by Shane Bryant
It was a good job, but I’d already agreed in principle to work for Darryl at Tundra. When I’d said goodbye to Benny, I’d gone to Kabul and then to Zubal, where Tundra had a base, and had begun doing some on-the-job training as a security contractor while I waited for the Canadian company to come through with a firm offer.
Tundra was offering good money, but it’s never just been about the money. Pretty much any military contractor would be lying if he or she said the money wasn’t important at all, but it’s not the end game. Afghanistan helped me get my finances, and my life, back together, and while there were countless times I wished I could be back home with my kids and Nat, there was no way I was going to go home to a job that paid badly and start going backwards. My last days with American K9 had left me with a sour feeling and I needed another break back home, away from Afghanistan and the war, before I started my new job.
I headed back to Australia without a firm job offer from Tundra, but hoping that they would keep to their end of the verbal deal. As much as I was enjoying my break from the war, being home with Nat and seeing more of the kids, my financial situation started to look grim again. I was renovating a house and if you’ve ever done that, you know where the term ‘money pit’ came from.
Although I’d given my word to Darryl, things were getting desperate, so I emailed Buck to see if he’d filled the position he’d offered me. He replied straightaway, telling me the job was still mine if I wanted it. I took it; while Tundra did eventually come back with an offer, it was too late.
Fate, and dogs, had taken me away from Australia again, but now I found myself in a very different part of Afghanistan, in the capital city, Kabul.
It’s a dirty, crowded, chaotic mix of the modern and the medieval. The traffic’s crazy and drivers rely on the magic horn to get them out of every near-miss situation. If you took the horn fuse out of every car in Kabul, I swear, the whole city would grind to a halt. The streets are jammed with rusted second-hand reject cars from Pakistan, new Toyota pick-ups and ancient Russian Kamaz trucks. As well as the richly decorated jingle trucks, there’s the odd sleek new European sedan, weaving in among three-wheeled motorbikes that each have a tray on their back that is loaded with farm animals or people.
The air’s choked with blue exhaust fumes from the cars and clouds of dust, especially in summer. I’ve heard estimates that up to 20 per cent of the particles in airborne dust in Kabul are human faecal matter. That would account for the smell that pervades the city.
In the poorer parts of town, they have a neighbourly system of sewage disposal. You and your family crap in a bucket, then take it outside the family compound and empty it up the road near your neighbour’s place. There are wide, deep drainage ditches full of effluent on either side of the roads. Any vacant block of land in a neighbourhood will be filled with shit.
The capital is far more secular than other parts of the country, and you’ll see men in western-style suits and women in dresses, though they will usually have a headscarf covering their hair. Women go to work, school and university, and shop in the brand-new shopping centres that are being built amid the bullet-pocked compounds and old concrete Russian apartment blocks. There are shops selling state-of-the-art computers and mobile phones, and others that have a sheep’s carcass hung up outside them, dripping blood on to the pavement.
My job these days involves quality assurance for VCSI. Buck’s an affable guy who’s used his people skills and experience to build the company up while other canine companies fell by the wayside. He networked with the various military establishments and other contracting companies in Afghanistan to win contracts and so gradually expand the company.
Buck has resisted pressure to pay bribes to win contracts – corruption is rife in Afghanistan – and has done well by sticking to what he knows, and proving his worth and his honesty to his clients. Buck’s been supported all the way by another good guy, a Mexican–American ex-police dog handler, Luis Montalvo, who also served in Iraq and came to Kabul at the same time as Buck. The firm’s doing well and we’re bringing in people from all around the world to work as handlers. VCSI also now has its own dog breeding centre, located in South Africa.
I train people to be operational dog handlers and, much as Mark did for me, I pair up handlers with dogs, to make sure they complement each other. The dog handlers I teach in Afghanistan tend to be Nepalese, Filipino and Afghani. If I get a handler who’s a bit introverted, I’ll look for a dog that’s calm and easygoing. There’s no point in giving a slower person a dog that moves at a million miles an hour, although, as happened with me and Ziggy, I’ll sometimes give someone a dog that is quite different from them, to help hone their skills.
