The Foreign Service Journal, October 2015

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2015 25 FOCUS ON CIV-MIL RELATIONS I n the fall of 2012, at the age of 55, I experienced for the first time the reality of war. This experience did not involve wearing a uniform or carrying a gun. But for 12 months I worked alongside those who did. Sometimes I traveled “outside the wire,” walking through potential kill zones in some of the most violent parts of Afghanistan. On one cruel day in early April 2013 I survived a suicide bomber’s attack in Zabul that killed a fellow diplomat, my Afghan-American translator and three American soldiers. We often rode in Black Hawk helicopters. The female waist gunner on one flight from Kandahar to Spin Boldak was young THE DUST of Kandahar A Senior FSO recounts his experience working alongside the U.S. military in southern Afghanistan. BY JONATHAN S . ADDL ETON Members of the U.S. Army, 3rd Zone, Afghan Border Police Security Forces Advisement Team, shield themselves from the dust and rocks blown by a UH-60 Black Hawk taking off behind them at an unknown location in southern Afghanistan in 2011. WIKIMEDIACOMMONS/USAFMASTERSGT.JEFFREYALLEN and small, almost as young and small as my daughter who had just started her final year of high school. Sometimes we traveled by convoy, protected by the heavy metal of a dust-colored Mine Resistant Ambush Proof vehicle. Each time I boarded an MRAP, the thought briefly crossed my mind that this vehicle might well become my tomb. On other occasions we walked to our appointments, don- ning helmets and protective armor to meet Afghan officials, visit schools and inspect irrigation works. American soldiers from the Third Infantry Division out of Fort Stewart, Georgia, provided security. It was the youth of those around us that was so striking. One lieutenant who directed my security on several trips to Kandahar