Sunday, May 17, 2009 -- 3:00 AM CST
-Kabul, Afghanistan

I'm on another planet.

People are waving their arms and running and screaming, dodging in and out of traffic, barely avoiding being hit by our wildly careening Toyota Corolla as we speed north from Kabul to Bagram.

On this planet there's no fear- unless you count me. To my right, my driver, Rohullah, grins and asks in Pashto if he can smoke, holding up a cigarette with the hand not gripping the wheel. I laugh and he lights up. For the first time in six years, I want one too.

We are flying. The Toyota's barely on the road, if you can call this a road. It's lined by bazaars on both sides, vendors and shoppers running back and forth, drivers doing nothing to avoid them. Rohullah doesn't seem to even notice the people as he blasts the horn and weaves in and out of traffic. This guy can drive.

I'm rolling some tape along the way. I want to shoot everything I see, because I can't believe it. I've never seen such poverty before- and while I knew I'd see plenty of it here, I never imagined this. All I can think about is how tough you'd have to be just to live here. We drive across a flooded street.

As we bounce across the potholes on the other side, I promise myself I'll never complain about anything again. I'll break that promise three times by dinner.

Turns out we took the back way to Bagram. Later, a Master Sergeant from Plainfield looks around a crowded mess hall and tells me that of all the people in it, he and I might be the only ones who've seen that road.

Rohullah pulls over, yells something out the window. A street vendor hands him two bottles of water. He pays, gives one to me, and floors it again. I like this guy. Finding him was lucky. I needed a ride in a hurry and took a chance. He doesn't speak English, but understood "Bagram," and at the time, that was enough.

See, things went a little off the rails today. Back in Chicago, I was booking a ride from the airport when I got a better offer. Here's what my National Guard contact wrote: "When you make your flight arrangements, fly into Kabul (KAIA), we will pick you up in an armed escort. You will feel like a third world dictator when you see us arrive, but who cares, you'll be safe, you'll be with the best soldiers, and they're all from Illinois."
Who could say no to that?

But when I landed- no escort, no soldiers- and the would-be dictator wound up hanging around outside the Kabul airport way longer than anyone should. I roasted in the sun, shot a little video, and tried to reach my guy. I was told he was on his way. Three hours later, it was clear my world phone wasn't ready for this part of the world- and that I had overstayed my welcome.
It's a war zone. Things like this happen all the time and you just have to roll with them. If all else failed, the Army was expecting me at Bagram Airfield by 4:30 that afternoon- so at least I had somewhere to go. Enter Rohullah: cab driver from Hell.

The outskirts of the base are like a scene from a movie:  blowing sand, razor wire, trucks and Humvees and guys with guns. The second we stop, a little boy shoves his head through my window and starts yelling in perfect English, his grimy face two inches from mine.
"Your friend will come for you! You must wait here!"

"And who might you be?" I ask, as I shove open the door. I need Rohullah's cell to call inside. He hands it over as I start to unload my gear, six or eight little hands reaching for my bags. I wave them away. The cell connects just as a short convoy of Humvees with big antennas passes by. The connection drops- as it always will when those trucks are around. I connect again and Sgt. Warren Wright of the Media Operations Center says he'll be right out. The little boy's name is Idris. He's ten, and quite the entrepreneur. He and his pals are selling cool drinks to the Afghan truck drivers who pass through here. They also steal anything not tied down. We talk about life in Afghanistan, school, soccer and money. The boys are funny, dirty and happy.

There's some change that keeps falling out of a pocket in my laptop bag. I get it out, hold it up, and the happy little boys turn into a pack of rabid little wolves, snarling and clawing over each other. All except Idris. Even when I try to throw him a quarter, he just shrugs and lets the wolves have it. My ride is here. We drive past the razor wire onto a base twice the size of my hometown.

-Tom Negovan, WGN News Special Report

Monday, May 18, 2009

I'm on another bumpy Afghan road, in an armored SUV with three other guys from Chicago, watching the countryside go by through bullet-proof glass, listening to The White Stripes' "7 Nation Army."

If I had a dime for every time I've said that..

