DUST: Bringing the basic training obstacle course inside the wire.

The integration of pedestrian infrastructure into the expeditionary base environment in Afghanistan has proven far less contentious than one might expect. A culture that prioritizes short-term efficiency over long-term functionality (at least partially evidenced by my article on building code violations from nearly a year ago) would seemingly scrutinize exclusively on infrastructure that accommodates gargantuan armored vehicles that need to get around with as few obstructions as possible in order to complete their respective missions. But the fact remains that only a small fraction of the people use MRAPs, Humvees or the all-too-rare tanks to get around. A slightly larger fraction use Toyota trucks, but because most people enter and leave a base through from the air, the number of vehicles on base isn’t nearly great enough to accommodate everyone. Most people get around by foot.

While the infrastructure might not be as conducive to pedestrians or bicyclists as your average neighborhood in Portland, it’s not as bad as many bases on back on American home turf, which are consistently spread out across huge tracts of land, with huge standoff distances between buildings intended as a protective measure in case of a vehicular explosive attack. Afghan bases are typically densely settled, or, at the very least, most planners recognize the efficiency of clustering residential tents and ensconcing them within ample protective barriers. And while grade separated sidewalks are not too common— particularly at the smaller bases that usually have the shortest life span—the regulatory and operational culture recognizes pedestrians. Speed limits for vehicles are incredibly low, often only 20 kph (12 mph), with fines for violators. Many units require their personnel to wear reflector belts at all hours, just to keep them prepared if the sun sets when they are out. (Most bases are fairly dark, and some are completely blacked out for safety, so pedestrian visibility is critical.) American soldiers must wear helmets if they ride bicycles. The larger bases often devote their sprawling outskirts to storage and industry, so they must employ a shuttle system with various mapped stops for ease of getting across those vast distances. And some of the largest bases, such as Bagram Air Field, close off primary arterials at certain early hours in the morning to all vehicles to devote the road for running and PT (physical training). In a multinational base, the American penchant for order and enforcement promotes a higher standard for pedestrian safety for its soldiers than is evidenced by the more relaxed coalition forces of other countries: coalition forces do not live under a mandate for reflector belts, nor does it seem that speed limits apply (at least for the Germans). This dichotomy between US and Europeans proves ironic, since the Germans, Swedes, Croats, and Latvians are more likely to come from a pedestrian friendly, densely populated settlement pattern back home than the Americans, yet the American rules are superior at promoting safety for the numerous troops and civilians depending on boots and bikes.

In contrast with the regulatory environment, the road design in expeditionary bases isn’t always great: sidewalks are inconsistent, rights of way are narrow, turn radii don’t accommodate the really long vehicles, drainage (if it exists at all) usually consists of wide-open ditches along the verge. But pedestrians and vehicles coexist reasonably well, thanks to those vehicular speed restrictions and a culture of awareness among drivers and walkers, particularly visible among the Americans in the multinational-base in which I reside. I have yet to hear of an accident, which is always a good thing, but particularly so on a military base, because a collision between a person and an armored vehicle would almost certainly result in death. However, force protection requirements sometimes trump other safety considerations, so that the design of a compound simply accounts for defensive barriers in the event of an external attack, rather than thinking about pedestrian safety and explosive defenses as a comprehensive protection strategy. As a result, it is not so hard to find situations such as the one below:

The wall on the left consists of what the military simply calls “HESCO”, much to the advantage of the UK-based HESCO Bastion company that manufactures them. HESCO enjoys a virtual monopoly on this distinctive fortification, known generically as a gabion (its brand name is a Concertainer), which essentially consists of tall (approximately 8 feet) durable paper bags enclosed in a thick wire mesh and filled with a combination of soil and a concrete topping, intended to absorb much of the impact of high speed missiles or mortars without eliciting dangerous projectiles if the bags themselves explode. The helices of concertina wire that coil on the top help keep out intruders.

Anyone who has read more than one or two of my blog posts can guess what I’m identifying as the problem in that photo above: there is simply not enough room on the side of the road for people to walk safely. The scaling of the objects does not quite capture the problem, but this footprint in the dirt does a better job of it:

It’s narrow. During the day, this proves a minor annoyance which a person can at least in part avoid by walking on the other side of the street. The real threat is after dark, when neither side of the road is terribly appealing, since the darkness would obscure the obvious tripping hazard found in the open drainage ditch, only a few portions of which are covered and protected.

And the typical base in Afghanistan is shrouded in absolute darkness with few isolated exceptions—a particularly salient problem during the long winter nights. I’ll admit that I tend to sound the warning bell in situations like this far sooner than the average person would. So this design deserves a special mention because multiple colleagues have also pointed out the safety hazard this poses. Why did the original squadron build the HESCO wall so close to the street? No compound is so crowded that the construction team couldn’t afford to shift the barriers at least a few feet inward to make room for walkers, or a drainage ditch for that matter. Turning the corner at the next intersection and pivoting to the left, one can see that on the next perpendicular street, the gabion of HESCOs offer plenty of room for both pedestrians and a drainage ditch.

