BASETRACK: ONE-EIGHT by Basetrack

Basetrack: one-eight

Basetrack one-eight edited by amy pereira photographs and essays by Tivadar Domaniczky Balazs Gardi Teru Kuwayama Rita Leistner Omar Mullick

design by eugene kuo pre-press by peter gardi

contents

9 17 25

Preface Two Brothers Any Other Day

43 223 227 233 237

1/8 Helmand, Afghanistan 2010-2011 In Memoriam A Marine to Civilian Touristsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Phrasebook Contributors Acknowledgements

preface “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 commander, 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, a Hungarian photographer. The Marines were the first conventional force to enter the valley—dropped in from Chinooks and left to explore the ground on backbreaking, knee-crushing, 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. “You’re safe, as long as they’re aiming at you,” a Marine once told me, assessing the enemy’s marksmanship. 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-

Preceding page, Bamyan province, 2007 Balazs Gardi

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 military—one that constitutes less than 1% of the population. 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 1/8—the 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment from Camp Lejeune, N.C. A cross-disciplinary media team joined us in Afghanistan and worked with us from around the world to connect more than a thousand Marines and Corpsmen to their families, and to a broader public. The last team sent dispatches from Kabul and Kandahar, outside the battalion’s area of operations. The photographs in this book are only a fragment 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

Kabul, 2002 Teru Kuwayama

Korengal Valley, 2007 Balazs Gardi

two brothers balazs gardi

When ISAF forces frisk villagers during security patrols, they almost always look at their palms. It’s easy to tell who has earned their bread by hard labor on the fields or by choosing guns over shovels. Gul reveals that although he worked briefly on his father’s 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 Kandahari hat, with a white Kandahari patu (shawl) decorated 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, I cannot 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 being 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 regular physical work: While Gul studied, Raziq worked 16

on the small family land attached to the three-room adobe house they grew up in with their parents and younger siblings. He doesn’t 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 deliver 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 surrounded by U.S. troops. ° ° ° A week after I meet the brothers, I visit Kabul’s Charahi Qambar refugee camp about 450 kilometers (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. Throughout, they were outnumbered by the internally displaced 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 17

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. ° ° °

Korengal Valley, Kunar province, 2007 Balazs Gardi

British. Currently, around 800 families—some with 40 members each—live in makeshift mud huts on the land. Khan Mohammed came from Kunjak, Helmand’s Musa Qala District. He stands in a small yard surrounded by newly built shoulder-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. 18

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, including 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 receive gifts. Another photograph shows his

Raziq admits that Gul is not the only one in Afghanistan to join the insurgency after losing a relative or loved one to the frequent night raids or aerial bombardments. “Our country is occupied by foreigners,” Gul says. “What would you do if Afghan soldiers humiliated, beat, and handcuffed you in front of your family?” he asks calmly. “The Taliban at least announce 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 insurgency. “Jihad is easy—you could do it wherever you are. It’s not hard to find the Mujahideen,” he says, adding, “Every Muslim’s obligation is to fight the occupiers.” There are no formalities for joining the Taliban, and it’s 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 successful in using them,” he says, but quickly adds what I have already read in Taliban communiqués: “We feel sorry for every 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 family 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 take my last breath in the battlefield.” Although Raziq misses his family a lot, he has to make do with his father’s 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. “Illiteracy is blindness,” says Raziq, who wasn’t as fortunate as his older brother, who had the opportunity to learn to read and write and even picked up a little English at school. Raziq describes his father as a very poor and aging man with a brave heart who, he recalls, struggled to provide food for his eight-member family. And although most of the time Raziq shared a room with Gul, he cannot recall any good memories: “We were so occupied with hardship, we had no good times together,” he says. Since Raziq’s father cannot visit him at the outpost 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 province—just as his birthplace, the village of Bazargan in Shah Joy district—is under Taliban control. 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 doesn’t 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 19

Korengal Valley, Kunar province, 2007 Balazs Gardi

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 won’t 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 anyone, unlike those bureaucrats.” Raziq also mentions hashish smoking in a negative fashion, although he refers to his fellow policemen when I ask him what the people in his province 20

think of the ANP. To my surprise, he doesn’t even try to defend his uniform. He is very aware that most Afghans call policemen “thieves” for a good reason—they’re known to constantly harass people. But Raziq says his unit is different. He says that the people in his province—as in most southern provinces—respect 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 Hazaras, Tajiks, and Uzbeks, they don’t even speak

Korengal Valley, Kunar province, 2007 Balazs Gardi

the same language as the Pashtuns of the south. He summarizes it: “People respect and support whoever 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 families 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,” 21

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 take so long.” The brothers know there is a chance they will face each other on the battlefield—just like many Afghan brothers did, fighting as part of either the Mujahideen or the Russians decades earlier. ° ° ° 22

The story of Gul and Raziq isn’t 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 militarized city wasn’t a problem for either of them.

