WTF AND EXPLODING DONKEYS

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Starring Tina Fey, “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” makes its debut on the big screen, an adaption of Kim Barker’s book “The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan“ which documents her surreal experiences in Kabul as the South Asia bureau chief for the Chicago Tribune from 2004-2009.

Having been in Afghanistan during the second round of elections in June 2014, I expected to either love or hate the movie. Overall, Tina Fey worked hard to make her character and the story line relatable, yet I was hoping to see a slightly more gritty narrative about the Afghans, the troops, the media, and the daily surreal fight for anything remotely deemed normal

Yeah, I know it’s not supposed to be a documentary ala Restrepo and I wasn’t in AFG for long but the day I arrived in the Balkh province, a donkey loaded with explosives was detonated just outside a NATO base resulting in me being covered with organic debris in the form of a tail part and mangled hoof – welcome to Afghanistan.

In my next post: Uzbeki warlords and the World Cup.

Photo attribution: Paramount Pictures and Terry Moseley

** No donkeys were harmed in the making of this post.

Donkeys in Blackpool, England

Afghanistan: 2016

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When I visited Afghanistan in 2014, NATO and US troops were scaling down operations while presidential elections, fraught with allegations of fraud, went into round two. Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah both claimed victory but eventually agreed to form a unity government led by Ghani and Abdullah as Chief Executive Officer in October 2014.

For the most part, NATO and the US took their toys and went home resulting in a predictable recipe for political instability including tribalism, power vacuums with a side order of warlords and a not-so-insignificant resurgence of Taliban-controlled regions.

U.S. President Barack Obama, having long stated his determination to end a war that began in 2001, reversed course in October 2015 and said that the American force of 9,800 troops would remain in Afghanistan through most of 2016, before dropping to 5,500.

The latest dispatch by Eric Schmitt and David E. Sanger of the NYT should give pause as to what to expect in 2016 as Al-Qaeda re-emerges throughout the region while the Taliban continues to control or strongly influence approximately half the nation, according to Bill Roggio, editor of The Long War Journal, an online publication that tracks Taliban control.

With the renewed violence against U.S. troops and potential “safe haven” for terrorist activities, I wonder if Afghanistan will return as a hot topic in the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections.