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 or thwarted — in Khost. (Sorry, I don’t have links for them, they’re emailed to me.) Yesterday afternoon, U.S. and Afghan forces stopped a suicide attack “by multiple groups of insurgents,” including from a suicide bomber “dressed as” a member of the Afghan security forces. (Uh, yeah, dressed as...) The insurgents attacked several municipal buildings in the heart of the city of Khost, taking hostages, and it took about five hours for U.S. and Afghan forces to subdue the assault. That’s a pretty brazen, complex attack.

And it follows an emerging pattern. Earlier that day, if I’m not misreading another release, an Improvised Explosive Device went off just outside Forward Operating Base Salerno, the headquarters of U.S. forces in the province right on the Pakistan border. April 25: U.S. forces detained a suspected member of the Haqqani and Massoud (that’s Pakistani Taliban) organizations in the province. April 16: IED turns up in the heart of the district. April 11: Afghan forces find a bomb-rigged vehicle in the Saberi district. April 9: a shootout with insurgents that left a baby dead.  April 4: Joint U.S.-Afghan raid in the Lagharah Valley captures an alleged Taliban commander. I count another 7 such incidents in March.

What’s going on in Khost? One explanation is that Task Force Curahee, the unit operating in the province since last April that was built around the 4th Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne — and which was kind enough to host me on my embed last September — transitioned out of Khost and adjacent provinces last month. Insurgents may be looking to take advantage of the rotation schedule. Curahee apparently stepped up its own operational tempo in response.

That’s a preliminary guess as I’m pretty much out the door to cover the Soufan/Zelikow thing. More on this later, but keep an eye on Khost as a locus for insurgent activity. It’s right on the Pakistan border — you can literally see Pakistan from Salerno — and insurgents have been trying to cut U.S. forces off from Kabul by attacking the one road that links the two areas.

None of the construction workers displayed any bewilderment over the fact that, seven years ago, the thought of working for Americans in this remote outpost in Khost Province would have been absurd, while today the U.S. appears to be an enduring fixture on the Afghan landscape.

The Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks retain a totemic quality even seven years out.

It’s hard to know what the rules are, socially speaking, to refer to them. The right-wing in U.S. politics has used the attacks as a cudgel from the start — Rudy Giuliani, 9/11′s equivalent of an ambulance chaser, lambasted the Democrats at the Republican National Convention for insufficient invocation of Sept. 11 -– while pursuing policies that leave the country more, not less, vulnerable to follow-on assaults.

Whether through cynicism or self-delusion, the Bush administration used 9/11 to invade a country that had nothing to do with the attacks and neglected the war in the place that did. Like much of the culture, the left is still coming to grips with what’s tonally appropriate now that the era of 9/11-hysteria has passed. Lots of people make consciously inappropriate jokes about 9/11, but most do so surreptitiously. The country is still not ready for 9/11 comedy.

This place is no exception. It’s hard to strike the right tone, even with an open display of solemnity.

Tonight, for example, the military contractor KBR prepared a special 9/11 menu at the dining facility — smoked turkey, baked ham and soft-serve ice cream. What could be more 9/11 than that?

At 6 p.m., there was a base-wide commemoration of the attacks that brought the U.S. into Afghanistan in the first place. Col. John P. Johnson, commander of Task Force Currahee, gave a short but eloquent reflection on the anniversary, pointing to the dozens of soldiers in attendance outside Salerno’s Tactical Operations Center as evidence of the country’s resolve against terrorism.

Some questions still aren’t easily answered, even seven years on. What’s mawkish? What’s commemorative? What’s responsible? What’s respectful? Should there be a ceremony on the anniversary of the attacks each year, or should the attacks fade into the cultural background — like Pearl Harbor, or Antietam, or any number of other atrocities the U.S. has experienced?

Where is the balance between overreaction and neglect?

Forward Operating Base Salerno, Afghanistan (Flickr: nicearmyguy81)

FORWARD OPERATING BASE SALERNO, Afghanistan – Spartan compared to Bagram, Salerno is a large, no-nonsense base about 12 miles from the Pakistan “border” — more on that later — that houses Task Force Curahee.

Curahee is largely comprised of the 4^th Brigade Combat Team of the 101^st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, as well as an aviation battalion, a Polish battle group and a handful of the diplomatic-military-development units known as Provincial Reconstruction Teams.

All told, Curahee has about 5,500 people to control Khost, Paktia, Paktika, Logar, Ghazni and Wardak provinces. This is a battlespace of 25,000 square miles -– about the size of West Virginia –- with a population of maybe four million people. The Afghan National Army isn’t as competent as it needs to be. But it’s regarded as a more reliable partner than the police force. “The whole thing is economy of force,” said Maj. Patrick Seiber, Curahee’s public-affairs chief, summing up the manpower available for the task force’s mission.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

There’s a variety of different responsibilities in an area that has become notably more kinetic — military-speak for “violent” — in recent months, as the Afghanistan war has intensified in general.

Southwest of us, in eastern Paktika, is what Seiber described as “the main area for the border fight.” It’s about 150 miles of straight entranceway into Pakistan — where Taliban, Al Qaeda and affiliated insurgents have free passage into Afghanistan.

The border isn’t actually a border. There are no fences, no walls, no structures dividing one country from another in the part of the world controlled by the Pashtun tribes. The fighters move up from Paktika, attempting to get to Gardez in the north and cut off Khost to the east. Their ultimate destination is Kabul, the capital.