It's a different road than the one I came up on- and a much different set of circumstances (see earlier blog). The Chicago trio has come up from Camp Phoenix, near Kabul, to pick me up at Bagram Airfield. They would have come yesterday, but "intel on road conditions changed." That's all they told me at the time. Today I learned what that means.

First- let me tell you a couple of things: Illinois has a huge troop commitment here. It's the reason I came over. This is the largest deployment by members of the Illinois National Guard since World War II. The even bigger story is what they're doing. These guys are mentoring and retraining the Afghan National Police and Afghan National Army- forces known as much for their ability to fight (as Russia found out in the '80's) as for their level of corruption and disorganization.

These statements are my own and not endorsed by the US Army, but are generally regarded as fact- and so far I've seen nothing here to contradict them. In fact, I've experienced some of that disorganization first-hand. Maybe some more on that later...

Suffice it to say, there's a huge Illinois story over here. A Chicago story. I've been shooting it. I'm tripping over home-town men and women who are making major sacrifices and a huge difference here. The work they're doing with the local police and army will shape the future of this country. The humanitarian work, well.. I can't wait to get back and show you. But I have a lot of ground to cover before then.

So- I'm at the wrong base, essentially, and these guys are going to come and get me. Then they're not. Turns out the "intel on road conditions" that changed was that four soldiers from Georgia and one civilian contractor were targeted by an improvised explosive device, an IED, about 20 miles from here. It blew their armored Humvee to smithereens and sent the soldiers to the hospital. One was treated and released. Three were injured badly enough to require immediate airlift to Germany. All will survive. One was blown out through the Humvee's turret, fracturing his pelvis. Had he been properly strapped-in, per Army regulations, he almost certainly would have died. That's how it goes. Sometimes breaking the rules works out. Speaking of the rules- all of this information, as of this writing, has not been made official-- so officially, I can't tell you about it. But I'm here, so I am.

That IED attack meant I had to spend the night at Bagram's "Hotel California"-- media housing. I had my own room with cable TV and a nice meal in the biggest chow hall I've ever seen, complete with a curry bar. That's not a joke. There's also a Dairy Queen and pizza delivery. Why wouldn't there be? Twenty-thousand people or so live and work there. It's a combination of military personnel and civilian contractors, and the number changes all the time. The Hotel California served my desperate need for sleep just fine, but I couldn't wait to leave.

Bagram's a busy place; with secret missions launching from its flight-line at all hours- 300 yards from where I slept. But I can't report on them. There are poppy fields and mine fields on the outskirts of the base. I have shots of those, and of the mud-walled villages nearby- gutted by bombing runs during the Soviet invasion. Good pictures. Not what I'm here for.

What I'm here for is that Illinois story I was talking about- and I found it during that long armored SUV ride with those three guys from Chicago, as we talked about home and looked out over the nomads and their camels, a pair of M-4 rifles lightly rocking against my leg.

Very soon, I'm leaving on another trip, with some different Chicago guys and a young pediatric nurse from Springfield. This trip's going to be a lot more serious; they had my blood typed today. We're heading toward the Pakistan border, a place called Khaki Jabar, and Taliban country.

Witnessed a book-burning today.

We took a trip out into eastern Kabul province near the Pakistan border. A  beautiful place, crawling with Taliban.

They're promising  a long, hot summer here -beginning right about now- and there've been several IED and small-arms attacks in the last few days, so the mood around Camp Phoenix has been pretty serious.

Getting ready for the mission, one of the soldiers asked my blood type. I said I didn't know.
His eyes widened. "How do you not know?"

I've never thought about that. I'm sure I knew at one time. I'll bet my mother knows-- but I'm not about to call from Afghanistan and ask her.

"We'll talk about that," he said, and went back to whatever he was doing.

In the civilian world, Capt. Chris Dieball's a Chicago cop who works out of Area 4. Like a lot of Chicago cops, he registers a little high on the "suspicion of the media" index. We hit it off right away. I don't know what kind of police officer he is -I've never run into him back home- but he's a great soldier-- smart, easy-going, compassionate and brave. There are a lot of people like Dieball here.