Garmsir, Helmand province, 2007 Balazs Gardi

The words “insurgents,” “Taliban,” and “the opposition” were used to describe the armed movement fighting coalition forces in Afghanistan, but both brothers more often used the word “Mujahideen,” or holy warrior.

This reporting—and most of the journalistic work coming out of the country—would not be possible without the help of the brave, smart, and knowledgeable Afghans who guide us through the labyrinth of Afghanistan’s current reality—sometimes at great personal risk. The fixers, as this profession commonly refers to them, are the real journalists behind the scenes who find and break stories, organize meetings, translate questions, and warn us about not taking a certain answer for granted. I am only one in a long list of foreign journalists who should thank Habib Zohori for sharing his extensive knowledge and for being a wise and kind companion along the road. 23

any other day omar mullick

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 attention—the land, the writer, the Beloved—and 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 supposed to do this repeatedly all across the plains of Helmand. 24

The irony was not lost on me: a Pashtun chasing Marines chasing Pashtuns. By that I mean I was supposed to shoot photographs, put faces to names, break the numbers “one-eight” into first names and last names—nicknames, even—looks, voices, demeanors, individual 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 Afghanistan that I am not sure what claim beyond an ancestral tug I have to the land. I want to know my mother’s 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 can only access decentralized provinces of memory 25

Bamyan, 2004 (L), Kabul, 2002 (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 seeing 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 king. 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 otherâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;all futile attempts to secure land. As he would advance on one conquest, others would attack what he thought was secure. A constant advance and retreat, but he never stopped, pushing on. Eventually, a landless child king, he turned his attention 26

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: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Few villages match Istalif, with vineyards and orchards on either side of its torrent, its waters cold and pure.â&#x20AC;? He wrote of its flowers, its climate, and was critical of the women and food in other parts of the empire. Everything paled by comparison. 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 civilization. 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

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

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 poetry 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 families 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 questions I asked on my first trip there. I wanted desperately 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 27

Bagram, 2004 Teru Kuwayama

in Kandahar, he cries. I don’t really know what to say about that. It resists comment. It either moves you, or it doesn’t. Then the man sitting next to him, an elder, proudly said in Pashto, raising his hand and surveying Kabul from the inside of this makeshift 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 pray and know that one’s land was lived on by those marked by piety. When I got home, to the guesthouse 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 reference, that I was perhaps familiar with the culture from which this sentiment was born. Erin, a young journalist from California, and 28

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 she would 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 son. I would give him a home. And what choice for Erin? Both riddled with heartbreak:

Bamyan, 2004 Teru Kuwayama

keep the puppy and lose him when she left for another 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 man’s 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 they wronged you, and you did not wrong them.” And she lived like 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 Arabic’s “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 possessive. So, if you were from Kandahar, you would be Kandahari. But here, his name did not denote a geographic destination; it was saying unequivocally that he was from God, the Most Merciful. He had lost 14 members of his family, mostly children and 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 29

Wakhan Corridor, 2005 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 understood 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 a man 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 30

saying that one strand hung between his shoulder blades as he prayed with the other strand in front. And then the legendary hospitality and the treatment 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 provision 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 practice, person to person. My mother cared little for my obsession with where we came from, was even perhaps 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 movement. It was the survivor mentality. But as much as

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

she did not care to name it, her expression of the Faith was the Pashtun version of it: limitless hospitality, 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 kitchen, knowing I was heading to Afghanistan. I found a boy, grinning at me from the corner of the food line. 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 and unclipped the necklace and handed it to me. I reached immediately into my pocket to give him money. My Pashtun friend grabbed my forearm and stopped 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 31

