Chapahar District

A GAO (Government Accounting Office) team came to Camp Eggers in order to conduct research on a report of the ANP training. We flew them down to Chapahar District, Nangahar Province so that they could see a FDD (Focused District Development) trained district in action. We got down there alright, it was what followed that will go down in legend.

We flew down on UH-60 Blackhawks escorted by this AH-64 Apache.


The Chapahar ANP District HQ is set on high ground, fortified by hesco barriers and wooden guard towers. The ANP live in either connex boxes or tents. This is a shot of the kitchen, with the proud cook posing for me.

I climbed up one of the guard towers and took this picture of the surrounding area.

After checking out the ANP District PHQ, we drove down to the village of Chapahar, which is basically this street. The storm you see brewing in the back ground turned out to be our nemesis.

This is LTC Doust with an old .303 Enfield turned in under the United Nations DIAG program. Basically, the locals are encouraged to turn in weapons for money. Of course, not a single one of the weapons were of the modern assault rifle type. Most did not function, and the Afghans here believed this pitiful collection of antiques justified a multi-million dollar dam and irrigation project. The compound we were in, is rumored to be Osama Bin Laden's hooch before we forced him into the Tora Bora region, south of Nangahar Province.

Well, the helicopters picked us up on time, even though we were late. As soon as we boarded we were informed that a storm front had moved in and we could not fly back to Kabul. So we were dumped off at FOB Fenty located at the Jalalabad airfield.

Since we did not want to spend the night in J-Bad we asked the DynCorp guys if they could drive us back to Kabul. Only problem was, the road was closed in the mountain pass. So we got our PSD from Camp Eggers to meet us on the far side of the closed portion of the road, after the DynCorp guys dropped us off on the J-Bad side. We had to walk about two miles with the GAO guys in tow to the far side of the road construction.

The following group of pictures were taken along the route to the mountain pass.

Here is where we got dropped off on the J-Bad side with a huge group of very curious Afghans.

Here we are walking up the road. When folks like the GAO come around people usually get nervous. We just make them walk, because thats, "How we roll."