Shindand Air Base: A Few Quick Thoughts

 

It was confirmed Wednesday night that Shindand Airbase fell to the Taliban. The news of this, while not unexpected, hurts. It hurts my soul. It hurts the way the passing of a loved one does after years of illnesses. You go from thinking about how you will react, to reacting. From wondering how you will mourn, to mourning.

I won’t say I’ll mourn for Shindand. I hated the place too much when I was there to ever do that.

Shindand is due south of the historically and strategically important city of Herat in Western Afghanistan. In 2009 I was one of the first Americans, who wasn’t a green beret, sent to Shindand as part of President Obama’s “surge.” The Italians had been in charge of that part of Afghanistan since the now temporary fall of the Taliban, and the invocation of NATO’s Article 5. In 2009 I was an Aviation Ops Specialist for a MEDEVAC unit that pushed out to the western high-altitude desert to support the Marines pouring into Herat, and some 82 Airborne units pushing north to the Turkmen border. The only Americans who were there before us were some Special Forces teams and the Seabees. The latter were turning a dilapidated Soviet airfield into a major airbase. Our two Blackhawks were the first American aircraft to stay there overnight, and at first we had to park them in the SF guys’ area, because there was no security anywhere else on the base.

The early days were rough. We were short of pretty much everything, but what I remember most was the toilet paper shortage. We actually saved and used TP from our MREs! We saved every scrap of paper we could. Just in case you needed to go, and it came to that. But being away from the “flag pole” was also a lot of fun. The Italians had the best food I had during my deployment, and every now and then you could sneak a little box of wine out of their dining hall. The wine came in little cartons that looked like a Hi-C and didn’t taste much better. Our NATO allies would join us in Afghanistan, but they wouldn’t give up wine with their meals. American troops were not allowed alcohol, to show respect to the local culture and win “hearts and minds.” The droll and cynical responses to this policy are so obvious I won’t even waste your time with them.

The Seabees finished up the airfield and our whole aviation battalion followed us to Shindand. We moved into the airport building pictured above. I never found out, but I assume it was built by the Soviets. I spent Thanksgiving and Christmas in Shindand. The Italians sounded like they got very drunk on Christmas Eve, we all remained sober. Just before I got sent to another base in an even more remote corner of Afghanistan, a priest came out from Kandahar and said Ash Wednesday mass for the Catholics. Every Catholic in the Battalion went to get their ashes. Afterward, one irascible captain yelled at a poor private who pointed out to him that he had something on his forehead.

Near our battalion area, close enough to walk, but far too dangerous to do so because of mines and unexploded ordinance, was a scrap heap of Soviet materiel; jets, helicopters old trucks, etc.. I started calling Afghanistan the landfill of history, and I didn’t mean that as an insult. The bits and pieces of history somehow make their way to Afghanistan, and the Afghanis preserve them in their poverty. In Kandahar, I saw them selling old Russian money, not Soviet money, but Imperial Russian money, and these sat next to rupees from the British Raj. Leftovers from the Great Game. While looking for old Soviet bric-a-brac I found a Maria Theresa Thaler, according to Wikipedia this might be a counterfeit made by the OSS for resistance fighters during WWII. Like I say, the landfill of history.

And now all the hard work that was done by me, my Medevac company, my battalion, the Seabees and everyone after us will add to that landfill. No, I won’t mourn Shindand, but something was definitely lost yesterday.

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  1. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    Hang On (View Comment):
    They did. But the Mujahideen were highly factionalized and tribal while being creatures of the ISI and by extension the CIA. The CIA gave material to Pakistan who in turn gave it to the Mujahideen. This allowed the US to say it was not directly funding the killing of Soviet military.

    Yes, but (im)plausible deniability isn’t really relevant to discussing who what why and how on Ricochet. (Is it? Am I wrong?)

    Also -it’s a pattern, I don’t think it’s reasonable (or plausible, really) to blame Pakistan.  The Mujahidin were the equivalent of Syria’s “Moderate Rebels”. The West keeps doing this, we cannot seriously expect different outcomes. Can we?