A South African woman, Tracey, is our dog trainer, and I concentrate on the people. Once we’ve teamed up a dog and a handler, I travel around to wherever they’re based and make sure they’re doing the job. I assess the teams in the field to make sure their operational standards are up to scratch.
Training people from all around the world has its challenges, particularly in terms of communication. The students speak English, but when I first started training contract dog handlers, I found they were having a hard time understanding me, because of the Australian slang I was using and the speed at which I was talking. Also, I got sick of repeating myself every time I spoke to an American, so I’ve slowed my talking a lot.
A lot of people from countries such as the Philippines can’t wait to get to Afghanistan and work as contractors, as, for them, the money is out of this world. Inevitably, people will sometimes exaggerate the experience they’ve had in order to get a job with us. I taught a dog handlers course for 20 Filipino ex-Marines and while there were some very experienced soldiers in the group – some of them at sergeant-major level, and with combat experience – it was clear that most of them had little or no experience as dog handlers. In fact, when I assessed them, they were hopeless.
One of the things I do to try to gauge the level of experience new recruits have with working dogs is give them an introductory lesson in caring for a dog. I get a dog up on the bench in front of them, and show them how to check for parasites and lumps by running your fingers through the animal’s fur.
The students will all nod, as thought this is pretty obvious stuff. ‘Now, you usually won’t have direct access to a vet, unless you’re working somewhere like Kabul or Kandahar. If you’re out at a FOB you’ll have to know how to recognise symptoms if there’s something wrong with your dog. OK?’
More nods all round. ‘You won’t be issued with a thermometer, but I’m sure you all know how to tell if a dog has a high temperature?’
At this point, the nods are getting slighter and the students all start glancing at each other to see if anyone does actually know the answer.
I give the dog a pat, then gently lift his tail. ‘What you do is stick your finger in your mouth,’ which I then do, giving it a good lick, ‘and stick it in the dog’s arse. If you feel your finger getting very warm, then you know your dog has a problem.’ I don’t perform this action myself, but look for who seems to be the biggest bullshitter in the group and call him forward. ‘OK, you first.’
You’d be amazed by the number of so-called experienced dog handlers who step up and start licking their finger, before I stop them.
I don’t go on missions anymore but I still carry a pistol and, when I go out, a 5.56-millimetre Russian AK-74 for personal protection. I thought my days of getting shot at would be pretty much over when I took the job in Kabul, but not long after starting, I was nearly killed – by some coalition troops.
In Kandahar, while on a quality assurance check, I met up with an old mate of mine, Brian, who I’d met while working for American K9. Although the military part of Kandahar airfield is dry, we knew there was alcohol for sale in a contractor’s compound, just outside the main gate on the highway. We headed out in a pick-up and when we got to the company bar, proceeded to down a few beers. As it was getting late, we tried to buy
a carton of beer to take back with us. The barman wouldn’t sell us takeaways, so we left disappointed.
It was night time by this stage and as we approached the main gate at Kandahar airfield, someone in the guard post flashed a bright light at us. I’d never seen anyone flashing a light like that before. We stopped and the light winked again.
‘What the fuck’s all that about?’ Brian asked.
I shrugged.
Brian, who was driving the pick-up, started to move forward slowly and we heard the crack-thump of a rifle shot. ‘Holy shit!’ I said. Brian hit the brakes and we heard another bullet whiz over the top of us.
‘What the fuck is this?’ Brian yelled as he rammed the car into reverse and, as we started to back up, the guard in the bunker fired a third shot at us. We didn’t know what this fucker wanted – to come to him, to stop or to reverse.
Brian was scrunched down below the dashboard as he drove. ‘Is that shit I can smell?’ I laughed, for some reason, as it all seemed pretty funny at the time, with Brian ducking down and glancing out the rear window as he weaved the truck in reverse.
