Khost Province

I’m going to head over to the Dirksen Senate office building pretty soon to cover the Soufan/Zelikow hearings. But before I go: it looks like Khost province, in eastern Afghanistan, is the target of increasing insurgent activity.
It seems like every few days I get a press release from U.S. Forces-Afghanistan about another attack — successful [...]

FORWARD OPERATING BASE SALERNO, Afghanistan – Outside the media operations center this morning, four Afghan workers on the base stared exhaustedly at a few large pieces of lumber, arranging the wood to form the basis for what appeared to be a roof. One of the men knelt over the arrangement and took a DeWalt circular [...]

The Salerno army base offers a window into the hard counterinsurgency battle at the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

BETWEEN BAGRAM AIR FIELD AND FORWARD OPERATING BASE SALERNO, Afghanistan – When I arrived at Bagram, a public-affairs officer named Chuck asked me what I thought of Afghanistan, notwithstanding the fact that all I had seen so far was Kabul. I told him that the place reminded me of the moon. Chuck laughed as he [...]