The photo merely depicts a different wall to the same compound, this time with ample room for drainage and pedestrians. This road segment, far closer to achieving a US model of a Complete Street, also features intermittent wooden bridges across the drainage ditches, prominently visible in the photo above on the opposite side of the street. At night, these bridges feature blinking LEDs that both manifest the bridges to pedestrians as well as identify the edge of the road to passing vehicles, so the drivers avoid hitting and destroying the wooden bridges or slipping into the adjacent drainage ditches.

A bit further down the road, one can witness a rare installation underway: sidewalks.

Until this newly laid segment, sidewalks were unheard of in the American portion of the base. Most of the smaller bases with populations under 10,000 (which is practically all of them) have no sidewalks whatsoever. Sidewalks are intermittent in the German portion of the base, as visible in the photo below:

But they aren’t everywhere in the German portion. About 500 feet down the same road, the configuration of the Relocatable Buildings (RLBs) is identical, but the street lacks sidewalks, bollards, or drainage ditches.

The Germans can be just as cavalier about accommodating pedestrians as the Americans have been. I scrutinized the German street design in greater detail in this earlier blog post).

The contrasting appearance between the various road segments identified in these photographs delineates a dichotomous approach to expeditionary base construction: permanent versus temporary. As the photos above indicate, German billeting is overwhelmingly permanent: the modular buildings sit in lengthy rows of two, unified by a central hallway, like a conventional double-loaded corridor hotel building. Some of the central offices and meeting spaces even use brick and mortar construction. By most regards, these buildings function at a higher standard of quality and durability, predicating upon the assumption that, since the German military purchased the land, it will maintain a presence at this base for the foreseeable future. Hungarians and Croats also appear to prefer the permanence of relocatable buildings. Conversely, at this same base, Americans use tents:

So do the Norwegians.

As do the Swedes, Finns, Latvians, Armenians, and Dutch. While I can’t vouch for the other Coalition Forces, I knew that the American mentality is that everything they construct should be capable of disassembly in 48 hours if necessary, leaving as little of a permanent footprint as possible.

I wouldn’t begin to assert that one approach is better than another—I’m not sufficiently informed on the long-term plans of Germans, Croats, Swedes, or even Americans for that matter. Permanent and temporary construction practices both have their merits. The average German base will, based on its construction materials, transition much more conveniently to eventual use by the Afghan National Army. The American bases won’t transition so easily, but if the priority is to get out and return to the land to the Afghans in a more fallow state, then clearly the non-permanent approach is wiser. My only concern comes in all the impervious surfaces used throughout the base—a topic which effectively concludes this rumination on pedestrian infrastructure.

It seems like a smart decision for the Americans to build a sidewalk along a stretch of road that hosts the American PX (Post Exchange, the closest thing to a big box store), a coffee shop, a Pizza Hut, a future Burger King, and, on the other side of the road, a USO Tent, post office, gym, finance office, chapel, and computer lab. It is undeniably the road segment in the American quarter with the highest amount of pedestrian traffic. But a concrete sidewalk is permanent. So are the drainage culverts, the basketball courts, and the foundations to all those tents. In short, the vertical element is what constitutes “temporary” in American expeditionary base construction: when we leave Afghanistan, it will look empty when standing on the ground staring at the horizon line, but peering downward from a helicopter will reveal a patchwork of pavement. How likely is it that the Americans, Swedes, Norwegians, et cetera will actually remove or destroy all that concrete—or, for that matter, the far vaster ocean of gravel that occupies most other unpaved, habitable portions of the base? Then again, even concrete pads and paved streets can prove a significant investment that would allow Afghans more freedom to build upward from an existing configuration. Concrete pads for temporary FEMA trailers in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina helped pave the way for the possibility of more permanent mobile home parks after the immediate need had subsided. Paved roads, drainage ditches, and sidewalks are amenities that much of Afghanistan does not enjoy, so although paved infrastructure forces future inhabitants into a certain configuration, it does provide provincial governments with infrastructure that they otherwise cannot always afford. A middle-of-the-road approach—combining permanent infrastructure with semi- or non-permanent structures—may prove the wisest compromise. Though I doubt that engineers at my compound will ever correct the mistake of building the HESCO gabion too close to the road and squeezing out the pedestrians, at least the potentiality for a correction remains in ways that wouldn’t if a permanent brick wall ran along the road instead of soil-filled bags. Like all other aspects of expeditionary base living, pedestrianism is malleable—precisely as it should be when tomorrow’s exigencies could require an immediate change in the urban form.

Drive-thru service...to (or at) your door.

One of the most intense work months of my career has just come to an end, and it's been obvious that it has prevented me from devoting as much time and thought to my already meager average of two blog posts a month. And I conclude September with another short(ish) post on an observation I made during a visit to Chicago, just days before I left the country for this job in Afghanistan.