Kabul, 2007 Balazs Gardi

order to engage. You see, I forgot, momentarily, our code. I forgot that sometimes people want something more than bread. Some times they want dignity, 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 sometimes—and 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 32

even money and a bullet cannot move. He wanted to give me a gift, and I, weaned on my fancy foreign education, 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 nothing 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 boy’s 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

may have shared similar night visions, the sword had swiftly become a gun, a specific gun common to 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 dispersed 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 compound with a central courtyard. Uncles and aunts also lived there. My friend’s father would not leave the house in the morning without kissing the top of his sleeping mother’s 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 33

Kabul, 2007 Teru Kuwayama

guns strewn on the ground. His father was increasingly 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 34

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 beheading. 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

Kabul, 2007 Teru Kuwayama

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, something 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 Rahamani, who invoked mercy in every syllable of his 35

Kabul, 2007 Teru Kuwayama

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 son’s dreams have evolved into a curse thrown at men. There is a Pashto proverb: “Don’t 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 36

up of us. And they are fed up of being treated like animals themselves. That leaves a wolf pack fighting with no discernible fence. If I could show you something now about these people, it would be to see them at their most disarmed. Their most vulnerable. The only two places I can think of that I have seen that—and you are free to laugh—are 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 and men are shoulder-to-shoulder at the mosque. Their pattus, which are the traditional shawls are either swathed around them, as

Kabul, 2007 Teru Kuwayama

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 except the sound of a breakaway voice from the front reciting the Quran, the voice suspended above the crowd like the most impossible of birds. In those moments, you are meant to ask for forgiveness 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 10 minutes 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 projection 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 congregated at the front of the screen were gay. Once, when photographing a portrait of a Pashtun from 37

Mazar-e-Sharif, 2004 Teru Kuwayama

Kandahar—in his army jacket, shalwaar, and back turned Kandahari cap—I asked him a question, expecting 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, “Aren’t they God’s 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 for people of the pen now, not the sword. How am I going to hear your end? Receive your gifts. If my son does what I did, and follows his mother’s family line, he will find people of great honor, people of extraordinary strength and an unswerving code. He is Pashtun on my side, but on his mother’s side are European immigrants from Poland. His grandfather—who passed away last year, whom he misses and who promised him a puppy when he turned five—played 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-grandfather before 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 son’s aunt, passed away, he would not attend the funeral without his jacket. My son’s mother would not leave his house without him slipping $5 into her hand, even when she was an adult.

When my son’s 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 city’s secrets, itching 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 notso-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 security 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 something, 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 if pulled 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 39

1 /8 Photographs 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. 42

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in memoriam

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Joshua S. Ose Lance Corporal (posthumously promoted), USMC Age 19 Hernando, Mississippi KIA September 20, 2010 Small arms fire

Javier Ortiz Rivera Staff Sergeant, USMC Age 26 Rochester, New York KIA November 16, 2010 IED

Edwin Gonzales Hospital Corpsman, US Navy Age 22 North Miami Beach, Florida KIA October 8, 2010 IED

Stacy A. Green Staff Sergeant, USMC Age 34 Alexander City, Alabama KIA December 10, 2010 IED

Raymon Johnson Lance Corporal, USMC Age 22 Midland, Georgia KIA October 13, 2010 IED

Jose A. Hernandez Lance Corporal, USMC Age 19 West Palm Beach, North Carolina KIA December 14, 2010 IED

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a marine to civilian tourists’ phrasebook

AO: Area of Operations; the territory in which a force conducts activities or for which it is responsible. AOR: Area of Responsibility. ABP: Afghan Border Police. ANA: Afghan National Army. ANP: Afghan National Police. ANSF: Afghan National Security Forces; includes military, police, and border security forces of the Afghan national government. Battle Rattle: [slang] the full kit of equipment and gear worn and carried by troops, which includes body armor (ceramic plates, helmets, and eye protection) and combat gear (weapons, knives, harnesses, ammunition magazines, grenades, etc.). Battlespace: the holistic area of conflict, including not only the physical geographic terrain, but the entire spectrum of contested arenas, including “human terrain,” public opinion, and information and communications networks. BDA: Battle Damage Assessment; the after-action investigation conducted to determine the results or effectiveness of 226