    • #31
  2. Brian Watt Inactive
    Brian Watt
    @BrianWatt

    Several weeks ago, Predator President Biden proclaimed that it would be highly unlikely that the Taliban would take over Afghanistan. Last night, FoxNews reported that it would be two to three weeks before Kabul fell to the Taliban. This morning (Pacific time) FoxNews is now reporting that Kabul may fall in the next 24 hours because Taliban forces are just 30 miles from the capital. A bloodbath and a refugee crisis is in the offing. God have mercy on those Afghanis on the ground who wanted to be part of the 21st Century not the Middle Ages and now have nowhere to go.

    Oh yes, to anyone here on Ricochet who voted to install Joe Biden as the Commander-in-Chief because Donald Trump was apparently awful and sent out mean tweets, a portion of the upcoming bloodbath is on you. 

    • #32
  3. Brian Watt Inactive
    Brian Watt
    @BrianWatt

    …and don’t think for a minute that the Chinese aren’t watching the Biden administration’s utter foreign policy and intelligence failure in Afghanistan and firming up plans to annex Taiwan. Does anyone honestly believe that China is somehow intimidated by Joe Biden and the useful idiots in his administration including the idiots in the Pentagon? 

    • #33
  4. Brian Watt Inactive
    Brian Watt
    @BrianWatt

    …and while I’m at it, Pentagon spokesman, John Kirby, is a buffoon. Watching him nervously stammering and hem and haw on TV at the moment is an embarrassment for this country.

    • #34
  5. Front Seat Cat Member
    Front Seat Cat
    @FrontSeatCat

    Zafar (View Comment):

    Dan Pierson (View Comment):
    Combat commands for senior officers

    My goodness. And here I was blaming it on the military industrial complex. Who knew?

    About nine years ago I flew from Delhi (my home town) to Tashkent. It was a night flight, so as the plane crossed borders you could see the pattern of lights in each country. Our (Indian) Punjab showed many small clusters of light, like little heaps of jewels – many small villages with electricity. Their (Pakistani) Punjab showed the great mass of Lahore with spokes of light (illuminated highways, better than ours boo hiss) radiating out from it. Afghanistan showed – nothing. It was an area of darkness except for a tiny dot of light at Kabul – and so it remained until we turned North and the many little lights of Uzbekistan’s Zarafshan valley presented themselves beneath us.

    I don’t know if the Soviets in their last days were still capable of this, but the thought that Afghanistan could have been more like Uzbekistan, or even Tajikistan, flawed grubby police states but with female literacy and running water and flush toilets – even at the cost of a Red Terror – makes me sad. (Would it have been so terrible to let the Soviets give it a go?) And what is happening in Afghanistan today to people like me is tragic.

    Maybe the Russians will share it with China – they’re both ready to get over 

    • #35
  6. Viruscop Member
    Viruscop
    @Viruscop

    Front Seat Cat (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):

    Dan Pierson (View Comment):
    Combat commands for senior officers

    My goodness. And here I was blaming it on the military industrial complex. Who knew?

    About nine years ago I flew from Delhi (my home town) to Tashkent. It was a night flight, so as the plane crossed borders you could see the pattern of lights in each country. Our (Indian) Punjab showed many small clusters of light, like little heaps of jewels – many small villages with electricity. Their (Pakistani) Punjab showed the great mass of Lahore with spokes of light (illuminated highways, better than ours boo hiss) radiating out from it. Afghanistan showed – nothing. It was an area of darkness except for a tiny dot of light at Kabul – and so it remained until we turned North and the many little lights of Uzbekistan’s Zarafshan valley presented themselves beneath us.

    I don’t know if the Soviets in their last days were still capable of this, but the thought that Afghanistan could have been more like Uzbekistan, or even Tajikistan, flawed grubby police states but with female literacy and running water and flush toilets – even at the cost of a Red Terror – makes me sad. (Would it have been so terrible to let the Soviets give it a go?) And what is happening in Afghanistan today to people like me is tragic.

    Maybe the Russians will share it with China – they’re both ready to get over

    They are welcome to it.

    • #36
  7. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    Viruscop (View Comment):
    They are welcome to it.

    This is such an odd statement. I hear and read such sentiments from many Democrats.