We never did have that conversation about my blood. Instead, someone else made it clear that if I wanted to come along, they would need to know my blood type. 

"Up to you," he said.

So we went and typed my blood. A hilarious Sergeant in one of the medical buildings here stuck a needle (I hate needles) in the back of my hand, gave me a Garfield bandage (told you he was hilarious) and joked about how well I "took the pain." We shot the whole thing in case it fits somewhere into one of the stories I'm doing. It might.

Anyway- I'm A-positive.

Now, I could have just called my mom and got that information without the needle -I've been talking to her anyway- but I just couldn't do that.

"Hey Mom, it's me.. Yup, still in Afghanistan. Nope, haven't seen him. Uh huh, food's good.. Listen, crazy question- if you had to guess about my blood type..."

Yeah- no. Not gonna do it. Although, now she knows AND I got the needle.

When they type your blood for a military mission and put a Garfield bandage over the wound, that's the very definition of the term "mixed message." I was pretty sure I was going to be fine. Pretty sure, until a soldier I've become somewhat close to over here took me aside and said the following:

"This is serious. This is a dangerous place. If this goes bad- you put down the camera and you pick up a gun."

I'm thinking, "A gun?! Like with bullets inside?!"

Now, I've shot some guns. I'm from a small town. Plus- I've done all kinds of stories involving guns over the years- and some of my best friends are cops. I've shot a variety of handguns, shotguns- even machine guns.

Let me emphatically state: I hate guns. Hate 'em. They serve one purpose: to do a thing I could never bring myself to do.

That said, I ask my soldier friend to give me a refresher on his 9mm Beretta and M-4 assault rifle.  Mag, slide, safety, trigger- got it. May I never think of it again.

At 5 in the morning, we're having breakfast. 5:30 we're getting briefed and moving out-- me shooting more shaky video on a bumpy Afghan road.

We get half-way to our destination, and there's a small mechanical problem with one of the Humvees. Everybody stops. They post security and make repairs. Posting security means everybody's out, weapons ready, on alert. I'm happily taking pictures. In one of the shots, with my zoom lens, you can see people gathering alongside a mud structure on a distant hilltop, watching.

"We're out of range," the man next to me says, "No rifle, no RPG."

Antonio doesn't need a zoom lens. He can see our observers with the naked eye. Antonio's not his real name- just what the soldiers call him; they say he looks like an Antonio. His real name I could never pronounce, but he's an Afghan national who works as a US military interpreter, loves America and plans to move there. Says he's already working on immigration and wants to live in Illinois.  I think it's the only state he's heard much about.

I'll think of Antonio and his love of America many times today- because I'll see the other side, too.

We move on. Over chai, there's a meeting between the police chiefs of Ladd, Illinois and Khaki Jabbar, Afghanistan. I enjoy the tea very much. When I comment on it, the chief (from Illinois) says his church group sent it from back home.

People back home have been sending a lot of things. A day earlier, I filmed the soldiers assembling a-thousand packages of school supplies for the children of Khaki Jabbar. That's our next stop. They don't hand the gifts out themselves, but let the Afghan National Police do it as a show of good will. The kids know where the stuff comes from. As we soon find out, everybody does.
Not five minutes after the supplies are gone, I hear the slightly raised voice of a female soldier.

"Uh, Lieutenant.. "

"That didn't sound good," someone says, and dashes away. I barely notice. I'm taking shots of the kids. They're beautiful. Someone grabs me.

"You gotta come see this!"

The soldier from Springfield leads me back to the school- to a room where the Afghan police are holding some of the older kids- 17 and 18 years old.

"These are the ones-- they did it," Antonio the interpreter is saying.

They lead me to a clearing outside, where I can see smoke.

Soldiers flank me as I get shots of a small fire on the ground. The school supplies. The local police say the second the Americans turned their backs, elements they link to the Taliban entered the school, and with help from some young supporters there, grabbed the notebooks from the hands of the younger children, tore them up and burned them. Some of the kids are trying to save pencils from the flames, asking me not to shoot this-- afraid they'll never get more.

