Day 26 - Driver's School

I spent most of the day at "driver's school" on Camp Eggers. Ugh. You're supposed to take this class in order to be able to legally drive over here, but our mission has dictated that I take up driving duties before attending. I have to say, I actually think I'm a worse driver, and a bit dumber, having attended. We were supposed to go last Thursday, but due to the Peace Jirga we were all locked down. As a result, there was over twice the crowd today. It started with an Army NCO having people in the audience alternately read the bullets off the slides to the everyone in attendance. I guess this is what they mean by "Army training." A large part of my job here is mentoring the Afghan instructors on teaching. I wish I could have taken a few today, because this was a shining example of what not to do. After the first hour and a half I actually considered drawing my M-9 and ending the pain.

We did learn more about our RCIED (Radio Controlled Improvised Explosive Device) jammers though, which was helpful. All the vehicles have them installed now as standard equipment. However, our adversary, being smart and adaptive as always has largely stopped using these kinds of IEDs and gone to other forms of detonation, mainly via suicide detonation. The joke we have is that if you hear the IED go off, count your blessings because it means you're still alive. If you don't hear it go off, well then, you know the rest.

The Taliban shot down a helicopter today in Helmand province killing four NATO troops. Helmand is just to the west of Kandahar, and it is one of the Taliban strong holds. The big coalition push this summer is in these two southern provinces. I think things will heat up before they get any better.

Leaving Camp Eggers today, our route back to the airport was totally blocked off. We had to take an alternate. I finally figured out why. The British Prime Minister, David Cameron, was here meeting with President Karzai. We were worried that something bad had happened on the route, so it was good news to know it was just cordoned off for the PM's motorcade.

I'm going to make this a short one tonight after yesterday's post. Plus I have to be up at 0400 and rolling early for some activities tomorrow. More on that next post.