NO REGRETS ~ An American Adventure in Afghanistan (2 page)

We’re rarely discussed outside of war zones. We’re the invisible hand that moves the American military. We supply, transport, and maintain the military in the field. We invent new technologies that protect them and make them more lethal. We exist everywhere that our armies operate. Our numbers are vast because we do the jobs that the Army either can’t or won’t. We are killed, kidnapped, and maimed alongside the military. Yet, we have no monuments.

The militaries for whom we work alternately revile us and grudgingly respect us. The American people ignore us at best, hate us at worst, or are simply unaware of us. Most do not understand our capabilities. We bring years of valuable experience with us. Yet, the only thing that matters to many is our price tag.

The history of the defense contractor is long and proud. We traveled with Alexander the Great as he trekked into Afghanistan over two thousand years ago. We transported Wellington’s guns across India. We sailed oceans to deliver troops safely to become cannon fodder on the battlefields of World Wars I and II. We followed the United States Army into Korea, Vietnam, Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. We fight and are sneered at and labeled mercenary. In the old days, we were mule skinners and stevedores, mechanics and laborers. In the modern era, we cook meals for our soldiers. We provide security for the troops as well as deliver them their equipment and ammunition. We provide Morale, Welfare, and Recreation (MWR) facilities where the troops can decompress, make a phone call home, or surf the Internet.

We provide intelligence to the Army. General Robert E. Lee learned of Union movements from a civilian contracted to spy on Lincoln’s army … for a price. Leonardo da Vinci taught armies how to build impregnable fortifications and he also built the first self-propelled cannon in history … for a price. Civilians are being contracted as I write this to deploy to Afghanistan to provide security for electric power grids. These men will fight the Taliban and local bandits. These men will bleed and die. Civilians from such diverse places as Romania, New Zealand, Great Britain, the Philippines, and Nepal have been providing convoy and base security since the beginning of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as have Afghan and Iraqi nationals.

We have been essential to every military since time immemorial. Yet, we are invisible to most of you. When the troops return from the battlefield you honor them. When we return from the battlefield, we are met only by our families. If the troops are wounded on the battlefield, you nurture them back to health and provide them with some semblance of benefits and aid. If we are wounded on the battlefield, no one cares. Oftentimes, the multi-billion dollar corporation with which we are employed tries to deny the responsibility for our injuries and wounds. If a soldier is killed on the battlefield, you honor him and call him hero. If we die on the battlefield, we’re told that we knew the risks and were well compensated, so stop whining.

We go for the money. Most of us will admit this. We acknowledge the risk and commit to the task. We are well compensated. Most of us. Some of us have been hoodwinked, kidnapped, and enslaved. Many of us are veterans of the military and have served in other war zones as sergeants, captains, and colonels. Others never wore the uniform. We do the job because we are hired to do so. We are not the companies that hire us. Our love and respect for the troops is as great as any civilian back home. We do everything in our power to help our soldiers complete their mission, for in most cases we are as committed as the soldier.

We give truth to the lies of politicians when they speak of troop drawdowns at conflict’s end. Why? Because we don’t count. Politicians can truthfully state that they have brought the troops home. They simply do not speak the other side of that truth. That they’ve left thousands of American contractors behind to finish the job. Soldiers get home in time for Christmas because contractors stay on to finish the job.

I know these things because I have been there. I first went to Afghanistan in November of 2003 as a defense contractor. I stayed in the country until February 2010. I worked as a property technician for the United States Army and a mentor and trainer to the Afghan National Police. I spent most of my time in Afghanistan but also traveled throughout Central Asia and the Middle East. This is the story of those years.

This is how it begins …

Fort Knox, Kentucky

Early September 2003

“Hello. Is this Dave Kaelin?” said a strange voice on the phone.

“Um, yeah. Who is this?”

“I’m John Owens from KBR.
¹
I’m looking for an SPBS
²
operator and I see that you are qualified. Would you be interested in a job in Afghanistan?”

“Well, that depends on how much money you’re offering.”

“I can’t really speak salary, but it will definitely be six figures.”

“Then, yes. I’m interested.”

“You’ll get a call in a few days from an HR representative.”

“John, can I ask you a question?”

“Sure. What is it?”

“How did you come by my name and, I assume, my resume?”

“Well, I shouldn’t be telling you. Basically, it’s illegal. But I got your information from CPOL.
³
Keep your phone on. You’ll be hearing from us soon.”

This was a fortunate turn of events. I had tried to get a job as a contractor when I’d left the Army in 2000 but my attempts had come to nothing. Instead, I’d enrolled in university and had been working jobs that were leading nowhere. Now the infamous KBR had come calling. I listened. Who wouldn’t? It was a chance to earn some good money and get rid of the college debt that I’d accrued after I left the Army. KBR had a bad reputation. It was the construction company that had received no-bid government contracts. At the time, it was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dick Cheney’s evil Halliburton Empire. The political left used KBR and Halliburton as a club to bash the Bush administration. It didn’t seem to matter that Bill Clinton had given KBR the same type of contract in the Balkans while Dick Cheney was the CEO. None of that mattered to me. I saw this as a paid adventure, and I really didn’t think much beyond the possible, but acceptable, danger of working in a war zone. War zone jobs pay well. It was a trade off—big money, big risk. I’d been in dangerous and exotic locales before—the Korean DMZ ’91, Panama ’95, and Egypt ’97. The danger didn’t concern me except for the stress that it would bring my family. It was an opportunity to make more money than I’d ever dreamed of making in my lifetime, and a chance to experience a part of the world that few Westerners are afforded.

