It's about the people

The KBR team that cleans our Chigo's (Heat pumps for heating and cooling our uninsulated plywood huts) stopped by this morning. They come by every two months or so because it takes several tries to get in and clean most of the units. The supervisor is from Kosovo, the assistant form Albania, and the guy cleaning is Afghani. The supervisor tells us he was a physics professor before his country was torn apart by fighting and shared with us tales about life in Kosovo. He started working for KBR in 1999 in Kosovo and has now been in Afghanistan for 3 years. His tales of learning English, which was still pretty rough, were pretty entertaining as well.

There are a lot of Afghani's working on the base, but most of them don't know more than a few words of English, which is still more words than I know in Dari or Pashto or Farsi or Arabic. Some of them are very good businessmen, such as the carpet seller who grosses $200k/month on average. The carpet seller and his brother run multiple shops to help support their family in Kabul. The last time I checked they have 31 family members sharing a large house in Kabul.

Most of the people who have been here for a while have befriended at least one Afghani. We have friends and co-workers down at Camp Phoenix and we had heard about the "gate guard that saved a lot of lives", but it didn't really sink in until I saw the stories popping up back home.

The short version comes from a recent speech by President Bush:

I want to tell you an interesting story about an Afghan security office[r] at Camp Phoenix near Kabul. This fellow has worked at this base for four years -- nearly four years. His job was to guard the front gate and screen cars before they are allowed to approach a U.S. military checkpoint. He is very popular with our troops -- people who have gotten to know him like him a lot. They appreciate his courage and his personality and they call him "Rambo." (Laughter.) Must have been a lot for the Afghan citizen to be called "Rambo," but that's what they call him.

One day Rambo was on duty, a car loaded with explosives tried to crash through the front gate -- they were attempting to get to our troops. This fellow did not hesitate, he jumped in the car and he prevented the terrorist from exploding the device. He saw somebody who was about to harm our citizens, our troops -- he then jumps into the car and stops the attack. A U.S. Army sergeant then responded, helped him pull the guy out of the car.

One of our U.S. soldiers who was there said this, he said, "He saved our lives. I promised him I'd name my firstborn son after him." The guy is hoping for a boy. (Laughter.)

The more complete telling of the incident can be found at VodkaPundit.

[clarification] The reason the guys nickname is "Rambo" is because the Taleban killed his entire family and Camp Phoenix is built on top of where his house used to be. The place pretty well is his home.

We have more stories of the strength and bravery of the Afghani people, I guess we'll need to post them.

I've had several conversations recently with soldiers who were extremely upset about the gate bombing and toll taken on the kids. Though the kids do some stuff to drive them crazy, all of the soldiers that work gate security and spend a lot of time out there absolutely love those kids. Nobody can really comprehend the sickness required to blow up children.

Kids are the real VIP's on base. Senators and congress critters are a dime a dozen, but when some of the Afghani kids come through the dining hall almost every face in the room follows them and smiles. Most of the Afghani kids speak pretty good English as well. I'm sure a lot of these smiles come from people thinking about their own kids back home, but I think it also says something very positive when a society places so much effort and respect into growing healthy children.