Brian stopped again and we wound down the windows. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I yelled back towards the gate. ‘We’re contractors, you dumb arses! Stop fucking firing!’
Brian was yelling as well, and finally someone stepped out into the light and waved for us to come forward. We drove forward slowly and when we got to the gate, exchanged words with the guards, who spoke in a thick Eastern European accent. It turned out they were recently arrived Slovakian soldiers, on their first night’s duty manning the gate.
‘We flash light at you to tell you to stop, but you move.’
‘That’s bullshit,’ I said. ‘No-one’s ever used that signal before.’ As we were talking, another vehicle approached the gate. The guy behind the spotlight flashed it, and the vehicle kept coming. No-one opened up on this car. ‘See?’ I said. These pricks didn’t have a clue what they were doing.
A German military policeman was summoned and, after talking to everyone, he escorted us to the Military Police post at the airport’s pax terminal, where Brian and I made full statements. We were later exonerated completely, and I hope that the Slovakians got a major kick up the arse.
I don’t know what’s going to happen in Afghanistan, but I sense, at the time of writing this book that neither side is really gaining ground.
I think the western media sometimes forgets that fighting is seasonal in Afghanistan. As things go quiet during winter, when the snow and bad weather set in, perhaps commentators equate this with the coalition gaining ground. In the summer, when the Taliban traditionally become more active, it can look as though the whole situation is turning to shit because coalition casualties start to climb again. The fact is that the Taliban are in this war for the long haul and can afford to take the winters off.
The Americans say they’re in Afghanistan for the long haul as well, but the Taliban outlasted the Russians and I think they’ll probably outlast the coalition. The Afghanis are a patient people and the Taliban are a fierce breed of warriors who are not afraid to sacrifice themselves, and even their children, if needs be. They take the horrors of war in their stride, and whether they live or die, for them it always comes down to God’s will.
Fifteen or 20 years of warfare will be a blink of the eye for the Taliban, but it will be impossible for the Americans to kill every one of them in that time. The coalition’s strategy needs to change; to place more emphasis on winning over the people. I think this needs to start with education; getting more kids into school and teaching them that there is more to existence than the traditional way in which the Taliban want people to live.
The coalition needs to ensure that the whole next generation of Afghanis is well educated, and does not think it’s OK for girls and women to be banned from learning, or that people should be beaten or executed for listening to music or deciding they don’t want to wear a beard and traditional clothes. At the same time, we need to continue to build infrastructure, strengthen the security forces and encourage the people to own their future. At the moment, too much of the aid is seen by the people as handouts; there’s a culture of ‘give-me, give-me, give-me’, rather than one based on ‘How can I can improve life for myself and my family?’.
My current job is a managerial position, which has certain stresses and responsibilities of its own, but, as well, I’ve probably come closer to being killed in this ‘desk’ job than I ever did out at the FOBs.
Although I’m not in combat, I can never relax. Even when I’m working in the office in Kabul, I know that any hour of the day or night I could get a call to tell me one of my handlers, or one of their dogs, has been caught in the blast of a command detonated IED and been killed or wounded. I get stressed about whether handlers are being accepted by the teams they’ve been placed with and sometimes I wish I could just go out there and take their place.
VCSI has a contract to supply dog teams to the headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul. I regularly go there to check on our handlers and dogs, drop off dog food, and to make sure the client is happy.
It’s about ten kilometres from my location; 20 minutes’ drive in good traffic. On one of these trips I was giving a lift to Mark Wilczynski and a handler named Clint. Mark, who was my instructor on my army dog handler’s course and the person who recruited me to Afghanistan, now also works with Buck and me at VCSI. I drove the company Hilux along Jalalabad Road, turned right at Freedom Circle and continued towards Kabul city until I reached Masood Circle, where I turned left.
