for Brainvise, the

media, including books, websites, and

iPhone and iPad applications. He has

worked across industries, from education and pub-

lishing to film and entertainment. His recent projects

include iPad applications for ABC News and Bloom-

berg Businessweek.

Joshua Levy is a San Franciscobased

artist, photographer, writer, and tech-

nologist. He has a background in market-

ing, gaming, and social media. In 2010he founded a gaming company focused on enabling

acts of philanthropy, the first of which is a mission-

based game sponsored by the Smithsonian Ameri-

can Art Museum.

This book would not have been possible without

the cooperation of the 1/8 Marines and Corpsmen,

attachments, and their families.

Very special thanks to Jackie Giambrone and Janet

Lynn Kroeker.

Th B k j d ibl b 2010


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Thanks to:

Lt. Col. Daniel Canfield

Maj. Justin Ansel

Sgt. Maj. Steve Rice

1st Lt. Lieutenant Brad Hull

Staff Sgt. James McChrohan

Additional thanks are extended to the Regional

Command Southwest Public Affairs, Combat Cam-

era, TACDOMEX, PSYOPS, the Dart Center for Jour-

nalism & Trauma, TED, Huu Nguyen at Winston and

Strawn LLP, and Art Neill at New Media Rights and

the Lieutenants Protection Agency at Musa Qala

District Center.

The Basetrack project was made possible by a 2010

News Challenge grant from the John S. and James

L. Knight Foundation.

b: -


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basetrack.org

facebook.com/basetrack

twitter.com/basetrack_1_8

flickr.com/basetrack

vimeo.com/basetrack

All media content produced by the Basetrack

project is available to the public for non-com-mercial use under Creative Commons Non-

Commercial, Attribution, No Derivatives license.

Basetrackone eight


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one-eight

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tivadar domaniczky

Balazs gardi

teru kuwayama

rita leistner

omar mullick

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Basetrack One Eight

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