an enemy attack or a military strike. Blue on Blue: AKA “friendly fire,” where coalition forces accidentally fire upon other coalition forces. Boot: a new Marine, fresh from boot camp, with basic training but no combat experience. Boot Camp: the initial training for a military service member; U.S. Marines undergo recruit training at either Parris Island, South Carolina, or San Diego, California. Burn Shitter: [slang] toilet facilities in which human waste is collected in metal drums and disposed of by burning. Camp Leatherneck: the primary logistical hub used by U.S. Marines in Helmand province and one of the largest coalition military bases in Afghanistan; it is conjoined with the U.K.-led base called Camp Bastion (abbreviated as LNK and BAS). Camp Lejeune: a 246-square-mile Marine base in North Carolina, home of the 2nd Marine Division; approximately 40,000 sailors and Marines are stationed there. CAS: Close Air Support; refers to fire from aircraft on enemy forces to support

friendly forces who are in close proximity to the targeted enemy forces. CentCom: U.S. Central Command; the U.S. military authority responsible for operations in the Middle East and Central Asia. CERP: Commander’s Emergency Response Program; discretionary spending money given to military commanders for supporting local projects, which may include construction projects like wells, canals, or roads. CF: Coalition Forces; refers to a range of more than 40 nations allied with the United States, including NATO and non-NATO foreign military forces, OGAs, and ANSF. Chow Hall: [slang] a cafeteria in a U.S. military facility; generally referred to as a “DFAC” on larger bases. Civil Affairs: military units acting as a liaison between the military occupation force and the local population; civil affairs officers are often reservists with relevant expertise drawn from their civilian careers. CLIC: Company Level Intelligence Cell. CO: 1. Commanding Officer: the senior 227

military officer in a unit. 2. Commissioned Officer, distinguished from a non-commissioned officer by specific training, rank, and designated authority. COC: Combat Operations Center; a command node from which operations are monitored and directed. COIN: Counterinsurgency; refers to the military strategy designed to support the recognized government of a nation or to suppress insurrection against the government. Command Det: Command Detonated; describes an IED that is triggered remotely by the bomber, such as by radio signal or a physical wire. Contractor: civilian companies and individuals hired to provide services and support to coalition forces, ranging from security and sanitation to catering and laundry services; civilian contractors in Afghanistan outnumber U.S. military personnel. (See “PMC.”) Controlled Det: Controlled Detonation; the deliberate triggering of explosives, typically to destroy uncovered IEDs, explosive materials, or weapons caches. COP: Combat Outpost; a midsize base, typically a satellite of a FOB. Counterinsurgency: the actions taken by a recognized state or authority, or its allies, to suppress an insurgency. CT: Counter-Terrorism; as opposed to COIN, it generally refers to kinetic military strikes against insurgent, or “terrorist” groups. DC: District Center; the administrative headquarters for a subprovincial municipality. DG: District Governor; Afghan political leader in charge of a subprovincial area equivalent to a U.S. County. DI: Drill Instructor. 228

Direct Fire: usually refers to small-arms fire, theoretically with a clear line of sight; in reality, it may be blind, with fire exchanged between combatant forces who do not have a clear visual fix on each other’s positions; as opposed to indirect fire, such as a rocket or mortar fire from beyond eyesight, that targets a general area. Doc: [slang] refers to the medical personnel attached to combat troops; while the U.S. soldiers are tended to by “Medics,” U.S. Marines are accompanied by U.S. Navy Corpsmen, whose MOS is designated as “Hospitalmen.” DOD: Department of Defense.; a/k/a the Pentagon. Downrange: [slang] refers to a forward area of operation, outside the security perimeter of a central base. See “outside the wire”. DST: District Stabilization Team; an ISAF team of military and civilian personnel of various backgrounds (i.e., development, finance, agriculture, communications) who work to improve local conditions through non-military means, such as economic growth, governance, and infrastructure development. ECP: Entry Control Point or Exit/Egress Control Point. Enemy-centric: focused on killing and capturing enemy forces. Enlisted: refers to ranks below commissioned officers and warrant officers, including non-commissioned officers. EOD: Explosive Ordnance Disposal; specialist units dealing with bombs, explosives, and IEDs. Eyepro: eye protection; ballistic grade sunglasses or eyeshields. FAC: Forward Air Controller; a military operator on the ground who directs fire from aircraft. (See “JTAC.”)