Curahee has only one battalion in eastern Paktika. Seiber noted that, in Iraq, there would be a division devoted to stopping infiltration — the difference between hundreds of soldiers and more than 10,000.

The fight in Khost was quieter in August than it has been recently, something that Seiber attributed to the task force’s success against insurgents and the strength of the provincial governor, Arsula Jamal, who’s a believer in what the major called “conflict resolution.”

But that’s not to say it’s placid here. Three weeks ago, over two days, insurgents attacked Salerno itself, using car bombs and fighters rigged with detonation vests. The casualties were mostly Afghan villagers who work on the base. Seiber and his team remember typing press releases about the attack, only to hear rockets go off in the background, prompting rewrites.

Spencer's route through Afghanistan

The base is a target for rocket attacks from the mountains ringing it — and also from inside Pakistan. Seiber said he couldn’t comment on the rise this year in U.S. attacks across the border into Pakistan, but confirmed, “We can fire in self-defense out across the border.”

But the major effort in Khost is the construction of the Khost-Gardez Road. Unlike much of Afghanistan, Khost is a fertile province — Salerno and its environs are notably greener than Kabul or Bagram — with wheat being a major crop. (We didn’t discuss poppy, Afghanistan’s principal export besides violence.)

There’s no reliable way, however, to bring Khost’s harvest to market. That’s where the 98-kilometer road comes in: the LBG Co. won a $101-million contract in April to build a modern road over 20 months. Jamal says that the road will turn Khost into “another Herat,” referring to the prosperous trading center on the Iranian border, because from Gardez, Khost can be linked to Kabul.

Insurgents, accordingly, have shifted their efforts into attacking road construction. Their objective, Seiber surmised, is “to show people the government is not interested in their well-being.”

Seiber is blunt about the force at Curahee’s disposal. “We can’t just put everybody along the border or everybody along the road,” he said. “We have to figure out: where do we assume risk?”

The task force’s answer, hewing to classic counterinsurgency strategy, is within the population centers. But 5,500 soldiers to protect four million people is a daunting ratio. “We’re spread thin,” Seiber said. “That’s the take-home.”

The potential good news is that the Army brigade recently scheduled to arrive in Afghanistan by January will probably come to Curahee’s neighborhood. Seiber cautiously anticipated that the brigade will operate in the Logar-Wardak area, near the dangerous stretch of highway that connects Kabul to Kandahar.

If it does, that means Curahee will be relieved of about half its battlespace, allowing it to focus on the Paktia, Khost and eastern Paktika hotspots. During this time, however, Curahee will lose its Polish battle-group. The Poles are slated to take control of part of Ghazni around November, so the base will divest itself of about 500 combat troops.

Even if the brigade comes to Curahee’s relief, I asked Seiber, will these roughly 5,000 troops be enough to control insurgent infiltration from Pakistan, guard the road and protect the Afghan population from attacks? His answer: “We’ll see.”

Tomorrow I’m scheduled to visit Gardez, where I should get a better sense of what the so-called “border fight” is like.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this piece contained a number of minor errors.  Maj. Patrick Seiber’s name was written “Sieber,” Arsula Jamal was referred to by the single name “Jamal,” and the Logar-Wardak area was mistakenly called the Logar-Ghazni region.  We regret the errors.

Now I know what he meant.

It takes about an hour and a half to fly southeast on a Chinook helicopter from Bagram to Forward Operating Base Salerno in Khost Province. (I gave up on the prospect of a C-130.) During the flight. you unspool about 5,000 years’ worth of progress on the highlight reel of human civilization. The terrain is an almost endless chain of mountains, with virtually no greenery jutting out from the mountainface — just an ashy, arid, bleached tan color stretching out over the horizon.

Mostly that surface is uninhabited, even in the valleys. The population centers that do exist feature maze-like structures that cut into the hills with frail strips of single-story construction that wind around each other and stop abruptly.

I counted exactly three high-rise buildings in 90 minutes. The first time I saw a building with any color – a sharp blue – it jarred me into noticing how monochromatic the landscape is. That building, it turned out, was attached to a military outpost where we briefly stopped.

A Chinook is loud, tight and uncomfortable. About 25 soldiers, contractors and reporters — along with one stately bomb-sniffing German shepherd — strapped into either side of the helicopter’s belly. Our legs were bent into unnatural positions, thanks to the baggage stacked up in the center of the bird. Two other passengers were seated between me and Sgt. Clark — one of the Chinook’s gunners.

Before we left, I overheard a crew member tell Sgt. Schon, her counterpart on the other side of the helicopter, that there was a rocket-propelled grenade threat on the flight route. I looked at the German shepherd, Cinco, and considered his panting face to be good luck.

About a half-hour into the flight, I craned my neck, stiff as it was from my body armor, to look out the window behind me. I saw a mountain, swept almost entirely by a silky tan sand, its peaks maybe 20 yards away from us. It jutted up and down like a vital sign measured on hospital equipment — no subtle inclines, just sharp heights and severe drops. Yet the mountain looked smooth, as if a footprint was the most absurd thing it could encounter. I thought I was watching a scene that would be unthinkable to witness from the earth’s surface.

That thought evaporated when Clark opened fire. She let out three bursts, the second the shortest: da-rrrrruck-duck-duck-duck-duck; duck-duck; drrrrruck-duck-duck-duck-duck-duck-duck.

I jutted my head around, trying to see who she was firing at from the different available windows, but I couldn’t see anyone. A few seconds later Schon joined in: duck-duck-duck; da-rrrrruck-duck-duck-duck-duck-duck.

Whether the mountain hid our RPG threat I’ll never know.