It's inevitable that trendy neighborhoods such as Lakeview, where I took the pictures from this series, will attract restaurants with an understanding of the pulse of urbanity. These shrewd entrepreneurs recognize that busy foot traffic on the sidewalks is not just free publicity but also an opportunity to expand their gross leasable area ever so slightly. For every party seeking a private meal in the restaurant's darkest, most anonymous corner, another will specifically stake out the extroverted front row seats, to increase the likelihood of chance encounters with friends from the neighborhood. It fits with the coveted lifestyle of the young professional as a Lakeview yuppie fits in the seat of a Volkswagen Jetta. And what better way to maximize the chance of lassoing passers-by into the coruscating dinner conversation than by getting them before they even make it into the door of the restaurant? Thus, witness the al fresco dining options.

If the sidewalk were broad and expansive, the owners of each restaurant could probably seek a permit for the city with much more artistic license—something that allowed a greater variety of seating arrangements, some waist-high partitions, maybe some tiki torches or other mood lighting at night, perhaps even a space for a roving musician. Obviously that's not likely to be the case on this street, where an restaurateur instead must take advantage of every square inch that he or she can get during Chicago's inevitably limited al fresco dining season; not much more than one-third of the year is warm enough. The outdoor dining configuration must fall within the allowable parameters set by the city, not to interfere with pedestrian accessibility or general safety.

But, judging from the photo of the streetscape here, the City of Chicago gives quite a bit of leeway for sidewalk amenities. It appears that these improvements, whether they include the setback for al fresco dining, or bike racks, or street trees, or potted plants—all of them can claim more than fifty percent of the width of the sidewalk—the total right of way. Pedestrians can't pass more than two shoulder-to-shoulder. Quite generous for the diners and restaurant owners, and my suspicion is that the city's planners conceived these dimensions with the hopes of further stimulating pedestrian vitality in the area by catering to them so much, then forcing them close together. The fence for the outdoor dining tables may not offer any visual privacy, which isn't a problem, since customers who would choose to eat here would have few qualms about being seen by as many people as possible. However, the fence does clearly demarcate a space which its users can clearly appropriate through the duration of the meal. And it provides an attractive mount for hanging plants and flowers. The restaurant's al fresco probably only caters to two deuces—just four people—but the owners prove that they value those potential customers by the amount they have invested towards gussying it up. The resulting arrangement seems to work for everyone: the business operators get to add a few more seats, the city gets the enhanced sense of pedestrian energy that drives up real estate (and, thus, tax revenue), the restaurant's patrons get all the seating options that they can hope for.

But one party still loses: the motorists.

For all they've been able to stuff onto the sidewalk, the interplay is problematic. The al freso diners could reach out and slap the car while remaining seated at their table. And while the driver may not have a problem with this arrangement, the passenger side sure gets a bum deal.

They're stuck. No real options if you park at this space. In this particular situation, the cars seem to fall last in the pecking order. For the militant urbanist, this isn't a problem, of course: cars are the problem, and we defenders of city living should never try to accommodate them at the expense of a healthy walking environment. After all, it's quite an improvement from the sidewalk fencing in downtown Chicago that I blogged about awhile ago, which clearly did nothing more than impede pedestrians' ability to cross the street on a particular side of the intersection.

But I'm not a militant urbanist, and I can recognize the need for a less lopsided arrangement. These images reveal a real predicament for a driver, and while this might seem like an isolated incident, I'd be be willing to bet the farm (or the entire slow food movement, in this case) that Lincoln Square, Lakeview, Lincoln Park, Roscoe Village, Wrigleyville, etc etc etc have plenty more examples where the the powers that be have rammed the puzzle pieces together. Cars park and the passenger can't get out because of an impediment on the sidewalk. The fact remains that this is on-street parking we're impinging upon here—the most spatially efficient kind, the easiest to integrate to a pedestrian/bicycle heavy environment, and, in many parts of Chicago, the only option on that block. Is it really in the best interest of the city to allow a streetscape improvement that effectively maims the adjacent parking spots? Sure, it won't affect the driver of the car featured in the above photos. But in a dense environment like Chicago, where parking is never that easy, cars are more likely to have a passenger (or two or three) than a typical vehicle seeking a parking space in a huge lot in suburban, car-friendly Schaumburg.

Thus, the conductor of this urban symphony failed to perceive all that forces that make the counterpoint here so delicate. I'm hardly pointing out a crisis here. It may never need intervention through new codes or revisions to the permitting process; let's hope it doesn't. The restaurant owners may soon discover the problem that these fences pose, and they may decide that it's better not to antagonize drivers seeking parking on the street right outside their window. But this arrangement demonstrates that pushing heavily in one ideological direction only results in the other agent responding with a push back, or even an antagonistic tug. Urban environments can be just as hostile to drivers as the suburbs are accused of being toward pedestrians. Streetscape improvements have the opportunity for enhancing value in a huge, largely successful metropolis just as much as they do in a neglected small town, but calibration with the scale, an awareness of the context, and a sensitivity to the consequences are all critical. This observation has about as much complexity as arguing that a dish can be seasoned too heavily, or, by contrast, it might not be seasoned enough—gosh, what an insight. Yet the most obvious juxtapositions often pass us right by, until, lo and behold, a passenger has to climb across the driver's seat to get out of the car. “Take that, Lexus-owning yuppies,” retorts the militant. “Even worse than a Jetta.” May the cooler heads prevail.