    I live and work among Democrats who express their chronic concern for people who are suffering for one reason or another. Yet they are indifferent to the plight of the Afghani people being held at gunpoint by the Taliban and soon Al Qaeda. I don’t understand this inconsistency. 

    • #37
  8. Viruscop Member
    Viruscop
    @Viruscop

    MarciN (View Comment):

    Viruscop (View Comment):
    They are welcome to it.

    This is such an odd statement. I hear and read such sentiments from many Democrats.

    I live and work among Democrats who express their chronic concern for people who are suffering for one reason or another. Yet they are indifferent to the plight of the Afghani people being held at gunpoint by the Taliban and soon Al Qaeda. I don’t understand this inconsistency.

    Perhaps we should celebrate the primary foe of the US, China, getting involved endlessly in Afghanistan. Maybe these Democrats have greater strategic vision than the Neocons are capable of. Maybe Democrats are concerned with people, but are also concerned with the endless suffering that China and Russia bring and so desire them to be mired in Afghanistan.

    • #38
  9. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    Viruscop (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):

    Viruscop (View Comment):
    They are welcome to it.

    This is such an odd statement. I hear and read such sentiments from many Democrats.

    I live and work among Democrats who express their chronic concern for people who are suffering for one reason or another. Yet they are indifferent to the plight of the Afghani people being held at gunpoint by the Taliban and soon Al Qaeda. I don’t understand this inconsistency.

    Perhaps we should celebrate the primary foe of the US, China, getting involved endlessly in Afghanistan. Maybe these Democrats have greater strategic vision than the Neocons are capable of. Maybe Democrats are concerned with people, but are also concerned with the endless suffering that China and Russia bring and so desire them to be mired in Afghanistan.

    So we allow China and Russia to harass, persecute, and kill the Afghani people just to keep China and Russia busy and away from us?

    The morality of that escapes me.

    • #39
  10. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    I suppose the thinking is that the people being persecuted in Afghanistan now can leave–the new river of refugees headed to other countries or to the United Nations’ infamous refugee camps. As has happened in the Sudan and Syria and other places that have descended into such horrible situations.

    The problem with that is that the camps become permanent and almost-as-horrible homes until other countries accept the refugees, which happens slowly if at all because no one wants them.

    • #40
  11. Viruscop Member
    Viruscop
    @Viruscop

    MarciN (View Comment):

    Viruscop (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):

    Viruscop (View Comment):
    They are welcome to it.

    This is such an odd statement. I hear and read such sentiments from many Democrats.

    I live and work among Democrats who express their chronic concern for people who are suffering for one reason or another. Yet they are indifferent to the plight of the Afghani people being held at gunpoint by the Taliban and soon Al Qaeda. I don’t understand this inconsistency.

    Perhaps we should celebrate the primary foe of the US, China, getting involved endlessly in Afghanistan. Maybe these Democrats have greater strategic vision than the Neocons are capable of. Maybe Democrats are concerned with people, but are also concerned with the endless suffering that China and Russia bring and so desire them to be mired in Afghanistan.

    So we allow China and Russia to harass, persecute, and kill the Afghani people just to keep China and Russia busy and away from us?

    The morality of that escapes me.

    So it saps the strength of the primary foes of the US? Yes. That sounds good to me. That sounds more in the interests of the US than anything that The War on Terror could achieve.

    • #41
  12. Lois Lane Coolidge
    Lois Lane
    @LoisLane

    MarciN (View Comment):

    Viruscop (View Comment):
    They are welcome to it.

    This is such an odd statement. I hear and read such sentiments from many Democrats.

    I live and work among Democrats who express their chronic concern for people who are suffering for one reason or another. Yet they are indifferent to the plight of the Afghani people being held at gunpoint by the Taliban and soon Al Qaeda. I don’t understand this inconsistency.

    I never, ever, ever, evvvvveeeerrrr want to hear again about how progressives who support this decision care for “people of color” or women or whatever.  These people don’t even talk about any of the Afghans who risked everything to help us like they are human beings.  Let ’em get beheaded!  Let their wives have their noses cut off!!!  We’re tired or something.  

    I also don’t think this haphazard bug-out of the “strongest” military in the world just in time for terrorists to mark their “victory” on 9/11 is really in our country’s best interest.  

