The potato chipper, p.11
The Potato Chipper, page 11
This was put to the board in Dubai who correctly refused to pay this although in fairness, the rumour mill among the guys that were left in the country was that no tax had been paid on any contracts for years, as the company only claimed that they were working for diplomatic clients which were exempt from taxation payments under a convention signed in Vienna; when in reality, they were conducting private work for other civilian clients.
The Dubai office had not really been forthcoming about the lack of country management oversight and when eventually pressed, stated that the two managers had been evacuated for their own safety (quite correct) and to avoid a trumped-up charge being placed on them. However, our status, in their eyes, was assured because we were not named managers and so we could carry on working, while being immune from being tarred with any of these charges.
What? Our small group of three to four guys who were left holding the fort totally dismissed that and realised that if our villa were raided by the authorities the first westerner that they could lay their eyes on would be taken off and given a hard time until a lawyer could get them out. Afghanistan is not a western country where rights are respected. We were talking about a country where a police commander, if he wished to indulge in perverted sexual fantasies would have you held down by six to eight of his comrades while you are Pulp Fiction ‘Gimped’. The authorities in this country don’t care who is or isn’t a named manager. If you were white or of western origin, you are assumed to not only have money, but to be a lucrative target who is guilty until proven innocent and who will be (mal)treated accordingly. I will stress here that many Afghans I worked with were tough, fair-minded people but there were many, a significant minority, which were overtly corrupt and would look for any opportunity to exploit others.
We were starting to lose respect for a lot of people, not only the Dubai based corporate geeks that were lapping things up with their expat. lifestyle but also the officials of a country we were supposedly helping, even though we hadn’t had much time for them beforehand. I am only glad to be able to say that my sense of humour knew no bounds as corporate profit clearly came above the welfare of any of us. Having said that there were contracts in place with several high-profile clients and pulling the pin on these would have implications for the company in its entirety. What I didn’t like about the situation was the BS being said that ‘you have nothing to worry about.’ I would prefer some radical honesty in such a situation along the lines of; ‘look it’s up to you; you have to earn your money and take a chance with it, but if you want to go, we understand.’
I had been warned about this situation by the guy that had covered my position while I was out on leave. He never returned to the contract and indeed, he told me that before my return, he had been instructed not to tell me about the issues. Being the honest Northern Englishman that he was, he gave me chapter and verse and I decided that I would return for an appraisal before reviewing whether I would continue there.
Just before I returned to Kabul, I had once again entered the cosmopolitan setting of Dubai to obtain my visa and had agreed to meet one of the Country Manager’s that evening prior to my early a.m. flight the following day, in order to briefly discuss the company’s operating licence in Afghanistan. Only two alcoholic drinks I thought, only two. He was great socially, and it was only 20.30 hours when we entered the bar of the Traders Hotel in Dubai for a swift ale and already, the ‘night-fighters’ were winking at us, looking for business. We then cut away to another hotel bar nearer the airport to meet up with a few more of our colleagues who had just come out of Kabul. Great! Everybody happy because they’re heading out on leave and me being the only one heading in. Having said that, I enjoy what I do, just not some of the side effects that accompany it.
Quick time check, 03.30 hours. I was in a complete den of inequity disco with some good-looking women, interspersed with some who had mouths that resembled a burnt out fuse box when I reminded myself that I had a flight to catch in less than three hours. I had had a few beers, like eight; so, I was a little thick headed but otherwise, surprisingly okay. Straight down the seedy looking stairs, out into the road past the stocky Romanian/Russian bouncers and into a cab. Got back to the hotel at about 03.45 hours, my car to the airport was booked for 04.15 hours. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t sleep otherwise I would only wake up in about eight hours having missed my flight. I put my feet up on my packed case, having sat down on the comfortable sofa when I felt myself going into nodding dog syndrome. After having snapped myself out of this just, I headed downstairs, handed my key in and after arriving at the airport, I felt full of life. It was one of the few occasions when a bit of alcohol (and socialising) had helped.
Straight up to the Kam Air check in desk and woe betide me but in front was a good-looking western woman, early to mid-forties, with Louis Vuitton baggage. I didn’t even wait three seconds
I just looked at her and said, “are you sure you’re on the right flight?”
She looked around and we locked eyes for about two to three seconds and with my eyes I directed my gaze (and hers) to her baggage before she responded with a smile following up in her Texan accented English.
“I think so, but isn’t this flight supposed to leave at 06.25 hours?”
It hadn’t missed my attention that the timing had been brought forward by thirty-five minutes to 05.50 hours which was a further example of operations in the Third World. We had some general chit chat and after I checked in, I rolled away to pass the final round of security checks with my boarding pass before heading to the Costa Coffee for a small, pre-flight breakfast. As I walked through the terminal, I noticed that it had improved with one or two shop and restaurant additions, plus, the clientele were less polarised and more ‘normal’. Previously, the divide between western ‘mercenaries,’ NGO aid workers, journalists and South and East Asian workers was highly pronounced.