DUST: The shoe may fit, but does the foot fit the stair?

In planning, as in any undertaking, when a certain prevailing goal asserts itself as the principal one, other objectives and their respective goals all too frequently become subordinate—such is the nature of prioritization. A no-brainer. In a conflict zone, urgency often triumphs over pragmatism. In Afghanistan, a dozen different units can lay claim to territories within a nascent outpost base, each with widely varying intended uses for the land in order to meet their strategic component of the mission. Someone oversees the process to ensure that units are able to meet their needs without impinging upon the others, or violating the terms of any Land Use Agreements with the host nation’s government. However, all too often the hasty maneuvering elicits in some less than satisfactory configurations, such as a light industrial use occupying the exact center of a fortification, normally reserved for billeting (quartering of troops) and pedestrian-oriented uses. But the industry requires less manpower and a lot more land, so it receives the space early on in the development and subsequent residential quarters have to design around it. It’s like putting a bottling plant where the town square would normally go. In an ideal situation, the center of the base would host the most restrictive residential uses (residential and community support), but it only hurts the overall mission when other units are waiting at the doorstep, ready to install the infrastructure they need.

I can see where seemingly imprudent land use decisions must proceed because they meet ever critical short-term needs, even if they are a long-term disaster. But what about the planning involved in constructing individual buildings within a base?

Most military units and battalions, as they build the requisite structures for the implementation of respective missions, are impelled/compelled to abide by Minimum Military Requirements—a fundamental understanding that few if any new bases are going to be permanent installations, and thus the shelters should leave a minimal footprint and cost as little money as possible. It entails basic responsibility with public dollars. Thus, throughout bases like Camp Marmal, the American quarters typically look more like this:


A combination of Small Shelter Systems (SSSs) by different manufacturers: usually Alaska Structures or CAMMS, sometimes California tents. (The concrete objects to the right in the lower photo are bunkers to protect from rocket or mortar attacks.) Inside each residential tent is a labyrinth of ropes and carpets, strung from the side beams to form makeshift privacy partitions for the eight to sixteen people sleeping there, often in bunks. Compare this with the German quarters on the base:


The magnificent mountain backdrop may continue to distract from the humdrum foreground, but the fundamental point is clear: while nothing fancy, the Germans get modular units strung together along a double-loaded corridor. These narrow structures (sometimes nicknamed “hooches”) usually measure about 8 feet by 20’ and, I believe, hold two troops who share a bunk bed. As the photo indicates, each unit can control its own heating/cooling, and the structures sit on a graded base that is clearly meant to last. The Germans control the land on this base (reputedly purchased), and they can set their own standards, which, due to their long-term presence, ostensibly does not require a maximum threshold for construction sophistication. Thus, their compounds boast a higher number of hardened structures.

But the Americans, with a military presence in Afghanistan ten times the size of the Germans, are operating with different prerogatives. The original photo from this post captures a core concern in the prioritization of expediency over other planning elements. Two-story plywood structures typically host office and administrative functions, and they have been nicknamed SWA-Huts. They are always windowless.
By most measurements, these structures are suitable, perhaps even ideal, for hosting the administrative arms of long-term, non-permanent field operations. They’re quick and cheap to build. They’re easy to secure, and they manage extremes in climates better than tents, protecting the sensitive information and valuable equipment inside. Because the foundations and load-bearing walls can accommodate two stories, they offer the opportunity to consolidate personnel with interrelated tasks into a smaller space than the Alaska tents. And they remain in good shape just long enough for a long-term (5 to 10 year) installation, with little cost to demolish—or even to dismantle—when the work is complete, which is almost always a longer time frame than initially anticipated.

But nestled within these expeditionary structures are some deficiencies that, if built on the home front, would be illegal.

From a distance, these stairs look no different than what one might see leading to an elevated deck in a person’s back yard. A landing bisects the stairwell so that it ascends perpendicularly, creating far less of a protrusion from the building than it would if it lacked this vertex. But the midway resting point almost helps disguise a serious design flaw. Notice the stairs on the lower half, below the landing:

And now observe the stairs above the landing:

It’s difficult for a photograph to capture the distinction (believe it or not, the snow actually helps), but perhaps some other angles will make it clearer. Again, here’s the lower half of the stairwell from the side:

And viewing it looking downward:

And here’s the half from above the landing, from both the side…

And looking downward.

If it still isn’t clear, the treads to the steps are smaller below the landing than they are above. The construction team used two different sized boards, and the upper ones are about an inch wider; with two boards per step, the treads are about two inches wider on the upper portion. While this might not seem like a serious offense, for most people ascending and descending a staircase is a largely unconscious act, primarily because we safely assume that the rhythm our feet travel is going to be uniform. Few people climbing the stairs to this SWA-Hut have managed it without stumbling at least once or twice, and descending is particularly problematic at night, since the building has no exterior lighting. It is only a matter of time before someone is seriously hurt. I still use a flashlight every night after having used this building for over a month; I’ve nearly wiped out a couple of times. Imagine the danger posed if personnel have to evacuate the building in a hurry, which is a legitimate possibility in a war zone.