    I mean, when we just left Iraq, things were all great, right?????  Unicorns and rainbows with no more human costs!!!

    To be fair, I thought President Trump had the strategy in Afghanistan all wrong, too, but President Biden is the one who must own the withdrawal because nothing irreversible was executed under the previous administration.  (I find it absolutely hilarious, actually, that Democrats seem to reject everything Trump did, except this.)  

    Ah, well.  

    I truly hope I’m wrong, and there is no degraded ability to create future alliances, no big signals of weakness that invite other powers to press forward against our interests in different parts of the world, no future deployments of more young men and women who have to  take back and rebuild completely given up ground controlled by actors who really don’t like us, or future attacks on the United States from this place that no one wanted to just keep stable….  

    We shall see what happens.

    • #42
  13. Lois Lane Coolidge
    Lois Lane
    @LoisLane

    Also, I definitely get the feeling that I’m in the minority in my opinions.  I’m okay with that.  

    • #43
  14. Brian Watt Inactive
    Brian Watt
    @BrianWatt

    Seen on Instapundit:

    • #44
  15. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    Lois Lane (View Comment):

    Also, I definitely get the feeling that I’m in the minority in my opinions. I’m okay with that.

    I feel the same way you do. There’s two of us. 

    • #45
  16. Viruscop Member
    Viruscop
    @Viruscop

    Lois Lane (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):

    Viruscop (View Comment):
    They are welcome to it.

    This is such an odd statement. I hear and read such sentiments from many Democrats.

    I live and work among Democrats who express their chronic concern for people who are suffering for one reason or another. Yet they are indifferent to the plight of the Afghani people being held at gunpoint by the Taliban and soon Al Qaeda. I don’t understand this inconsistency.

    I never, ever, ever, evvvvveeeerrrr want to hear again about how progressives who support this decision care for “people of color” or women or whatever. These people don’t even talk about any of the Afghans who risked everything to help us like they are human beings. Let ’em get beheaded! Let their wives have their noses cut off!!! We’re tired or something.

    I also don’t think this haphazard bug-out of the “strongest” military in the world just in time for terrorists to mark their “victory” on 9/11 is really in our country’s best interest.

    I mean, when we just left Iraq, things were all great, right????? Unicorns and rainbows with no more human costs!!!

    To be fair, I thought President Trump had the strategy in Afghanistan all wrong, too, but President Biden is the one who must own the withdrawal because nothing irreversible was executed under the previous administration. (I find it absolutely hilarious, actually, that Democrats seem to reject everything Trump did, except this.)

    Ah, well.

    I truly hope I’m wrong, and there is no degraded ability to create future alliances, no big signals of weakness that invite other powers to press forward against our interests in different parts of the world, no future deployments of more young men and women who have to take back and rebuild completely given up ground controlled by actors who really don’t like us, or future attacks on the United States from this place that no one wanted to just keep stable….

    We shall see what happens.

    We put America and Americans first, subject to the constraints of climate change. Spending money on infrastructure in America over Afghanistan and trying to prevent state legislatures from gerrymandering people of color out of existence or restricting their right to vote  are more important issues than Afghanistan . They always have been, and they always will be.

    • #46
  17. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    Lois Lane (View Comment):

    Also, I definitely get the feeling that I’m in the minority in my opinions. I’m okay with that.

    Your opinion is the only one I understand.

    • #47
  18. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    But then again, I don’t know what the military was ever intended to accomplish is Afghanistan.  Changing hearts and minds means virtually nothing without knowing what we are changing them to.  Eradicating the Taliban militarily means killing the Taliban until they surrender and submit.  Policing Afghanistan means incorporating it as a US Territory in perpetuity.  It had something to do with 9/11 apparently; what exactly did we send our military there to accomplish?

    • #48
  19. Lois Lane Coolidge
    Lois Lane
    @LoisLane

    Flicker (View Comment):

    But then again, I don’t know what the military was ever intended to accomplish is Afghanistan. Changing hearts and minds means virtually nothing without knowing what we are changing them to. Eradicating the Taliban militarily means killing the Taliban until they surrender and submit. Policing Afghanistan means incorporating it as a US Territory in perpetuity. It had something to do with 9/11 apparently; what exactly did we send our military there to accomplish?