Fat-bitching: [slang] the practice of eating the dessert portion of an MRE before the main course. FET: Female Engagement Team; small groups of female Marines, attached to all-male infantry battalions, assigned to interact with and gather intelligence from Afghan women, assess needs, and foster improved relations between Afghan communities and ISAF. Fixed Wing: propeller and jet aircraft, other than helicopters. FOB: Forward Operating Base; counterintuitively, these are the largest, most central, or rear-guard bases in the “forward” theater of conflict; sometimes referred to as “superbases,” their populations may range in the tens of thousands. Fobbit: [slang] derisive term for troops stationed on large, protected FOBs or “superbases,” deemed out of touch with the realities and hardships of combat. G-BOSS: Ground-Based Operational Surveillance System; a ground-based video surveillance system that uses tower-mounted cameras to observe areas surrounding military bases. GIROA: Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan; the “official” U.S.allied government of Afghanistan, led by President Hamid Karzai, whose recent re-election was marred by widespread allegations of fraud and vote-rigging. Global Contingency Operation: GWOT, as rebranded 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”; refers to irregular fighters, often politically motivated, who typically fight a larger conventional force by means of sabotage and harassment.

GWOT: a global war on terror, a/k/a War on Terrorism, the Long War; the international military campaign led by the U.S. and the U.K. in response to the attacks of September 11, 2001, under the administration of George W. Bush; also used to refer to a broad campaign, beyond military action, against networks and regimes associated with terrorist organizations; the term was discontinued with the advent of the Obama administration, and replaced with the term “Global Contingency Operations.” Haji: an honorific title for a Muslim male who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca; often used by U.S. troops as a vaguely derogatory term for a Muslim, or anything associated with the local Muslim population, e.g., “Haji-truck” or “Haji-mart.” Hearts and Minds: refers to the popular support and confidence of the people in an occupied territory; originally associated with the British military occupation of Malaya in the mid-20th century. Hesco: collapsible, fabric-lined, wiremesh cages, filled with sand and used like oversize sandbags to build defensive walls. Host Nation: the country being occupied by foreign forces, i.e., Afghanistan, Iraq. Human Terrain: refers to the anthropology of a given territory and the matrix of tribes, ethnicities, and cultures that reside within it. IDF: Indirect Fire; any sort of ordnance that is fired at an enemy from a position with no direct line-of-sight view of the target, though it is often guided by a forward observer; mortars and rockets are standard indirect-fire weapons, but even large-caliber machine guns can project indirect fire by aiming upward and “plunging fire” down on a target at the end of the parabolic arc of fire.

IED: Improvised Explosive Device; a booby trap, mine, or homemade explosive device. Indig: [slang] indigenous person. (See “LN.”) Insurgency: a rebel force acting against an established authority; broadly encompasses a wide range of anti-state actors who may have different motivations or goals. IO: Information Operations; a broad spectrum of activities related to the gathering and dissemination of information and ideas; includes Propaganda, PsyOps, Public Affairs, Influence Operations. ISAF: International Security Assistance Force; the multinational coalition force tasked with stabilization and military operations in Afghanistan; approximately 140,000 foreign troops, primarily from NATO nations, serve under ISAF command, including 100,000 U.S. troops. Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan: a/k/a the Afghan Taliban, also sometimes called the Quetta Shura Taliban, or QST, because leadership is believed to be based in the Pakistani city of Quetta (although other shuras exist in Peshawar and Miram Shah); titular leader is Mullah Omar. Jacksonville: a city with a population of approximately 100,000; adjacent to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina; demographically the youngest city in the United States. Javelin Missile: man-portable shoulderfired missile; originally designed as an anti-tank weapon, but also used in Afghanistan to penetrate fortified targets such as mud wall compounds. Jihad: in Arabic, literally, “struggle,” as a personal, spiritual matter, or as political or armed action in defense of Islam, or Islamic principles.