The outside environment offers another example of a more justifiable but still unfortunate exclusion:

None of these offices have plumbing; everyone has to use port-o-lets. No structure would meet Minimum Military Requirements if indoor plumbing were installed, let alone the fact that it would have to link with a broader network and water/wastewater treatment system. No plumbing means no toilets and no sinks—no sinks means no place to wash hands after using the restroom in this crude, dirty environment. This has been illegal for approximately a century in the US. These green port-o-lets have little dispensers of sanitizer solution, but they are seldom operative, and no public health expert has ever suggested that this fashionable alcohol-glycerin combo should ever take the place of soap and hot water for killing bacteria. The closest latrines with a sink, water, soap, and flush toilets are a five minute walk away. Functionality, safety, and general sanitation take a back seat in the interest of getting the job done quickly and cheaply.

The building reveals other deficiencies on the interior that prevent the population from evacuating safely. Notice the hinges on this door, leading to a second office from the entry room on the second floor of the building.

The door pivots to the interior. This inner room has no other exits. All personnel must leave through the door in the photo above, walking into another room first before exiting. Here are views from inside this interior room:

The 5 to 10 workers using this room at any time will have to pull on the closed door in order to open it, though modern building codes would require the hinges to operate so that the door requires pushing. Having a pull door only creates an impediment in the event of an emergency that requires evacuation. Unfortunately, most of the doors in the building have been installed under these standards.

Elsewhere on the base, code violations are less obvious, but a trained eye can certainly identify them. I don’t have the skill set to spot most problematic circuitry, but many people on staff do.

Seen above is an extensive row of Small Shelter Systems, most likely Alaska tents, viewed from their “back yards”. The large box on the right side of the second photo is a 100-amp breaker. Here it is up close.

And here’s the other side of that 100-amp breaker…
…ports filled with 60-amp cables. This is not as dangerous as it sounds. But it is certainly not up to code. Under normal conditions, 60-amp cables can handle the current generated from a 100-amp breaker. The problem is the combination of excessive current coupled with extreme outdoor air temperatures, which is a legitimate concern in the Afghanistan summers, when temperatures can break 120 degrees and the air conditioners are cranking at full capacity. A 100-amp breaker often will not trip when the current is excessive until it’s too late, and there will be a short on the cable. The most likely outcome is nothing more than a series of ruined cables. In a worse case scenario—if these cords were covered with, for example, blankets or paper bags—the shortage of a cable could induce a fire.

In all likelihood, expediency supersedes optimization of supplies in each of these instances. It was not a deliberate act of carelessness to use two different sizes of boards on the stair treads, or to link cables and a breaker with different current flows. The construction team had to do the best it could in a limited time frame with the materials that the workers received. But cost is undoubtedly also a factor, and the lack of uniformity does seem a bit surprising, considering that most units are contending with budget constraints. Take, for example, the back of these LSS (Latrine Shower Shave) units:

Notice that the middle latrine uses a different piping configuration than the other two. Elsewhere in this row, one can find some really creative pipe networks:

Wouldn’t it have saved money to buy the exact same pipe fittings? After all, most of the latrine units themselves are identical, presumably ordered in bulk. I have no idea what went on in the installation of these facilities, but it would appear that the LSS units and the plumbing came from different sources. Maybe these units weren’t all brand new, and some smaller pieces were lost in transit, resulting in pipe networks that the construction team cobbled together with whatever was available. The latrines may very well all operate with reasonable efficiency—the plumbing configurations are simply different means to the same end—but it would be virtually impossible for them to operate identically, since they use such different infrastructure.

Frugality, expediency, and functionality make uncomfortable bedfellows in facilities planning, particularly in a military setting. It is difficult for any combination of the two to prevail and virtually impossible to achieve all three (the elusive “win-win-win situation”). The disharmony of functionality and frugality is obvious; you get what you pay for. A good example of this is a bulk order of chairs that recently appeared in the American dining facility, a welcome contrast from the uncomfortable, noisy, awkward metal benches.

These chairs are lightweight, padded, and have a moderately ductile backs for reclining. They are also mind-bogglingly junky. The facilities operators introduced them in the handful of days between Christmas and New Year’s Day. At the time that I write, a month has passed, and I would estimate that over 80% of them look like this:

Good luck leaning back in that. The ductile plastic suffered from excess pressure applied to it; it snapped. Now the chair is little better than a stool. By no means is this an indication that the troops and civilians here are rough with the chairs. It doesn’t take engineering knowledge to see that these chairs had a design that encouraged leaning back, but they lacked the structural support to do so. The result was inevitable. And now they have had to order another set of chairs and reintroduce most of those abrasive metal benches. I can only hope that no one was seriously hurt from one these jalopies.

Analogous to this scenario is the one motivating the decision to mix amperage between cables and breakers: no doubt 60-amp cables cost less than 100 amp ones. Obviously the ratio of cables to breakers is high, so the aggregate cost savings for 5000 cables at 60 amps versus 100 amps is probably significantly greater than the savings for 100 breakers at 60 instead of 100 amps. And, as is indicated earlier, skimping out on the cables is not likely to result in catastrophe, which might not necessarily the case if the purchaser had ordered breakers with inadequate amperage and splurged on the cables. Neither one of these situations has caused any bodily harm that I’m aware of, but between functionality and cost, it is clear which variable won.

