1 Aug 2009

Is the Afghan war on terror coming to an end?

Heat. It’s not something, that, if you live in Bangkok, you thought you would still be susceptible to.

Bangkok’s sticky, like a constant reminder of how hectic and dense the city is – it’s brimming humanity.

But out here, in Jalalabad, where we are en route to Kunar, near Afghanistan’s north-eastern border with Pakistan, the heat sits on you – a fiery blanket of discomfort. Dry and unforgiving. Sweat dries on your body, down the back of your ears. Dehydration is a constant, not the exception. Your contact lenses heave in your eyes. It’s not a place meant for people who wear contact lenses, I tell myself.

We’re here at what’s probably the peak of “fighting season”, in perhaps the most volatile area of Afghanistan.

I normally find embeds a series of torturous waits, followed by the occasional hour long moment of chaos, and then the more difficult, probing task of trying to get the soldiers you are with to speak openly about their hopes and fears on camera.

But this time I admit to feeling a little nervous. It feels a little more pressured here: like, as much of Washington admit, this next 12 months is crunch time, after which a lack of progress will be labelled – by default by the US Congress – as failure. There is anxiety everywhere. And heat.

The journey into places like this can sometimes tell you more about how the conflict is going than the time you spend out with the soldiers, embedded.

We flew into Kabul, a city where life seemed to be insisting on continuing as normal, despite the heightened threat felt by westerners living there. The world’s attention may be focused purely now on the fight here, but the capital seemed determined to shrug off crisis, occupation, and the panic ahead of the elections.

The fruit sellers, the quiet banality of car crashes, of dizzy crammed roundabouts, and the laziness of patrolling police: all just too relaxed to signify a city worrying about where it was headed next. Life has and always will go on here, it said – foreigners come and go.

Then there was Bagram airbase: 15 months ago, it felt a little chaotic – Iraq still so much the focus of the machine driving it. Now it seemed established, organised, at full throttle – almost making a last dash for the line.

My gauges for this are a little petty and domesticated, but they are all we as journalists get access to: there’s wireless internet almost everywhere, and even an Oakley clothing shop amid the other coffee stalls and KFCs.

I think that if there is such a thing as the evolution of military bases, the existence of a brand name clothing store on base is perhaps the last step ahead of over-sophistication and extinction. You probably only want to buy a brand-name bikini (in a place without a pool) if you’re leaving soon.

Even the contractors – the vast gaggles of men and women who drive the trucks and do “other stuff” too tiresome to mention that keeps a base running, have a last-chance saloon glint in their eye: like the gravy train of the Bush years is coming to an end.

They just don’t have the “bling” of years past: their clothes are ordinary, less ornate and ostentatious, speaking more of money saved than blown overnight in Dubai. The dream of blank cheques from Uncle Sam is coming to an end.

We raced through Bagram to here, Jalalabad.

That to me also said something. 15 months ago, we spent about half our time just waiting for helicopters or planes that often didn’t come. They simply didn’t have the air power then. Now it seems they do. This is now the priority fight.

I can’t work out whether the change in atmosphere here is tinged with desperation or purpose. But it feels like – after the successful redefinition of success in Iraq and the coming withdrawals – the last episode in the war on terror is coming to a head.

That the next month – ahead of vital presidential elections on August 20th, only after which as Barack Obama said he can debate a new plan for the country – is as close to the defining moment of this eight year campaign. And that it will perhaps define the legacy of the war on terror.

And the heat, it’s not going anywhere.