Jingle Trucks: [slang] civilian cargo trucks, common across South Asia, usually decorated with ornate, hand-painted designs, and jingling chains and chimes. JTAC: Joint Terminal Attack Controller; U.S. military personnel who directs offensive actions of combat aircraft from a forward position on the ground. (See “FAC.”) KAF: Kandahar Air Field; the main base of operations and logistical resupply for coalition forces in Regional Command South. Kinetic: refers to conventional military actions employing violence; also sometimes referred to as “direct action,” as distinguished from non-kinetic military action such as information operations, or reconstruction and stabilization operations. KLE: Key Leader Engagement; typically refers to a meeting with important figures in a community, such as political, tribal, or religious leaders. Klick: kilometer. LN: Local National; typically refers to Afghan civilians. The Long War: in the 21st-century context, refers to the broad-spectrum, open-ended efforts to combat terrorism and state failure across the globe. LZ: Landing Zone used by helicopters; can be a static, fixed position on military bases, or an improvised area used in the field. MARPAT: Marine Pattern; refers to the digital pixel-style camouflage worn by Marines in the field. MATV: Mine Resistant All-Terrain Vehicle (MRAP-ATV). MI: Military Intelligence.

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Mike: minute. MISO: Military Information Support Operations. Moondust: [slang] refers to a fine sand with a powder-like consistency, commonly found in southern Afghanistan. MOS: Military Occupational Specialty, referring to the area of expertise that a service member has been trained for, i.e., rifleman, mortarman, radio operator, hospitalman/medic. MRAP: Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicle; an armored vehicle specifically designed to protect passengers and crew from IEDs and landmines. MRE: Meal, Ready to Eat; standard military rations for forces in the field; designed to deliver a high-calorie meal and withstand extreme storage and handling conditions; packaged in heavy-duty plastic bags, they remain edible for as long as three years and can be “cooked” with individual heating elements that are included in the MRE package. Mujahid, Mujahideen: one who undertakes jihad; commonly used to refer to fighters in the Afghan resistance movement against the Soviet Army in the 1980s, but increasingly used by the contemporary insurgency in Afghanistan. MV-22 Osprey: a “tilt-rotor” aircraft, with two helicopter-style rotors, mounted on a fixed wing; capable of vertical takeoff and landing, like a helicopter, and long-range forward-propelled flight, like a fixed-wing airplane; classified as a rotary-wing aircraft, used primarily by U.S. Marines in Afghanistan and Iraq. A similar aircraft is used by U.S. Air Force Special Operations. MWR: Morale, Wellness, and Recreation; refers to leisure activities or support systems provided to troops, including Internet, telephone, and library services.

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Nation-Building: refers to the efforts to construct the identity and the infrastructure of nation states, particularly in territories where governments are newly formed, transitional, or newly independent; notably in the emergence of postcolonial nations in Africa and Asia. NATO: North Atlantic Treaty Organization; the military alliance of European and North American nations founded in 1949; Article 5 of the NATO charter articulates the principle of “collective defense,” whereby an attack on a member nation is considered an attack on all member nations; in response to the 9/11 attacks of 2001, NATO exercised Article 5 for the first time in its history. NCO: Non-Commissioned Officer. NIPR and SIPR: internal telephone and computer networks used by the military; NIPR (Non-classified Internet Protocol Router Network) handles all unclassified information, and SIPR (Secret Internet Protocol Router Network) handles certain classified information.

OFP: [slang] “Own Fucking Program”; refers to eccentric, independent, or unusually autonomous behavior. OGA: Other Government Agency; can refer to any of a range of civilian or paramilitary actors such as the CIA, DIA, FBI, DEA, etc. OP: Observation Post. PAT: Police Advisory Team. Patrol Base: A smaller base, typically a satellite of a COP. PB: Patrol Base; a small outpost, typically a satellite of a COP. Piss Tube: [slang] a makeshift field urinal constructed from PVC tubing inserted in the ground. PMC: Private Military Contractor, Private Military Company, Private Military Corporation. (See “Contractor.”) PMT: Police Mentor Team.

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

SecDef: the Secretary of Defense; currently, Robert Gates, who was appointed in 2006 to replace Donald Rumsfeld and is expected to retire in 2011.

PSD: Personal Security Detail; private security contractors or the element of Marines or soldiers responsible for the personal security of a person of importance.

Shadow Government: in Afghanistan, refers to the covert governance imposed by the insurgency, which may include functions normally associated with an established government, such as taxation, courts of law, prisons, etc.; also referred to as “parallel government.”