Then, as I sat down, she of Texan fame rolled up to my table and asked if I wanted company. Well, we had only spoken for five to six minutes and fifty-six seconds in the check in queue, but she seemed pleasant. She had what appeared to be a mixed Germanic/Anglo & Mexican appearance, with Anglo Saxon hair, jawline and lips with brownish eyes and prominent round cheeks.
I liked what I had seen for now, so I gestured to the seat, “of course, please!” before she introduced herself as Christine. Our conversation was pleasantly fluid, threading from topic to topic seamlessly.
I liked to challenge her a little but at the same time, give her some security as my inclination was that she was an investing type, with two twenty something children, who worked for the Corps of Engineers and had been in Iraq previously. I wasn’t surprised to hear her say that this was her first trip into Afghanistan but I would describe her as a patriotic, proud and brave person with a big heart. Importantly, she wasn’t the over the top with those characteristics.
We boarded together, spoke a bit of Spanish on the bus to the plane and I bade her farewell, or so I thought, as she slid into her business class seat as I pushed on towards the back to take my economy seat. However, economy was no great hardship on these flights as we normally got two to three seats to ourselves. This flight was no different. Shortly after taking off, she came down from business class and suggested that I come and sit next to her. Well, that was very nice but what would the cabin crew think. I needn’t have worried as they laid out the red carpet figuratively speaking, and I took my seat, had my bag placed above my seat and tucked into what I have to say was a lovely breakfast; as good, if not better than I would have experienced on some western airlines. I was reliably informed that the Northern Alliance figure General Dostum who had been fighting against the Taliban for many years was a stakeholder in the airline. He would have been proud. I did think about writing to customer service but held back because use of Terminal two denoted that they still hadn’t obtained the IATA safety permit giving them full respectability. In layman’s terms, that meant that they were more likely to have an accident.
They also had been alleged to have had several near misses and accidents as well. One of these stories which even to this date, is unconfirmed but I heard several different sources tell me, was that on one occasion, a Kam Airplane was mistakenly loaded with water instead of Kerosene at an unspecified airport, probably Kabul. At the beginning of the procedure, the plane’s tanks were one third full so when the water was loaded, the initial repercussions of this mistake weren’t felt so the plane taxied off to the runway, the pilot pushed the thrust levers forward on being given clearance for take-off and plane rolled off down the runway only to splutter to a standstill after several hundred metres. Fortunately before they had reached the point of no return known as V1 in Aviation Terminology.
Happily, on this occasion, after a smooth landing on a beautiful spring day, not too hot, with hardly a cloud in the sky above the bowl-shaped mountains that encircle Kabul. I looked out the window at the rusted out Russian/Soviet occupation era relic helicopters as we taxied to our stand. Christine and I exchanged details and made a commitment to meet again, if I could get on to her installation for a night of salsa … Alas, it wasn’t to be, as I couldn’t get the required clearance to get to the camp and the option to come over to my villa, while an option was thwarted, probably by a realisation that her long time English boyfriend, who worked in my business wouldn’t be too keen on sharing her in an open relationship. Who knows, but it was a pleasant few hours that I passed with her and while I know that there was an attraction there, getting her through the airport and safely to her US military escorts was my priority, so I could settle that one in my own mind.
After this brief mentally hedonistic escape, reality once again gripped me on my return to the villa. I slowly made my way up to the villa’s front door adjacent to the courtyard area, and the feeling of emptiness was all encompassing. The guys who I was taking over from, Martin, was fantastic and had warned me about the situation with the Afghan government. The temperature in the city was rising in more ways than one and the Taliban were about number nine on our list of problems. He gave me his usual mesmeric handover and just walking around the villa; one could sense the feeling of a declining operation. The feeling was one of tension with the belief that the Ministry of Interior were baying for blood with any western firm, especially those doing risk management; due to it being high on the list of targets. The usual format was for the company’s in country HQ to be raided with suspected, complicit individuals being detained for questioning.
That is an unpleasant experience in any country but magnified tenfold in the ‘Heart of Asia’. During my takeover from Martin, he advised me that he had lived the final week of his stint with his bag packed, ready to bolt out of the back door if we had any hint of an MOI/Government raid.
I, and two of the other Operations Managers who were holding the fort drew up some unofficial contingency plans and indeed, on the day of my return, the London based operations manager who was NOT on the GOA radar, slipped into the Afghan bank with two of our guys providing heavily armed coverage waiting outside the door, to withdraw all of the company’s money, so that it could be securely deposited into the safe of the operations manager for one of the embassy contracts we had. I will not state which country that is because they will not know about it, and I doubt that they would be that happy if they ever found out; but this was a brave call because there was the possibility that the account had already been frozen and marked, such that, anybody attempting to carry out a transaction, would immediately be associated with a company suspected of illegal activities.