I'm in no way clairvoyant, but I saw this coming. Earlier, I'd gone back to my Humvee to get more batteries, and when I returned to the school, a handsome young Sergeant from the northwest side named Almodovar was shaking his head in disgust. He told me that when he got close to a window, one of the older kids leaned out and said "Go home, American son of a bitch!"

Pretty demoralizing to a guy who just came by to drop off some pencils and books.
They could have burned them after we left. They didn't. Message delivered. We don't rush out of there, but we don't stay long, either.

It's a long, dusty ride back to camp, where that Area 4 cop, Dieball, laughs the whole thing off.

"We know the Taliban are there," he says, "That's why we go."

Hitting the road again, so one more entry before I go.

I've been trying to get close to the Pakistan border, south to the Kandahar region and east toward Jalalabad. I have opportunities to do two of the three before my embed is over- but I have to move fast.

 

Good Lord- a chopper just flew so low overhead the building shook. You'd think I'd be used to that by now.

 

Today was sort of a housekeeping day. I mostly slept, but I also got some laundry done and a couple of interviews shot.

There's something else I've been meaning to get to. I've been having trouble keeping up with people and news back home, and I don't really know what's going on with the website and my blog, but my wife sent me a few comments from it that stopped me in my tracks the other day. Here's one:

 

 

Hey Tom, 
I think you are doing a great thing out there. Keep up the good work. You have no idea how many people who have loved ones out there are getting a little peace of mind. P.S. Tell my brother (CSM Mark Bowman) that we love him and "stay safe"! :) 
Thank you again and praying for all of you!    Kelly Bowman

Kelly might be interested to know that I've been spending a lot of time with her brother. In fact, he was on the road with me on the trip with the two Generals, as part of Gen. Huber's Command Team. Command Sergeant Major Mark Bowman's kind of a big deal around here. He's an amazing guy, and I'm sure Kelly's very proud. She should be. When I sat down for a one-on-one with the General at FOB Ghazni, it was Bowman I asked to tag along. Just Bowman. He's the kind of guy you want to have around-- a hard-core soldier with a sharp intellect and a calm demeanor. In Chicago, he's a teacher.

 

Here's another, and this one really got to me. I sums up in a nutshell what I'm doing here.

 

I have a 26 year-old son in camp phoenix, my oldest child. Your blog shows me his reality thru his eyes, and brings him home just a little bit. Of course if he knew I was reading it he'd worry, so we won't tell him. Thanks for putting your life on the line to bring us this report. I will look every day for your words. Julia dahlstrom

See, here's the thing: There's a war over here-- and whether you agree with it or not, it's happening, it's underway. If you don't want your countrymen in harm's way in Afghanistan- great-- neither do I. I don't want anyone in harm's way anywhere. But there are men and women from our city and state who have answered the call of our nation, are doing the bidding of the government you elected. Don't say you didn't ask for this-- didn't ask them to-- you did. What happens over here happens in your name, whether you currently approve or not.

If I wanted to get into the politics of this, I would have embedded in Washington. I wanted to let people know what's happening in Afghanistan, so here I am.

Am I having a good time? Do I like it over here? Do I miss my wife? Do I hate making her worry? Do I worry?

I'm sure you can figure out the answers. The bottom line is, as I keep saying, this is a huge story. It's a local story. How the US media is not doing more to cover it I do not understand. What I can tell you is that I have seen some things since coming over here that would blow your mind. Tomorrow I head downrange again expecting to see a few more.

Julia's email moved me almost to tears, because Julia understands. I came over here to bring her son home, just a little bit.

This is actually starting to turn into the multi-media experiment I hoped it would.

Since arriving here a week or so ago, I've been filing on-line, on WGN-TV via Skype and satellite.. phone for WGN Radio.. and now it looks like the Trib is going to pick up a piece I banged-out yesterday.

I'm travelling light, shooting my own stuff on a pair of tiny (and I mean tiny) cameras and doing some basic editing on a MacBook Pro. The resolution on those tiny cameras blows me away. There are issues from time to time that I won't bore you with, but I'm getting some great stuff. I can't wait to get it all back to Chicago.

