George,

Greetings from Kabul. I am still here and still healthy, somehow having avoided so far the various food-borne and respiratory illnesses that have befallen many of my election comrades. May this stay the same for the next week. While I thought I would spend out my remaining days here in Kabul, I just now got word that I may be going to Kunduz province in the far north for a couple days to look at some highly questionable ballot boxes. They make really great rugs there, but they’ve also been making some really great explosives there recently, so I have mixed emotions about this news.

Speaking of explosives, this place is heaven on earth for those semi-balanced souls who thrive on the language of – and tools of – war and insurgency, and I’m not talking about the Taliban. The Blackwaters are still here, but so are a whole host of other “security” outfits, made up mostly of young and youngish Brits, Americans, South Africans, Australians and others who weren’t finding enough excitement or money in their own armies and police forces. The amount of cash we spend on these guys, their toys, and their intelligence-gathering is off the charts. (Note to any of my own Guard-a-World security guys who may come upon this letter: I love you dearly and keep doing what you’re doing.) It didn’t used to be this way, but times have changed.

It’s a real treat in language immersion to try to decipher the memos these folks send us on the current security situation here and in other parts of the country. Here’s a small sample of a recent report from that province I am supposedly heading for (hope you like acronyms):

Complex Attack: 23AUG09, CHAHAR DARA District, KUNDUZ PROVINCE.

AGE attacked an ANSF checkpoint with SAF and RPGs. There were no casualties suffered in the attack, which ANSF repelled with assistance from local ANSF artillery positions.

And now for translation:

AGE = Anti-Government Elements

ANSF = Afghan National Security Forces

SAF = Small Arms Fire

RPG = Rocket-Propelled Grenade

Others that didn’t make it in the above report:

ACG = Armed Criminal Gang

AOG = Armed Opposition Group

And my favorite: SVBIED = “Suicide Vehicular Borne Improvised Explosive Device” That’s a car bomb. SVBIED is six syllables. “Car bomb” is two. Go figure.

Election day was relatively quiet here. I did have to don my flak jacket once – apparently police were firing on each other outside a polling place I was observing. But voters seemed to be in a pretty good mood here, and I didn’t witness any overt fraud. The ink was bad again; people could stick their finger in bleach and it would come off. We had ink problems here five years ago, and it’s getting tiresome.

After election day, the work got heavy as the complaints from out around the country came pouring in. I am part of team of Afghans and internationals who are reviewing all of these to decide which are really serious, which are serious but won’t affect the outcome of the election, and which are frivolous or simply not investigable (if that’s a word). We’ve looked at 2,000 now and are not quite done. Some are funny – one presidential candidate is complaining that his vote totals aren’t being read over the TV (he’s only got 795 votes out of the one million so far reported). Some are weird – “I was the only observer in the polling place, and they beat me up and threw me out, and then they stuffed the ballot box with 450 votes for Karzai” (how did he know this when he was beaten up and outside the polling place?). Many are disturbing.

When this part of the process is finished, we start investigating the really serious ones – at least 400 at last count, and – where appropriate – we will throw out the results from dicey polling places or maybe even entire areas. Sadly or happily – I’m not sure which – I will not be around when most of these decisions are made.

But hopefully, I WILL be around to be on the plane home next Saturday and to arrive safe and sound in C’ville on Sunday. I look forward to seeing you all then,

Jim Heilman (Electronic mail, August 29, 2009)