PSY-OPs: Psychological Operations, or psychological warfare (PSYWAR); a branch of the military devoted to using information operations to influence enemy behavior. PT: Physical Training; athletic exercises. PTSD: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Public Affairs: the military branch tasked with media relations and distribution of information to the public on behalf of the military. QRF: Quick Reaction Force; a unit on alert and ready to respond in case another unit is attacked or needs support.

NJP: Non-Judicial Punishment; refers to disciplinary action against servicemembers for offenses not considered severe enough to warrant court martial.

POG: [slang] Persons Other than Grunts (pronounced “pogue”); a derisive term referring to rear-echelon support troops or non-infantry personnel.

NVGs: Night-Vision Goggles.

Population-Centric: focused on providing security to, and winning the allegiance of the civilian population, as opposed to killing enemy forces.

RC: River City; a communications blackout imposed to prevent news of a casualty from leaking before official notification has been made to next-of-kin.

Pos: Position; refers to the physical location of a unit or individual.

REMF: [slang] Rear Echelon Mother Fucker. (See “POG,” “Fobbit.”)

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

Rotary Wing: refers to helicopter aircraft.

OCS: Officer Candidates School; the training program that produces commissioned officers. OEF: Operation Enduring Freedom; generally used to refer to U.S. military operations in Afghanistan that began in response to the attacks on September 11, 2001, but also includes broader military operations across the globe, including the Philippines, Africa, and Central Asia; most U.S. military operations in Afghanistan have been absorbed under ISAF command, but some U.S. forces continue to operate independently of ISAF, under the OEF designation.

Pressure Plate: the component of an IED that triggers the explosion when stepped on or driven over. PRT: Provincial Reconstruction Team; cross-disciplinary personnel from the military and civilian government, along

Rat-fucking: [slang] the practice of opening an MRE, selecting only the preferred items and discarding the others.

RPG: Rocket-Propelled Grenade. RTB: Return To Base. SA: Situational Awareness; knowledge of the environmental factors that support good judgment and decision-making.

Shitbag: [slang] unprofessional, substandard personnel. Shura: a gathering of community leaders; can include most adult male members of a village. (See also “KLE.”) Sitrep: Situation Report; a status assessment or update. Small Arms: portable weapons, such as rifles and machine guns, carried by individual troops; NATO defines “small arms” as including weapons firing rounds up to .50 caliber ammunition. Small Wars: refers to guerrilla war and insurgency conflicts whose characters may resemble police activities; as opposed to conventional warfare between nations. TCN: Third Country National; refers to a contracted employee from a nation other than the contracting nation or the host nation. TCP: Traffic Control Point. TIC: Troops in Contact; hostile engagement between forces. Tracking: [slang] following, observing, and understanding. UAV: an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, a/k/a a drone, used for surveillance and attack by the U.S. military in Afghanistan, and by the CIA in Pakistan; “Predators” and “Reapers” are specific types of UAV aircraft.

Uniform Violation: refers to infractions of dress code regulations, ranging from improper facial hair, rolling of sleeves, blousing of trousers, choice of boots, color of undergarments, etc. USAID: United States Aid and International Development; a federal government agency responsible for administering civilian foreign aid including economic, development, and humanitarian assistance; operates as an independent agency under guidance from the U.S. Secretary of State. VBIED: Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device; a car bomb. Victim-operated: an IED that is manually triggered by its target, generally by a trip wire or a pressure plate. V/R: Very Respectfully. Commonly used as a closing remark in correspondence. VTOL: Vertical Take Off and Landing; refers to the ability of an aircraft to rise and descend straight up and down; generally used in reference to an aircraft that can also fly in a conventional forward-propulsion manner; VTOL aircraft used by the U.S. Marine Corps include the MV-22 Osprey and the Harrier “jump jet.” Wadi: a dry creek or riverbed. Warrant Officer: an officer with specialized technical expertise in a field such as aviation or ordnance. The Wire: [slang] refers to the security perimeter surrounding a military installation. Zulu: also known as UTC (coordinated universal time); the time standard by which time zones around the world are measured.

