Want to find out what's going on in Iraq

My Name is Tyler my Uncle is stationed over in the Middle East. He sends my family weekly e-mails about what is going on over in Iraq and Afghanistan. If enough people enjoy I would be glad to keep everyone in touch. Thanks for reading. Feel free to leave comments.


Week# 22:

Kandahar One of the patches we wear above our unit, on the left shoulder, is the ISAF patch. ISAF stands for the International Security Assistance Forces, and it is a special unit designation under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Not all of the units in Afghanistan belong under this command structure, at least for now. Eventually, this might change with the surge of forces forth coming, nevertheless, the Commander for ISAF (COMISAF) is located in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and as such, my mission this week took me there.

Land is a premium in every corner of every operating base throughout the country. With the surge, comes the increase of such requirements, and as I stated last week, the construction on such land is moving at an incredible pace. My focus was to grease the skids for our organizations much needed requirements for both the land and the construction assets. Normally, this does not fall into my lane of responsibilities, but considering no one knows better the sense of urgency, countryside, our coalition partners and the commanders vision, my team was asked to intercede.

More ambassador than soldier, our meetings were with both our international coalition partners and other DoD agencies. For the majority of the time spent in Afghanistan, ISAF/NATO Forces have dominated the Kandahar Providence (some say it is the birthplace of the Taliban), and established both operational and logistical footprints. Each of these footprints were substantial enough for their required support, however, these are in no way robust enough to support the massive U.S. Armys war-machine.

So, after a quick mission analysis, our course of action was to divide and conquer; each going forth independently to negotiate smaller pieces of the overall requirement. Asking for all of it at once, would have been perceived as undoable by many and too much for any landlord to section off willingly. By coaxing a patch of dirt here and a plot of land there we were able to convince our military neighbors that our presence would not be so dominating. Needless to say, our team was able to acquire a 90% solution for the first three of the four-phased build-up strategy. The next challenge was keeping it. Knowing you cannot build all at once, we were able to develop a concept where if we build on patches throughout the obtained land & space requirements, then to others, wide-open spaces would not exist, nor would the small disjointed empty patches be so desirable.

The weather in Kandahar was quite miserable; especially for walking the land to achieve our mission. Our military flight out of Bagram was delayed for 6 hours due to heavy rains and fog. Our flight was just over an hour due south, at which point we found constant rain. It rained on us for three days straight. The only good thing about it was that I was able to sleep in my newly issued Army gortex sleeping bag within a metal-roofed structure. This actually brought a smile to my face each night as I would look up and remember the nights my family and I would sleep in our camper in the backyard of our home in Virginia. Walking in that slick fine mud was worse than any heavy red-clay mud back in Fort Knox, KY or Fort Benning, GA!

Of course, trying to return back north to Bagram did require some patience. As it rained on us down south, it snowed up north causing delays for our little airfield. But then again, its all good; everything happens for a reason. While waiting, our team refined our support plan as we were able to accidently meet up with a unit set to depart within the next few months and was willingly to forego their office containers and the land that their sleeping tents were placed on. After another quick meeting with the Base Operations Mayor cell, we had completed our mission requirements to 100%. It just goes to show you that when you dont think things are going your way, God has a unique way of those opportunities revealing themselves. The trick, I think, is to have the foresight and patience to recognize His ways more so than your own.

Major Robert Miceli