Month 10 Day 28

Notebook entry

Eight reports given, ground poppy eradication strongest tribe, musical chairs, literacy Narallah addition class VI, lunch KGB, duty, priority intelligence requirements with major Kraus, fire, didn't want weather.

Journal entry

I continued to listen to 'Decent into chaos.'  They talked about how ground poppy eradication was done by the strongest tribe.  I wonder to myself, seeing all of the conspicuously undestroyed poppy fields alongside of destroyed ones, if we are just creating another strong tribe...The musical chairs syndrome that we see in the Afghan officer corps (no one gets fired, everyone just gets transferred) starts at the Top, Mullah Omar wanted Karzai to work as the ambassador to the UN under the TB.  Marshall Fahim, didn't get fired when he tried to turn the army into a Panshiri-dominated organization, they all just play musical chairs. 

I went to a literacy class in the morning.  Nasrallah and the new Chai boy Amir were both in there learning.  The teacher was explaining the concept of multiplication through showing them iterations of addition.  There were only six guys in the class, and half of them came late. 

Tawoos was on duty and I couldn't find him in the morning. 

At lunch I talked to the linguists.  Apparently Dinar told them that if they signed up for the internet through sniper hill that I was going to have to search their computers every night, and that all of their traffic was going to be monitored. This is total bullshit.  I explained to them how Intel cannot work on American persons, but I don't think they believed me.  I am not the KGB.  If I work with these guys this long and they still think I'm the KGB, will I ever be able to break the thought process in my Afghans?

Maj Kraus came over and just as he got here we had two of the Afghan tents catch fire.  We all scrambled over there and I started spraying it with the greywater truck and getting the afghans to not look at the tents that were burning but at the adjacent tent to make sure they didn't burn down.  We managed to isolate it, and it was pretty well in hand by the time the mainside fire department showed up and started dowsing it.  It was started by faulty wiring.  Throughout the whole thing, the brand new ANA firetruck that we gave them last week did not move from its origincal position.  The Unity contractors were more responsive than the ANA fire station.

Maj Kraus worked with Bernie on PIRs.  He came back and said that Bernie was already trying to play the rank game.  He thinks that I won't give him things because I can't.  To some extent that is true.  I can't give him a container, humint source money, or anything like that, but for the most part he still hasn't figured out that I will not give him stuff because he has to learn how to do it himself.

I was told in the meeting that I didn't give Bernie any information.  This is laughable, I give him reports every day, but I don't give him the answer.  His job is to think.  Me taking that away is like putting all of the Afghan supplies on USMC equipment for the logistics officer.