terms

Etymological Weaponry

Two rep­re­sen­ta­tive sym­bols of Afghanistan, grenades and pome­gran­ates, come from the same ety­mo­log­i­cal root. We dis­cov­ered yes­ter­day that the word “grenade” is tak­en from the French “pome-grenate.” French sol­diers gave the hand­held explo­sives their name because they looked like the seed­ed fruits, both in their round shape topped with a crown, and in their inner work­ings con­sist­ing of lots of small seeds, prepped for activation.  We keep a stock of both at the Taj. Mean­while, “RPG” is usu­al­ly miss-tran­s­lat­ed as “rock­et pro­pelled grenade.” Its a mem­o­rable term…

So like no shit, there we were…

Today we went on the PRT (provin­cial recon­struc­tion team) base in Jalal­abad. Lou had arranged the meet­ing. A New York­er was run­ning it. He spoke fast (refresh­ing­ly so, as one’s mind atro­phies from a pre­dom­i­nance of inter­ac­tion with non-native speak­ers.) He was excit­ed about a par­tic­u­lar new fund­ing stream from USAID that was meant for off­beat projects that are not being addressed by oth­er large funds. Lou had con­nect­ed a few dots and sug­gest­ed crick­et fields and now the ball…

Coming to Terms

And there’s more where these came from… FOB — for­ward oper­at­ing base, as in FOB Fen­ti, a US Army base at Jalal­abad Air­field (JAF) FOB — free open bar, as in FOB TAJ 😉 COMMS — com­mu­ni­ca­tions, cell phone con­nec­tion, inter­net, radio.  Got­ta keep it run­ning. Prime — Main per­son on task, who has to keep COMMS flow­ing. “You’re prime, I need you to have COMMS.  None of that cell­phone stolen in the mar­ket busi­ness.” COP — com­bat out­post, COPs are sup­port­ed by FOBs.…

Glossary

Terms picked up along the way: ISAF — Inter­na­tion­al Secu­ri­ty Assis­tance Force is what the US-led NATO coali­tion forces are called in Afghanistan. Com­mVoid — of as in, “Sor­ry, I did­n’t hang up, we got Com­mVoid!”  Because many IEDs are trig­gered by cell­phone, ISAF and UN con­voys fre­quent­ly trav­el with cell­phone jam­mers cre­at­ing a communi­ca­tion void in their vicin­i­ty.  As I have been informed by peo­ple who have expe­ri­ence with such things, the most dan­ger­ous place to dri­ve is at the…