How to Dismantle an Occupation

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http://world.time.com/2013/03/11/how-to-dismantle-an-occupation-u-s-soldiers-tear-down-afghan-bases-take-home-memories

The journey home begins as the first stabs of sunlight crest the mountains east of Forward Operating Base Altimur, a hunk of land on the slope above a wide desert valley, deep in Logar Province. A sergeant from Bull Battery, one of the 173rd Airborne Brigade’s field artillery units, rouses Afghan drivers from their slumber in the cabs of their flat bed trucks. They park beside the base each night and sleep in the trucks to keep them running. They often fill their radiators with water to keep their engines from freezing.

Throughout the day, the troops and a few civilian contractors load truck after truck with T-Walls–eight-foot tall slabs of thick concrete that surrounded most buildings when the base was full. A driver can fit about four walls on the flat bed of his truck, or two twenty-foot metal containers, or four heaping pallets of ten-foot long lumber. Load by load, the 300-man base grows smaller, and soon it will be about a quarter of its original size. Closing smaller bases is the first step in what the military calls retrograde–the arduous and complex process of bringing home all of the U.S.’s equipment in Afghanistan.

(PHOTOS: America’s Long Withdrawal from Afghanistan: Photographs by Yuri Kozyrev)

The paratroopers from Bull Battery tackle the Altimur base closure with alacrity; they’ve done this mission before, and although this time the task is much larger, it many ways it’s an easier assignment. “Here it’s been unique for us because, to put it simply, we don’t have a lot of people shooting at us,” says Lieut. Colonel Kelly Webster, commander of 4-319 Airborne Field Artillery Battalion, Bull Battery’s parent unit.

In October, Bull Battery’s troops closed Combat Outpost Garda, a smaller, horseshoe-shaped base in a hotly contested area of neighboring Wardak Province. The first step was to determine what to leave to the Afghan tolai (company) who would take over a smaller version of the base. Here, 173rd officers say, they learned lessons from previous base closures, where Americans handed over outposts to the Afghans that were either too big for them to sustain or where the Americans basically bulldozed everything and left. “As we look at retrograde we have to make sure it makes sense,” says Major Adam Lackey, executive officer of the 173rd who oversees much of the brigade’s retrograde process. “We can’t leave a mess here for the Afghans.”