Month 5 Day 17

Notebook entry
Seven reports to Samir, morning cleaned up office, afternoon gave Company Commander’s Intelligence handbook and talked about bribe falling through. Samir forgets keys.

Journal Entry
Chapter title: Do you want to partner with them, or do you want them to partner with you? Re the ANA CoC monving

I tried to work with Samir in the morning, he was busy rearranging and filing stuff away in his office. That turned out to be ok, I got three new forms from him about talking to detainees and I helped him get [r]id of some of the old sensitive material that he had. In the afternoon he was completely useless. He lost his keys, didn’t want to work and was complaining that he paid a USD$5000 (A200,000) bribe to someone in MoD and that the guy didn’t transfer him. He took this out of his wedding fund. The poor bastard must really hate his job. He wants to be a company commander in Qandahar. His girlfriend is pissed at him, his dad (the Minister of Mines) and his uncle, some big-whig general in Qandahar are all pissed at him too. They were trying to work it through their personal connections. Samir basically threatened this guys life, or to rape his daughter. I don’t think he’ll do either, but you never know. I told him I would train him to be a company commander. Little does he know that training him to be a company commander will make him an infinitely better S2 [intelligence officer]. I also talked to him about going down to the kandaks to train some of the guys there.

Went to the Classified Material Reset training and when I came back I saw one of the contractors who works on ANA [Afghan National Army] vehicles with the head MP [Military Police] and the XO [Executive officer] of the Base Defence Operations Center. The story goes like this. What the Marine saw/heard is in parenthesis. Sabash was running on mainside and took a break from running for a minute and started to walk, then recommenced (the Counterintel [CI] guy saw him running by the flight line, and saw him increase his rate of speed when he turned around and said he tensed up when he drove by). An non-uniformed white guy stopped his truck and asked him to produce his base ID and started asking him who he was and who he worked for (the counterintel guy wanted to establish a baseline for questioning by asking repeat and control questions). Sabash asked the nonuniformed white guy who he was with because he has been asked for bribes by the ANA before-though he did not say this (this frustrated the CI guy’s attempt to figure out what he was up to, challenged his authority, and annoyed him, he told him that he was an American citizen). Sabash doesn’t have any idea where this guy is from, he is from india and can’t pick out English accents, he works on trucks (the CI guy feels like he has established his identity and asks the questions again). Sabash doesn’t believe this guy, and doesn’t understand why he is being asked questions that are on his card, and tells the man to reference his ID (the CI guys feels he is being evasive and suspicious, and asks him to get in the truck). Sabash is terrified, he doesn’t know this man, he doesn’t wear a uniform, he isn’t from here, and he is scared that something is going to happen to him (the CI guy figures, well if he won’t talk to me I’ll take him to the Marines and he’ll talk to them or lock him up or kick him out). The Marines take him here. I confirm his ID, and that he is not a threat to anyone. I try to explain both sides to them and to the CI guy, and they don’t get it. They are hard-wired to think everyone is a threat. I try to talk to Sabash and he cries uncontrollably for about 15 minutes, the poor man was terrified, I try to explain the base defense side to him, but I think he is too distraught to understand.

Where is the empathy?