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contributors

Teru Kuwayama is a photographer from New York. His work over the past decade has focused on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Kashmir. He was the 2009–2010 Knight Fellow at Stanford University and is currently a 2010 TEDGlobal Fellow and a 2010 Ochberg Fellow at the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma. He received a 2010 Knight News Challenge Award to launch Basetrack: One-Eight. 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 Correspondents Award and the Alexia Award for World Peace. His ongoing project, Facing Water Crisis, documents water related crises and conflicts around the world. Tivadar Domaniczky is a photographer and audio artist. After working as a photojournalist for Hungary’s leading political newspaper, he relocated to Gaza. 232

From 2006-2009 he worked in Israel and the Palestinian Territories for Time magazine and the International Committee of the Red Cross. Rita Leistner is a photographer and writer 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 Cavalry during Operation Iraqi Freedom. She has won 12 Canadian National Magazine Awards and co-authored 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 Pennsylvania. He lives in New York. He spent six years in fashion photography and the film industry, shooting music videos and commercials before turning to documentary photography. His long-term project “Can’t take it with you” explores the lives of Muslim Americans, and has been published in the 233

New York Times and National Geographic. He has received fellowships and awards from the M100 Foundation, 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 newspapers 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 Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights to research the escalation of violence in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Matt Farwell is a writer who served as a soldier in the US Army from 2005 to 2010. After infantry and airborne training at Fort Benning, Georgia, he was assigned to the 10th Mountain Division’s 2nd Battalion, 87th Infantry, and was deployed to Afghanistan for 16 months, where he earned the Combat Infantryman’s Badge. Peter Gardi is a multimedia producer and industrial designer based in Budapest, Hungary. He works with Basetrack’s embedded 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 Francisco–based artist 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 234

design collective that designed and implemented Basetrack’s online presence. He is working on a project 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 Crisis, Conflict, and Cooperation, and works on issues related to security and terrorism 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 Development in Afghanistan and Pakistan. She earned an MA in international policy studies from Stanford University, an MS in economics from the University of 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 media, including books, websites, and iPhone and iPad applications. He has worked across industries, from education and publishing to film and entertainment. His recent projects include iPad applications for ABC News and Bloomberg Businessweek.

Sundev Lohr is a Salt Lake City-based Web 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 likeminded individuals to easily share location-dependent information in a Wiki-style format. Laszlo Malahovszky is the Budapestbased co-founder and manager of TEDxDanubia, and a co-founder of Sense/Net, a software development company. He studies institutional barriers to freedom of speech and eDemocracy and supports Basetrack’s efforts to set up and share free and fair online communications systems. Shazdeh Omari is a New York based freelance editor, currently working for The Village Voice. Previously, she taught English at Western Connecticut State University and produced radio features as an intern at United Nations Radio. She has worked on a number of professional journals and books, including the Committee to Protect Journalists’ annual reports, Attacks on the Press.

Amy Pereira is the Senior Photo Editor at 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 journalism as a “fixer” and translator for foreign 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 extensively with John Lee Anderson, Steve Coll, and Dexter Filkins, and most of the major international news organizations in Afghanistan. Prior to working in journalism, he graduated from Kabul’s Medical University.

Joshua Levy is a San Francisco–based artist, photographer, writer, and technologist. He has a background in marketing, gaming, and social media. In 2010 he founded a gaming company focused on enabling acts of philanthropy, the first of which is a missionbased game sponsored by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. 235

acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without the cooperation of the 1/8 Marines and Corpsmen, attachments, and their families. Thanks to: Lt. Col. Daniel Canfield Maj. Justin Ansel Sgt. Maj. Steve Rice 1st Lt. Lieutenant Brad Hull Staff Sgt. James McChrohan

Very special thanks to Jackie Giambrone and Janet Lynn Kroeker. The Basetrack project was made possible by a 2010 News Challenge grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Additional thanks are extended to the Regional Command Southwest Public Affairs, Combat Camera, TACDOMEX, PSYOPS, the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma, TED, Huu Nguyen at Winston and Strawn LLP, and Art Neill at New Media Rights and the Lieutenantsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Protection Agency at Musa Qala District Center. 236

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basetrack: one-eight 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-commercial use under Creative Commons NonCommercial, Attribution, No Derivatives license.

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B asetrack one-eight edited by amy pereira photographs and essays by Tivadar Domaniczky Balazs Gardi Teru Kuwayama Rita Leistner Omar Mullick

design by eugene kuo pre-press by peter gardi

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