I believed I was going to be able to make a difference over there in a way that would never have been possible trudging through as a nine-to-five wage slave in America. Thirty or forty years from now, I figured I’d be able to look back and say “I helped liberate Afghanistan. I helped bring them democracy, freedom, and liberty.”

* * *

KBR wanted me to report immediately. I negotiated a date of September 22, 2003 to start my in-processing in Houston. I had two weeks to settle everything on the home front. Not that there was a lot to settle. I was ready to go the day that John Owens had called me. The only reason that I wanted the two weeks was to give notice to my employers. They had done right by me and I wanted to return the favor.

I was joining what was known as LOGCAP or the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program. LOGCAP is a huge umbrella contract intended to provide logistics support to the U.S. government’s “Global War on Terror.” The contract covers our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as assorted periphery areas of military operation, such as Uzbekistan, the Kyrgyz Republic, and small outposts in Pakistan. Basically what LOGCAP does is to contract out civilians to assist U.S. forces on the ground in these places. KBR had been awarded a LOGCAP contract to support our troops in Bagram and Qandahar, two key American military bases in Afghanistan, which is where I was now heading.

KBR flew me to Houston on the Sunday before in-processing started. I was administered an AIDS test and a short physical that really only ensured that I was breathing and not a drug addict. As we processed through, I met people heading out all over the world. There were folks headed to the Balkans, Romania, Germany, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Iraq—anywhere that KBR had a contract. Some of these folks looked so disheveled that, at times, it had the feel of a homeless shelter. It was as if KBR had scoured the streets and unemployment lines to fill the LOGCAP contract requirements. Some of the positions for which they were hiring had strict qualifications. For instance, my position required five to ten years experience with United States Army property accountability operations and SPBS certification in the use of the Army’s database system for tracking and monitoring weapons and supplies. However, there were also positions such as laborers, dining facility cooks, and the like. KBR could hire anyone for those positions and they did. I met one guy who had been in a halfway house for recovering addicts. He had been addicted to heroin. Yet, KBR had hired him to go to Afghanistan, which is the opium center of the world. (As far as I know, he stayed clean while he was there, but that wasn’t the case for everyone.)

The Army required KBR to administer drug tests as part of the hiring process. The day of the urinalysis was one of consternation for many of the prospective employees in my processing group. Quite a few guys were sweating bullets as they confessed to having recently smoked dope or snorted cocaine. Of course, they kept that information from KBR. Many of these guys had spent the night drinking water and taking goldenseal pills to prevent coming up “hot.” It must have worked. No one in my group failed the test. Later that night, I came upon a few of them smoking marijuana in celebration. Quite a few spoke longingly of the opportunity to score pure opium and Afghan hashish when they got in-country.

During the first few days in Houston, we sat through classes on improvised explosive devices (IEDs), unexploded ordnance (UXO), mines and mine field recognition, as well as an Afghanistan country class where we were briefed on the culture and language, plus indigenous animal threats, and other possible health hazards.

The last piece of the process was inoculations. Luckily for me, I had my military vaccinations card. Civilians who had never been in the military were given upwards of twenty shots. After that, we were issued a chemical protection suit, chemical mask, body armor, and helmet. With that KBR cleared us for deployment. Then we waited for our respective flights to Afghanistan, Iraq, or Eastern Europe. Despite having been told that I was needed urgently for my position, I sat in my hotel room for another week waiting for a flight.

¹
KBR—Kellogg, Brown & Root—is one of the U.S. Army’s largest defense contractors.

²
SPBS—Standard Property Book System—is a database software system used by the U.S. Army.

³
CPOL—Civilian Personnel Online—is the
Monster.com
for government jobs with the U.S. Army.

Into the ‘Stan!

October–November 2003

KBR flew its employees in and out of Afghanistan via Uzbekistan back in 2003. You might spend a couple of hours or several days in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent. When I arrived at the airport, it was like a jump back in time. Tashkent felt like a scene out of a sixties-era James Bond movie. Military clerks behind the customs and immigration cubicles went through their mind-numbing, bureaucratic motions like drab, gray automatons—no smiles, no greetings. “Hand over your papers.” STAMP! STAMP! STAMP! “Here are your papers.” I don’t think they ever looked at me to verify that I was the guy in the passport photo. I tried to engage the dude who was processing me into the country. No dice. He ignored me. I was just a number in a long line of the faceless masses who had started passing through to fight the “War on Terror,” which had suddenly made Tashkent a popular destination for businessmen, contractors, and government bureaucrats.

The airport itself was even more drab, cold, and gray than its customs officials. Men in green and gray uniforms with guns stood about with no real purpose. The building was at least fifty years old, pre-dating
perestroika
and
glasnost
. Cheap, imitation marble lined the floors. It was an ugly structure and it was run down. Metal chairs with “pleather,” or fake leather, and padded seating were scattered about in a way that spoke to the traveler: “Keep moving. We don’t want you here.” The baggage carousels were battered and dented, and, on my arrival, had completely broken down. Instead of queuing at the carousel to await our baggage, carts were wheeled in and gnarled Uzbek men in frayed uniforms dropped all of our bags onto the dirty floor.

Once each of us had grabbed our bags, we were led outside where we were instantly surrounded by a teeming mass of poverty-stricken humanity. Men and boys in tattered, filthy clothes pleaded to be allowed to cart our bags to our vehicles. “Sir. Sir, carry your bag. One dollar each bag, sir.” They were insistent. Even if we said we would carry our own bags, three or four of them would follow along with us, oblivious to our repeated “No, thank yous.” As we climbed aboard the bus waiting to take us to our hotel, they pleaded even louder. “Baqsheesh.” “Tip, sir! Baqsheesh, sir!” One dollar, sir!” “One bottle water, sir.”