With The Troops

KABUL MILITARY TRAINING CENTER, Afghanistan -- The Afghan National Army is trading in its battle-worn Russian Khalashnikov AK-47 rifles for the U.S. M-16, the standard rifle of the U.S. military for many years.
U.S. soldiers are skeptical that this change is going to work, since the M-16 takes a far higher standard of maintenance than the Ak-47. Col. Bruce Bennett of the South Carolina National Guard, commanding officer of Training Assistance Group VI here, calls the changeover a challenge and notes his predecessors left behind pictures of Afghan soldiers cleaning their Ak-47s in a mud puddle.

CAMP ALAMO, Afghanistan -- Few warriors are as celebrated and feared as the Nepalese Gurkhas who serve with the British army. There are 30 Gurkhas here at this training base who school Afghan officers and sergeants in the arts of war.
Major Umesh Pun, their commander, enjoys the training. But he really lights up when talking about the 600 Gurkhas stationed in Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan, where they hunt the Taliban.

CAMP ALAMO, Afghanistan -- This U.S. training base helping the Afghan army is hundreds of miles from the ocean. But the soldiers here are awash in shipping containers.
The walls of the camp are shipping containers heaped with silos of broken concrete. The showers are in shipping containers fitted with plumbing and power. The latrines are shipping containers with stalls and sinks.

KABUL MILITARY TRAINING CENTER, Afghanistan -- Sergeant First Class Darrell Dancy glumly watched from a distance as his Afghan National Army students shoved home a 122 mm shell in a Soviet-era D-30 howitzer and blasted away.
"I'm an artillery guy. I'd rather be down there with them," he said. "But since the accident, they make us stay up here."
Last July, four Afghan soldiers in basic training here died when a mortar round exploded in the launch tube. Like the rest of the Afghan National Army's artillery, the mortar shell was a Soviet model.

DEH YAK, Afghanistan -- Campers know a good cook can make a huge difference when you are out in the boonies with wood fires and below-freezing temperatures. So the U.S. Army team embedded with the Deh Yak district police station is lucky to have Sgt. Elia Kougemitros.
"Kouge" is a New York National Guardsman from the Bronx. When he's not freezing in a gun turret of a speeding Humvee or pondering unexploded ordnance on the roadside, Kouge may be in the makeshift kitchen here where the soldiers have a small barracks.

FORWARD OPERATING BASE VULCAN, Ghazni, Afghanistan -- The governor was adamant: No Americans handing out aid in the neighborhoods where there'd been riots two weeks ago after U.S. Special Forces killed eight Ghazni police officers.
The American troops were adamant: we want the people to know we're friends, we're going to do this mission, and we've got the firepower to protect ourselves.
The Afghan police general was caught between them and looked like a man with a worsening headache.

FORWARD OPERATING BASE VULCAN, Ghazni, Afghanistan -- An Afghan soldier and a civilian were killed this afternoon when an apparent Taliban suicide bomber blew up a car in front of an Afghan Army pick-up truck 200 yards from the gate of this military camp.
Five other Afghan soldiers were wounded.
The blast rocked this base and threw a hammer-shaped white cloud high into the sky. It was the first suicide bombing inside the city of Ghazni that any of the 35 American soldiers here could remember.
None of the Americans was hurt.
"This is a change," said Army Capt. Robert Bailey. "Usually they don't ---- where they eat."
Many Taliban insurgents are thought to live in Ghazni, but normally they stage attacks outside the city.

FORWARD OPERATING BASE VULCAN, Ghazni, Afghanistan - Say hello to Alabama National Guard Maj. Mike Tomberlin, operations officer for the small police training mission here in the winter fastness of eastern Afghanistan'smountains.
In civilian life, he's Mike Tomberlin, business reporter with The Birmingham News.
In Ghazni, he's a Santa Claus.
Today Maj. Tomberlin is the turret gunner on a Humvee, tossing Mardi Gras beads and candy to Afghan kids when he's not keeping a wary eye out for bad guys.

DEH YAK, Afghanistan -- AhgeyfazalAhman Amery Shafahan is the head man for this county-sized district of Ghazni Province, about 9 miles east of the city of Ghazni. On Wednesday, a crush of American visitors put his hospitality to the test.
Two journalists and an eight-man team of soldiers embedded with the Deh Yak police arrrived first. Next came an Army major with the Florida National Guard here to see what needs to be built for the police station, accompanied by a non-commissioned officer who handles all sorts of mechanical repairs.

CAMP PHOENIX, Afghanistan - Your desert combat boot does well on rocks and dirt, less well on other surfaces. A soldier could be walking across the snow from the barracks to the shower building, and, bam, he's down on his back.
"Ice sniper got him," a sergeant says.
The injuries are serious, from bruised to broken bones. Army Captain Robert Bailey of Plano, who is based near Ghazni, Afghanistan, warned us to bring ice crampons to wear on our boots. I found some YakTraks with ice-gripping metal rings that slip over the soles, toes and heels. Hopefully those will keep the ice sniper at bay.

02/04/08: American troops muster early-morning Super Bowl party at Afghanistan training base

The military men and women based here in Kabul keep sentries posted around the bases, maintain nighttime blackouts where required and otherwise seem vigilant, even with attacks few and far between within the bases themselves.
Convoys are different, thanks to the enemy's main killer, the improvised explosive device.
Going outside the wire requires flak jackets, helmets, goggles and loaded weapons. An officer instructs everyone traveling on destinations, fallback plans, and what to do in the event of a breakdown or attack that disables a vehicle. Certian makes of cars and trucks favored by Taliban suicide bombers are described.

Inside thecity of Kabul is a large military training base, something like boot camp in downtown. And inside this Kabul Military Training Center, surrounded by 5,000 newbies of the Afghan National Army, are roughly 200 U.S. and allied forces in a place called Camp Alamo.
Dallas Morning News photographer Erich Schlegel and I are here to see how quickly the U.S. military can work its way out of a job. That's the mission of the Camp Alamo troops -- train, advise and mentor the Afghan National Army to take over security in Afghanistan, so U.S. and NATO forces can go home.