The glitches around and inside the two-story plywood office indicates the likely victor in a duel between functionality and expediency. It may not have cost any more to build stairs with uniform treads—in fact, it may have cost less—but it could have caused delays if the team had to wait for the appropriate supplies. Most likely the shipment was partially wrong here and the builders had to make do with what they had at their disposal. (One of the neighboring two-story plywood structures seems to have uniform treads.) I’m not sure what motivated the installation of interior doors that swing the wrong way. Maybe it was a supply issue again, and they just didn’t receive the right hinges but had to build promptly. To me, the repeated occurrence of such an easily avoidable flaw is redolent of a hastily conceived design not fully vetted by architects or engineers.

The issue of quality control helps tie the last problematic pairing of our three variables: expediency and cost. Building a structure quickly with little thought to the design will inevitably result in a product that functions more poorly than it otherwise would. But building quickly is frequently also antithetical to building cheaply. A rush job often costs more, just as it costs to deliver mail express rather than standard. The situation at hand in a conflict zone changes routinely and demands immediate reaction, sometimes lacking the forethought it needs and frequently resulting in escalated costs in order to get the job done quickly. Foregoing the standards set that US building codes set decades ago clearly speeds the process. Regulations and standards routinely intend to improve functionality but rarely help cost or speed/efficiency. Thus, we witness an abundance of poorly built structures that still cost significantly more than the sum of the individual parts would suggest, chiefly because time was of the essence.

Of the three variables—speed, price, quality—I would never assert that one always comes out the loser. All three rise or sink in importance in various situations; this is hardly profound. The unfortunate reality is that rarely do two of the three ever share top billing. The builders on a construction site are seldom culpable; they simply implement what they are told to do with the supplies given. Clearly the suppliers and implementers do not always communicate through the construction manager as well as they should, but to pin the blame on any of these entities fails to account for the logistical challenge of getting these supplies into a war zone. The people in charge of the purse strings are hardly steering the ship either; budgets shrink and grow from a variety of forces, the political one proving a formidable wild card. And any budget, no matter how well planned, will wilt under radically fluctuating costs.

In identifying all the safety compromises in the built environment of a military base in wartime, I identify a problem without a clear origin. These sort of problems are the wickedest of them all. No one would argue that the powers that be have anything to gain by turning a blind eye on US building codes and construction standards, but they very well lose out in other critical aspects of the mission if they always stop to mind the Ps and Qs. It fosters a climate of individual solicitousness, to identify these almost unavoidable weaknesses beforehand in order to prepare for them, because they’re not going to change. We residents of a base just have to remain vigilant and be sensible when encountering a potentially risky situation. I offer a final example of the best and worst with which the military must contend. Much of the construction work is required by national and international law to engage in the services of LNs, or Local Nationals: in this case, Afghan companies that have responded to RFPs. It does not take long from observing these generally industrious men to realize that Afghanistan has nothing resembling an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

DUST: What does the flag capture?

My suspicion is that I have less to say on this subject than I’d like to think, but I’m still feeling my way around in terms of the appropriateness of featuring certain material on this blog, so in the meantime it is best that I linger on the fluffier subjects. And I can’t help but indulge in my love of flags and all their expressive content while I live on a multinational military base. As my previous Afghanistan post indicated, they’re everywhere. They are less prevalent in their original, fluttering cloth form on an American base like Bagram Air Field. But the other two bases in which I have lived, Kandahar and now Camp Marmal, lack a single nation’s dominant military presence, and flag poles stand sentinel at various points across both bases.

The above photos, both taken at Kandahar, are hardly the greatest at capturing the semantic properties of flags. In the first photo, the flag—possibly German—projects just to the right of the street sign with “Illinois” misspelled, and in the second photo, a Danish flag (if I recall correctly) spears the sky in the distance on the left, slightly higher than the power lines. I never intended the flag to be a focal point in these photos. But they do at least suggest the flags’ power to serve as monuments in a base setting, primarily through two different expressive tools. When propelled on poles or stanchions, they punctuate the landscape by simply being taller than most structures amidst a flat, treeless terrain. And the banners themselves achieve prominence through their hues: bold colors contrast to the sepia tones of dust and particulate matter that veils the horizon, even when low wind levels keep the flag furled. The example below in Camp Marmal with a Norwegian flag gets the point across somewhat better, thanks to cleaner air and the relative absence of power lines.

These contrasts help to explain how flags engage with their surroundings at the sensory level, but the question remains how they operate spatially. In short, how do they govern the area around them, if they have any control at all? Obviously the devices used in display of the flag matter critically here. Within the context of a coalition base made up of multiple national armies such as this, the flag most clearly connotes two seemingly paradoxical territorial ideas: 1) that the area below the flag is part of that nation’s compound and “belongs” to it, so that the flag presides over that portion of the base; and 2) that the particular nation has a presence on this base and is a “team player” in the Afghanistan conflict as a whole. It’s quite simple. It operates much the same way when flags project from a particular movable object, such as the Croatian flags on the MRAPs below:

The red white and blue (also an adhesive on the side of the vehicle) is the national flag; the other one pertains to a particular mission. Obviously these vehicular flags serve primarily to identify the nationality owning that vehicle, which means they do not appropriate the same amount of space as the ones tethered to poles planted in the ground. But these flags can venture outside the wire and still effectively indicate Croatia’s participation in combat.

