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A masseuse? Shared with the usual disclaimer disclaimer....
Afghanistan's forgotten army dreams of a world of plenty
Patrick Bishop, Telegraph (UK), 20 Sept 06
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/09/20/do2004.xml
"What you do?" asks Olga, working her strong thumbs into the back of my neck.
"Journalist."
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"What?"
"Er, like TV."
"Ah, khorosho." In the mirror I can see a smile break across her broad Kyrgyz features. TV is good. The TV world is the one she wants to inhabit.
Instead poor Olga is stuck in a massage parlour on the Kandahar airfield, described by a military website as "one of the most remote, landlocked and desolate places the Army has ever had to build as a combat base". On the plus side, it "makes a perfect hub to battle the Taliban".
But "desolate" is right. The climate is vile. The heat is stunning and the air is heavy with talcum powder dust, fecal dust as everyone likes to tell you, mingled with the immemorial dung of man and beast, that clogs the lungs like an 80-a-day fag habit.
Behind the wire are two armies. There are the men and women in uniform, the Britons, Canadians and Dutch of the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), who are bearing the brunt of the war on the Taliban in southern Afghanistan. Then there are the men and women who support them.
There are 37 nations contributing to the Isaf military effort. The logistical battalions of loo-cleaners, burger-flippers, latte-frothers and check-out jockeys toiling at KAF – as the base is known – are at least as cosmopolitan.
They are as diverse a bunch as it is possible to find outside the UN and they all have two things in common. They can make more money here than they can at home, and home is where they fervently wish they were.
"The heat is hell here," sighs Yelena, a rangy, blonde Bosnian. "Last week it was 60C." Not like back in her birthplace of Banja Luka, I remind her, where already the cool hillsides will be turning red and gold.
"Now you are making me cry," she exclaims in mock misery. "Look at the tears in my eyes!" Yelena's charming banter is a relic of her days working as a translator for British Army peacekeepers in Banja Luka. But the trouble stopped and the caravan moved on. Another conflict has offered another opportunity, but nothing as good as the last one. "I've been here six weeks and I don't know how long I will last," she says, before slipping back behind the counter in the Naafi shop.
Arrangements that would have been unthinkable in the Cold War world are commonplace now. Olga the masseuse grew up in Bishkek, the capital of the Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan. She works for a Russian boss who has beauty parlours on American military bases all over the region.
The American-built KAF stands on a base that was once occupied by the Russians, and the stamp of America is all over. Outside the fence is a landscape of mud and straw villages where life has hardly changed for hundreds of years. The night belongs to a primitive, fanatical enemy.
But inside, among the armoured vehicles and container parks, an attempt has been made to recreate the bland world of the Midwest.
The focus is the Boardwalk, a rectangular wooden arcade inside which a hockey rink is being built. Soldiers and civilians spend their down time strolling round and round, pausing at the Burger King or Tim Hortons, a Canadian coffee and bun chain, or browsing in boutiques for leisure wear and souvenirs. Round the corner is the Green Beans, which serves, according to the motto on the plastic cups, "Honor First, Coffee Second". The concession is leased from the American equivalent of the Naafi.
Brian, the cheerful, slim Indian dealing with the long queue, must be doing it for the honour side of things, because the money is hardly attractive.
"I get $600 a month, $800 with tips," he says.
What does he do for a social life? "What social life? When I finish I just crash." He relents a little. "It's not so bad really. There are salsa nights and films. You can bear it as long as you know it will end."
At times, you can forget that there is a world beyond the wire, but the war keeps crashing in. One night last week, a siren wailed a warning over the public address system and a few seconds later there was an explosion as a missile came thudding in. It had been fired from a village a few miles away, where strenuous efforts have been going on to win hearts and minds and wean locals away from the Taliban.
The dust lanes between the prefabs filled with workers, most of them employees of KBR, the private military logistics contractor that provides the wherewithal for the American empire.
The shelter was overflowing when we reached it. Outside a clutch of American Southerners in cooks' whites grabbed the chance for a cigarette.
"Happens all the time, man," said Lonny, who swapped life in a diner to work through the night preparing meals for the base food hall.
The all-clear siren sounded and the people drifted away. Some made their way to the veranda outside the Naafi where they smoked and chatted and drank coffee or Coke, the strongest beverages allowed on the base.
In the corner, the TV glowed, beaming in the beckoning world of green and peace and plenty.