Now, television isn't always pretty. And it sure ain't easy sometimes.. not from here. It's tough to make a reliable phone call where I am, much less do a live shot over the Interweb.

Satellite normally would not be an option- but some guys out here worked very, very hard to make that happen yesterday, so viewers of the WGN Morning News could connect with some of their loved ones serving in Afghanistan- and so I could get a little bit of this story out. Sadly, we couldn't see them- or even hear them- but I think we made a connection as best we could. That was a little rough, and honestly, I ended the day pretty frustrated. I'd been up for most of the three previous days, chasing a pair of Generals around southeastern Afghanistan.. and lemme tell ya- that'll wear you out.

Especially when it's these guys: Brigadier General Huber, a Chicagoan -who I mentioned in an earlier blog- and one General Wiszniewski, his charming Polish counterpart. Now, I don't have to tell Chicagoans about our unique relationship with the Poles-- and I don't have to tell them about you, either. In the past few days, I've visited Poles at what I believe to be the actual edge of the planet. They spoke little English. I speak no Polish. All I had to say was "Chicago."

I met a dead ringer for Ed Harris, who emigrated from Poland to the US many years ago at the age of 21. Settled in Chicago. Joined the Army. Today, Sgt. Gregory Danko serves alongside his fellow Poles, his language skills being put to good use. There's a Polish Army patch on his left shoulder, the Stars and Stripes on his right, and an expression of pride on his face as he serves his two countries. Danko's a great guy. I hope to introduce you properly in a week or so. He has a wife and a couple of kids in Chicago. He misses them a lot, but believes in what he's doing here.

America and Poland have a longstanding military partnership dating back to the end of the Cold War. The nuances are for someone else's blog, but suffice it to say that a connection evolved between the Illinois Guard and the Polish Army. They like each other- and when they can, they serve together. That's why at that base at the edge of the planet, where there's a fortress wall the British built 200 years ago and nothing but sand and nomads for miles around, there's a Polish base, 250 or so Polish soldiers, three US advisors- and all three are from Illinois.

That's how I wound up on a Polish helicopter with these two Generals, as they made the rounds and surveyed their troops.

Now, if you're still reading-- this is where I stop and say that I've been a reporter for a long time and I've never had access like this before. If anyone else tells you they have, they are lying to you.

I'm talking about unfettered access, in a hostile area, to two of the top commanders in the field and all of their soldiers. When many are from Poland and the rest are from home- I think I can get a story out of that.

But let's add one more element, and tell you this: These are the soldiers who will get America out of here.

The Illinois National Guard, with the aid of their Polish brothers and sisters in arms, are tasked with mentoring and retraining the ANP and ANA; the Afghan National Police and Afghan National Army. That's the work which, once complete, will allow Coalition troops to withdraw. You know- "They stand up, we stand down.."

It's clearly going to take some time, but it's happening. You'll see. And I can't wait for you to meet General 'Ski...

A quick update-- my lovely wife just sent me some more of your posts. Thank you for them. I found the timing of this one pretty interesting:

--

 

Tom,

 

Thank you for doing this. I can't tell you what a joy it is to have our soldiers being shown in such a wonderful light. These soldiers truly are doing a good thing, regardless anyone's opinion of this war.

 

You have traveled a bit with my husband SGM Jason Burris. We are so proud of Jason and the rest of the Illinois troops. As the NCO IG, Jason is dedicated to seeing this mission through and helping all of the soldiers there. We as a state should feel honored to have people like these soldiers living amongst us. They are willing to give up everything at a moments notice at home and abroad.

 

Please stay safe, and know our hearts are traveling along with you. Don't forget, Illinois is a big state and yes, there are Cardinal fans that watch WGN too!

 

--

I put Annette's husband Jason on a chopper out of Camp Phoenix not 15 minutes ago. He's doing great. He showed me some pictures of their son and daughter as we talked about home. Had a minute to check email and wanted Annette to know he got on that Chinook with a big smile on his face.

Have to go. Keep the comments coming-

tn