The use of words “govern”, “preside”, and “appropriate” only effectively applies, though, to flags in isolation. Throughout many of these coalition bases, flags are grouped in a formation of multiple poles, like the one below in Camp Nidaros, a Norwegian compound nestled within Camp Marmal:

Despite the fact that Marmal is a German-owned base and is the headquarters for Northern Regional Command (led by a German General), these flag formations tend to be as egalitarian as possible, most likely in an effort to demonstrate that no one country’s forces are hierarchically superior to another. The formation in the above photo seems particularly self-abnegating, because the banners attached to the poles are not even national flags: they are narrow streamers with a different configuration of each country’s respective national colors. They diffidently reference the country without proclaiming it. If I can interpret them correctly, this display shows, from left to right, the colors of Norway, Finland, Latvia, Sweden, and Germany. All of those nationalities with the exception of Germany have troops stationed in this particular compound Camp Nidaros; billeting for Germany is scattered elsewhere across the base. One would think that either the compound’s commander (Norway) or the base commander (Germany) would occupy the central flag pole to show ownership. Instead, that pole belongs to Latvia, while Norway and Germany occupy the peripheries. I have no doubt that this configuration was conscious. Place a flag in the company of others and the aforementioned territorial paradox—that of simultaneous individual ownership and operating as a team—immediately collapses, because the ability to denote “owning” a portion of the base evaporates. Here’s another formation at Camp Marmal that coyly dissolves hierarchy:

The flags of the United States, Germany, Afghanistan, and the U.S. Navy all hang at half-mast. The deployment of an even number of flags clearly avoids placing any one flag at the center, and in this case, the host nation, Afghanistan, gets equal representation with two countries and one branch of the military of that same country. The building to the left houses exclusively US forces, predominantly associated with the Navy, yet two other nations’ flags wave out front.

The half-mast configuration, nearly always intended to show mournful deference for the recently deceased, assumes a new poignancy with the next photo, taken just minutes after the previous, as dusk had set in:

This event comprises an unannounced visit by German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the evening of December 18, 2010, speaking at the memorial of a German soldier who had died in an accident the preceding day . Notice that in the first of those two photos, the German flag is half-mast. But here as elsewhere, the presentation soon diverted to the shared responsibility, as Merkel continued her brief speech about Germany’s involvement in Afghanistan. By the conclusion, the flag was full-mast along with the others.

Again, the flag formation avoids placing any nation in a position of primacy. Germany, the owner of the base, stands at an unremarkable position of third from the left. The United States, the second largest presence, sits on the far right. And while there are an odd number of poles (21), allowing the potential for one pole to take center place, the framing of the poles around a central memorial places eleven on the left and ten on the right; no nation takes the center stage. Here are some close-ups of the memorial in daylight without the crowd:

Protocol for the display of the US flag requires that it observe international standards when juxtaposed with other nations, and none should rest above another at a time of peace. Obviously the existence of Camp Marmal is predicated on this precisely not being a time of peace, and yet the coalition nations (including the euphemistic “host nation” Afghanistan) still observe the peaceful display here as in every other location where more than one national flag presides over the space. Yet every time the flag waves in isolation, it proclaims its territory. The difference, it seems, is the level of conscious thought invested in the display: asserting national presence and ownership requires demands very little additional scrutiny, and, cheaply fluttering from the back of a Hummer, almost seems like an afterthought. Conversely, the assembly of a group of national flags in mutual respect requires serious deliberation.

The semiotics that underpins any display of multiple flags operate differently when the display takes place indoors. The pictures below take place in a DFAC (Dining Facility) at Kandahar Air Field:

It seems to be common practice to decorate the dining halls in the larger bases with national flags. But the flags preside over clearly bounded space here; any assertion of territoriality simply adds a dimension to the message already communicated by four walls. The display of flags indoors does not convey the potentially contentious air of imperial entitlement that it has the potential to suggest when outdoors; the flags address an enclosed space and not the open air, or the land itself. Perhaps it’s just me, but flags also lose expressive impact when they are limp and static; the fluttering of a flag from wind, however mild that wind may be, projects authority that it is hard for a motionless flag to muster. So while the exterior display of flags seems particularly sensitive to the fact that these nations collectively occupy a land with which they are waging war against a certain faction, all the rules fall by the wayside when flags hang indoors. No one seems particularly sensitive of who owns what. The PAX terminal at Camp Marmal is an excellent example:

Near the back of the building on the right is a colossal German flag—the country that owns the base. The other flags in the photo represent the three nationalities with the next largest presence on the base: in the far distance (with the checkered shield) is Croatia; to the right of the German flag is the American flag; to its right (partly cut off by the picture’s edge) is the Norwegian flag. All of these flags occupy a noticeable second tier to Germany. Pan to the right, however, and the message becomes a bit more muddled.