Garrie subsequently withdrew about half a million US dollars and that involved some creative bluffing of the Bank Manager, as well as two of our guys standing outside with Kalashnikov’s in case of an attempted mugging. I was amazed that the government hadn’t frozen the account. That was to be done later when there were only a couple of thousand dollars remaining in the account. As soon as I heard of this ‘bank job’ on the first evening of my return, I realised that the operation was living on borrowed time and realistically, this was the first phase of a downscaling and withdrawal from Afghanistan for all of us.
I was now starting to feel that after just over one year in the country, it was time to re-evaluate and plan to move elsewhere. We had a New Zealand Diplomat staying in the villa, a client who was being escorted by one of my friends. This guy was an aide to the NZ Prime Minister John Key, he was quite alarmed by our situation and emphasised that it didn’t realistically provide him with much confidence to know that the main company man wasn’t in town. I was rapidly learning that the Corporate World was full of flannel, bluff and bluster.
I personally was just content that I had my sources already in place, principally Najib that I could call on to help me personally as well as my friends. He, however, could not help on the macro company matter that I’ve just described above, and his one piece of overarching advice was don’t get caught using non-registered, illegal weapons. This was clearly good advice, but a whole lot more difficult to put into operation because some of the weaponry we were using could not be tracked back to officially recognised suppliers but then again, who could do that in Afghanistan.
When risk management firms entered Afghanistan from about 2002/03 to operate in country, unlike Iraq, there was no centralised system of controlling and issuing weapons for private companies to carry out their business. Quite often weapons were procured from local arms dealers with transactions of old Soviet era Mujahideen Ak variant weapons being exchanged for box loads of US dollars, at remote sites,’ in near Mexican Standoff situations with tensions running extremely high. Formerly respectable UK/US/French/South African and Eastern European soldiers were now stretching the lines of that respectability with the purchasing of weapons from dubious sources, all in the name of the client’s/asset’s protection. These guys including myself had to remember that our respective governments had not a lot of interest in us and from a personal point of view, my country didn’t even have an embassy in town; preferring to manage affairs from Tehran.
I had decided that I was going to limit my moves and mostly confine myself to our compound with outward journeys only taking place when they were essential. Even frequenting the bars and restaurants of choice was looking for a more dubious prospect. Just after my return in country, a restaurant was raided by Ministry of Interior officials over allegations of improper activity. What that specifically meant nobody knew but what did occur was that the ladies, both staff and patrons were subjected to extra scrutiny and were questioned as to their sexual proclivities (if any) that may have taken place in the restaurant.
Once all of that was completed, individuals were allowed to depart without having to pay the bill, as the authorities just ordered them out and the owners were too busy to notice. A little bit of good comes out of the bad but I once again had to wonder why the leaders of a country that was seriously in difficulties with an insurgency that was not only seeing the city limits being progressively encroached on by militants conventionally, but also by a monthly pummelling of high value targets in a coordinated fashion, by preferring to concentrate on attacking people that weren’t a threat to them. My conclusion – Human beings are completely irrational.
History has many examples of this and the leaders of the US and Europe with their debt-ridden economies seem to be obsessed with spending other people’s money in conjunction with fomenting wars in a vain attempt to prop up their empires that ultimately fail. The Roman, Spanish and British empires ultimately fell due to a continual series of wars and the associated financial implications; and even at a lower level, whenever a loved one attacks somebody close to them, it is usually owing to an unconnected failure or a personal attack on that person’s self-esteem, coming from somebody else. Heads in the sand continue pouring money into failing concerns (welfare/warfare states’) seem to be the order of the day; but then again, this is easy for a politician who has an economics degree but no actual business experience to have developed their foundational core knowledge probably because they think that they’re above that and besides, all mistakes (i.e., incurred debts) can be, as I alluded to earlier, passed onto their respective taxpayers.
Returning to the subject at hand, a team of Australian operators moved into our villa so at least we had some reinforcements in the event of an attack or raid on our compound. Their addition increased our complement to approximately thirty, although during the day there were only two to three of us around, with most team members dotted around the city. It certainly felt like an operation in decline, and I was really starting to think that Afghanistan was an environment that was going to be too difficult to operate in for those of us who were working for commercial (as opposed to diplomatic or military) clients.
I was regularly keeping in touch with other companies and my local national colleagues were doing their best to gauge ‘the vibe’ within the Ministry of The Interior and phone calls were being received periodically to the effect of them ‘wanting answers’ from senior management over the number of alleged irregularities, which I touched upon earlier.
Our main concern was whether there was going to be a raid. The consensus was that there was not one imminent, although a continuing lack of response would denote the inevitability of this. If this were to occur during the daytime, there was a fair chance that I would be on the site and possessing a white skin would arouse possible suspicions amongst the MOI party, that I was in-charge of the operation. I decided to strip down paperwork from the operations room board with various names on it, including mine, for obvious reasons. Life continued for a further two to three months until we received the warning that we were to receive a visit if answers were not forthcoming within three weeks. We were then nearing the end of July 2010.