Afghanistan's forgotten army dreams of a world of plenty
Patrick Bishop, Telegraph (UK), 20 Sept 06
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/09/20/do2004.xml
"What you do?" asks Olga, working her strong thumbs into the back of my neck.
"Journalist."
advertisement
"What?"
"Er, like TV."
"Ah, khorosho." In the mirror I can see a smile break across her broad Kyrgyz features. TV is good. The TV world is the one she wants to inhabit.
Instead poor Olga is stuck in a massage parlour on the Kandahar airfield, described by a military website as "one of the most remote, landlocked and desolate places the Army has ever had to build as a combat base". On the plus side, it "makes a perfect hub to battle the Taliban".
But "desolate" is right. The climate is vile. The heat is stunning and the air is heavy with talcum powder dust, fecal dust as everyone likes to tell you, mingled with the immemorial dung of man and beast, that clogs the lungs like an 80-a-day fag habit.
Behind the wire are two armies. There are the men and women in uniform, the Britons, Canadians and Dutch of the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), who are bearing the brunt of the war on the Taliban in southern Afghanistan. Then there are the men and women who support them.
There are 37 nations contributing to the Isaf military effort. The logistical battalions of loo-cleaners, burger-flippers, latte-frothers and check-out jockeys toiling at KAF – as the base is known – are at least as cosmopolitan.
They are as diverse a bunch as it is possible to find outside the UN and they all have two things in common. They can make more money here than they can at home, and home is where they fervently wish they were.
"The heat is hell here," sighs Yelena, a rangy, blonde Bosnian. "Last week it was 60C." Not like back in her birthplace of Banja Luka, I remind her, where already the cool hillsides will be turning red and gold.
"Now you are making me cry," she exclaims in mock misery. "Look at the tears in my eyes!" Yelena's charming banter is a relic of her days working as a translator for British Army peacekeepers in Banja Luka. But the trouble stopped and the caravan moved on. Another conflict has offered another opportunity, but nothing as good as the last one. "I've been here six weeks and I don't know how long I will last," she says, before slipping back behind the counter in the Naafi shop.
Arrangements that would have been unthinkable in the Cold War world are commonplace now. Olga the masseuse grew up in Bishkek, the capital of the Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan. She works for a Russian boss who has beauty parlours on American military bases all over the region.
The American-built KAF stands on a base that was once occupied by the Russians, and the stamp of America is all over. Outside the fence is a landscape of mud and straw villages where life has hardly changed for hundreds of years. The night belongs to a primitive, fanatical enemy.
But inside, among the armoured vehicles and container parks, an attempt has been made to recreate the bland world of the Midwest.
The focus is the Boardwalk, a rectangular wooden arcade inside which a hockey rink is being built. Soldiers and civilians spend their down time strolling round and round, pausing at the Burger King or Tim Hortons, a Canadian coffee and bun chain, or browsing in boutiques for leisure wear and souvenirs. Round the corner is the Green Beans, which serves, according to the motto on the plastic cups, "Honor First, Coffee Second". The concession is leased from the American equivalent of the Naafi.
Brian, the cheerful, slim Indian dealing with the long queue, must be doing it for the honour side of things, because the money is hardly attractive.
"I get $600 a month, $800 with tips," he says.
What does he do for a social life? "What social life? When I finish I just crash." He relents a little. "It's not so bad really. There are salsa nights and films. You can bear it as long as you know it will end."
At times, you can forget that there is a world beyond the wire, but the war keeps crashing in. One night last week, a siren wailed a warning over the public address system and a few seconds later there was an explosion as a missile came thudding in. It had been fired from a village a few miles away, where strenuous efforts have been going on to win hearts and minds and wean locals away from the Taliban.
The dust lanes between the prefabs filled with workers, most of them employees of KBR, the private military logistics contractor that provides the wherewithal for the American empire.
The shelter was overflowing when we reached it. Outside a clutch of American Southerners in cooks' whites grabbed the chance for a cigarette.
"Happens all the time, man," said Lonny, who swapped life in a diner to work through the night preparing meals for the base food hall.
The all-clear siren sounded and the people drifted away. Some made their way to the veranda outside the Naafi where they smoked and chatted and drank coffee or Coke, the strongest beverages allowed on the base.
In the corner, the TV glowed, beaming in the beckoning world of green and peace and plenty.