From left to right, the picture shows Norway again (same flag as the previous photo), Sweden, Finland, Belgium, Montenegro, Slovakia, Latvia, and part of Turkey. The positioning, size, and even the choice of nationalities here seem to be based more on expediency than any sort of conceived arrangement. The spacing between them seems inconsistent, the size does not fit with either a hierarchy or an egalitarian coalition, and while Turkey and Slovakia may be part of the coalition, they have yet to show any presence at Camp Marmal, while other nations clearly berthed here have had their flags omitted. Anyone plunked into this facility while blindfolded would draw the conclusion, upon removing the blindfold, that it is a German-run building. Provided that he or she knows the German flag, the enormous mural makes it obvious. But the participation of these other nations and how they fit into the system on this base is completely undefined. The flags help add color to an otherwise sparse terminal; otherwise they might as well be garland.

The DFAC at Camp Marmal has a similar configuration on one of its walls, with even more diluted semantic results:

Again, we see a row of thumbtacked flags used as decoration, with little regard for placement. Is this display trying to show a hierarchy, with the NATO flag (the white compass on a blue field) taking precedence in the middle of all the participating partners? That doesn’t work, because the NATO flag is not in the middle; there cannot be a middle position with twelve flags. Are the participants all on equal footing? Perhaps they are, but the disparity in size of the flags would not suggest it:

Montenegro and Latvia are huge compared to Bosnia and Herzegovina, the United States, and NATO. Again, it seems the decorators bought whatever size flag was available (and whatever relevant nationality they could find) in order simply to decorate, without intending any other message. Compare this to the precision and thought that they applied to the adornment of another wall, with photos of the Afghan countryside:

It’s much easier to get away with a sloppy flag display in an indoor setting, where there is less at stake.

No doubt this analysis may come across as one of my much-ado-about-nothing posts. After all, they’re just flags, and it is possible that I’m projecting my own fascination with the topic by inferring more out of it than anyone ever intended. But flags are also a powerful diplomatic tool, and they may be the most widely available, transportable material to clearly convey both a nation-state’s government and often the very essence of the land. Witness the recent global coverage of burnings of the American, Danish, or Israeli flag and it would be hard to shrug aside its potency within a broader understanding of semiotics. In a multinational setting rife with the potential for a serious imbroglio, a blasé display of a nation’s flag could set tempers flaring.

The use of flags on these bases suggests that the outdoor display has significant political ramifications, but indoor displays do not matter so much. Maybe it’s true that an indoor display will never carry the same territorial weight, but it can still result in a transnational contretemps. A recent meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, hosted by President Obama in New York City, aroused some ire and international press when the Philippine flag was accidentally displayed upside-down, indicating the nation to be in a state of war. The problem with the indoor settings at the PAX and DFAC in Camp Marmal isn’t that they’re purely hierarchical or egalitarian; it’s that they’re neither, or a little of both. National flags might be beautiful to some, but they are too semantically rich to serve a purely aesthetic purpose.

I conclude with one particularly interesting flag that can serve on its own as a microcosm for what a carless flag display loses semantically. The national flag of Croatia has already graced this blog post a couple of times; they constitute one of the largest forces at Camp Marmal.

This brief analysis constitutes a bit more of what I know about vexillology, the study of flags as semiotics, which I covered at much greater length in a blog post on the Maryland flag many moons ago. The Croatian flag is by no means a particularly bad flag; it certainly looks far more elegant than the contrived, deer-on-hind-legs antiques that constitute many of the US state flags. But the real core of the flag is the checkered shield, serving as the flag's central charge; this escutcheon pattern predominates on a lot of the exercise gear that the Croats wear around the base in their down time. I particularly like the way the checkers align with the bottom blue fess (stripe). The decorative "flair" sitting in the place of a coronet above the checkers might help to embellish the shield, but they erode the symmetry, suggest hierarchy (some emblems might be more important than others), and they complicate the entire presentation, thereby diluting the message and the overall readability of the flag. The North American Vexillological Association asserts that the key indicator of an effective flag is that a child should be able to draw it from memory. Its impact should be immediate and unforced. By no means is the code of the NAVA the Gospel on flags, but I cannot imagine most six-year olds reproducing the Croatian flag after just a few minutes. Most 40-year-olds wouldn’t do a great job either.

The weaknesses in the Croatian flag echo the problems with the display of national flags in the interior public spaces of Camp Marmal, or many other situations where they serve an ornamental purpose. The display of flags to convey either hierarchy or egalitarianism is fine; there are no inherent faults in either of these organizing principles. The deficiency lies in when the display blurs the line between the two—when it is ambiguous as to which entity, if any, should stand out—which is precisely the problem with the array of symbols in the Croatian flag and the panoply in the DFAC. Ambiguity serves a distinct aesthetic purpose, but a flag’s communicative intent should always be clear. We don’t make light of the most prominent proxy for nationhood, whether in an Olympic natatorium or in a war zone.