The neighbourhood around the International Security Assistance Force is also home to the US embassy and to some other consulates. The streets are flanked with trees and high walls, and there is plenty of security. I stopped at an Afghan police checkpoint, showed my ID badge, and was allowed through. The second checkpoint I had to pass through was closer to the US embassy, and manned by expat security contractors from a company called Armorgroup. A grey armoured car with a turret-mounted machine gun on top backed them up. Finally, after passing through the contractor’s checkpoint, I had to go through another boom gate, to get to the actual entrance gate to headquarters.
Once inside the complex, the security was handled by Macedonian soldiers – part of the international force – rather than by Afghanis. I could see a group of military people in British camouflage uniforms, who looked like they were getting a tour of the headquarters, wandering around. I went to yet another gate, the ‘badge gate’, where I was given a vehicle pass, and from there to a final stop, a vehicle checkpoint where soldiers checked under my car with mirrors.
Finally through all the security hurdles, I drove through the complex, past offices, and a small café where, incongruously, some uniformed people were sitting, sipping espressos. I headed for the back gate, where our kennels were located.
Just as Mark, Clint and I got out of the Hilux, there was an almighty explosion that rocked the ground like an earthquake. Three British soldiers near us dropped to the ground and at first I thought it was a mortar attack. The three of us started walking back towards the accommodation blocks we’d just passed, to the gate. A pall of black smoke and dust began to rise from the area we’d just driven through, and Mark got out his digital camera and started taking some video footage.
‘IED, front gate,’ I heard an American soldier saying.
When we got closer to the gate, it was chaos. The windows of buildings around the gate had been blown in and I could see a car, maybe two, burning on the other side of the boom. ‘Over here!’
We were ready to help, and a couple of Americans and I lifted a female Macedonian soldier and carried her to the medical centre. She was a tall and solidly built girl in her late twenties, with dark hair, and eyes that were open but empty of expression. She didn’t appear to have been injured physically, but was covered in dust and in deep shock. It was as though she were conscious, but unable to walk, talk or move at all under own steam
. Once we dropped her off, I went back towards the gate.
An American major was coordinating the first aid effort, and telling everyone to stay inside the base and away from the gate. There were wounded people everywhere, lying, staggering around, moaning. I found an Afghan soldier wandering around with his hand to his head. He’d been hit in the scalp, probably by flying glass, and his face and upper half of his shirt were soaked in blood. ‘Come on, mate, let me give you a hand.’ I put his arm around my shoulder and half led, half carried him back to the aid post.
A loudspeaker message was warning everyone that the base would be in lock-down for the next two hours, in case there were more IEDs out there. As I came out of the medical centre, I saw Adam, one of our dog handlers, and his labrador, Betty. Adam hadn’t been on duty, but was already kitted out and had come to the gate to see if he could help search for more bombs. Adam was an Australian Army dog handler, and I was impressed with his motivation and his attitude. He hadn’t needed to be called to go there, not shirking despite a mother of a bomb having just gone off.
Six minutes.
That’s how long after Mark, Clint and I passed through the boom that the IED went off. It turned out that it had been a suicide bomber driving a Toyota 4Runner packed with between 150 and 200 kilograms of explosive. How the hell he’d passed through the previous security checkpoints was anyone’s guess. Perhaps someone at the boom had finally noticed something was up.
Three people died that morning. The bomb had gone off at about eight-thirty and had vaporised another two cars. The people killed were Afghani civilians, apparently, and a further 85 civilian and military personnel were injured, mostly by flying glass and other debris.
I didn’t dwell on how close I’d come to being killed. If I gave it too much thought, I’d never go back to my job in Afghanistan.
I’d like a good, steady job back in Australia that’s going to provide me with a decent wage until I’m ready to retire. I’d want job security but, as I write this, the world is in the grip of the Global Financial Crisis and there isn’t much security in anything. Ironically, at the moment my job in Afghanistan is probably one of the safest bets in the world. There is no end in sight to this war, so I could have a job for life if I wanted it.