    I think it is totally fair to question a lot of very stupid policy in Afghanistan, and I think our leaders should be excoriated for not articulating a clear mission for people at home.  But I would have kept a stabilizing force where it was and controlled the territory *forever* if need be…. We don’t have to nation build to do that.  It was in our best interest as well because of the threats that exist in that area.  

    Remember.  The Afghans were fighting *with* our air support when we were embedded.  The Taliban is not Afghan, after all.  

    The mission?  Create a stable enough region for commerce and education to grow.  Keep American enemies controlled and weak with no power base.  Exert enough power to protect American forces in the area while deploying Afghan forces for ground work. All of that was being done until we threw it away.  

    And now American men and women are in more harm’s way as they are being deployed to retreat.  It seems crazy to me that anyone would rationalize this as anything but a humiliating defeat that weakens our country, even if one cares nothing for the Afghan blood that will definitely run through the streets… is already being spilled.  

    It ‘s feckless.  

    • #49
  20. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    Lois Lane (View Comment):
    The Taliban is not Afghan, after all.  

    Unfortunately they really are.  Not all Afghans, but a critical mass. 

    • #50
  21. Lois Lane Coolidge
    Lois Lane
    @LoisLane

    Zafar (View Comment):

    Lois Lane (View Comment):
    The Taliban is not Afghan, after all.

    Unfortunately they really are. Not all Afghans, but a critical mass.

    Meh.  It’s a Pakistan-born ideology.  Afghan recruits when having ruled Afghanistan are/were inevitable, but knowing it’s a foreign created entity matters in the context when people talk about the history of other armies in the region.  

    • #51
  22. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    Lois, it’s my understanding that it grew out of madrasah education of Afghan refugees in Pakistan during the anti-Soviet war. So it was born, in some ways, in Pakistan but it has also always been an Afghan – in the beginning and perhaps still more specifically Pathan/Pashto – thing.

    You can see from the map below that the Pashtuns live on both sides of the (artificial) border – so it’s not so easy to define this ideology as foreign to Afghans (or Pashtuns).

    And to keep up with the bad news, according to the news this evening the Taliban have entered the outskirts of Kabul. Twenty years, and that dispensation collapsed in less than two weeks. I’m deeply depressed by it, but it does indicate some indigenous support.

     

     

    • #52
  23. She Member
    She
    @She

    Hang On (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):

    Hang On (View Comment):
    Pakistan created the Taliban to address this and make religion and not ethnicity the focus.

    ? I thought they emerged from the Mujahidin?

    Interesting (but long) article on Pashtuns and the state:

    https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00396338.2021.1930403

    They did. But the Mujahideen were highly factionalized and tribal while being creatures of the ISI and by extension the CIA. The CIA gave material to Pakistan who in turn gave it to the Mujahideen. This allowed the US to say it was not directly funding the killing of Soviet military.

    The strategy of elevating religion over ethnicity as a means to consolidate loyalties (both internally and externally) that might otherwise divide among tribal or other cultural lines didn’t start with Afghanistan, and at least in its modern incarnation over the past century or so, hasn’t ended well.  

    • #53
  24. Lois Lane Coolidge
    Lois Lane
    @LoisLane

    Zafar (View Comment):

    Lois, it’s my understanding that it grew out of madrasah education of Afghan refugees in Pakistan during the anti-Soviet war. So it was born, in some ways, in Pakistan but it has also always been an Afghan – in the beginning and perhaps still more specifically Pathan/Pashto – thing.

    You can see from the map below that the Pashtuns live on both sides of the (artificial) border – so it’s not so easy to define this ideology as foreign to Afghans (or Pashtuns).

    And to keep up with the bad news, according to the news this evening the Taliban have entered the outskirts of Kabul. Twenty years, and that dispensation collapsed in less than two weeks. I’m deeply depressed by it, but it does indicate some indigenous support.

     

     

    I am deeply depressed as well.

    • #54
  25. James Lileks Contributor
    James Lileks
    @jameslileks

    Viruscop (View Comment):
    We put America and Americans first, subject to the constraints of climate change.

    I’m 99% sure you’re trolling, but that 1% is killing me.

    • #55
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