Tales of Training Afghan SMW Pilots

PC-12 Knight Ryder over the Mountains of Afghanistan.

We have wasted the precious lives and limbs of our own sons and daughters the last 20 years in Afghanistan, and now we waste the lives and limbs of the sons and daughters of those who we swore to stand by.

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From August 2013 to August 2015, I was one of the principals on a USAF contract to train Afghan Air Force pilots, attached to the Ministry of Interior’s (MoI) Special Mission Wing (SMW) in Kabul. It was one of the best flying jobs I’ve ever had. The MoI was getting 18 brand new Pilatus PC-12/47E Knight Ryder aircraft, PC-12s that had been converted to a multi-mission military platform for ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance), light logistics, MEDEVAC, and supply air-drop. The aircraft had less than 40 hours on the Hobbs meter when they showed up in Kabul, and still had that new airplane smell to them. Our job was to train the pilots, who had completed two years of English training, and another 18 months or so of Undergraduate Pilot Training (UPT) in how to fly the PC-12 and the basics of employing it in the various mission roles.

The students were all extremely polite, calling the instructors either “Teacher” or “Captain.” Most spoke English very well, and we found there was a direct correlation in their fluency and success in the program, as all the aircraft manuals were in English. They studied hard, but all needed considerable work on basic instrument skills, something that became apparent very soon into the project, which prompted the US Air Force to lengthen their syllabus. All made it through, although there was one, maybe two, who needed to repeat the entire program. Most were senior 1st lieutenants, a few were captains, and one was a major, who was my first student. Nearly all were married, some with young children at home.

There were amusing incidents. For example, one of our instructors, callsign Scooter, looked suspiciously like Santa Claus. One morning, I was trying to explain to two students why the flight computer would lose track over the poles. While I’m perfectly aware that Muslims do not celebrate Christmas, I naively presumed that my students might have at least heard stories about Santa, and somehow, I managed to work a reference to St. Nick into my explanation. With quizzical looks upon their faces, and my explanation falling flat on its face, I let the technical details alone for another day. Instead, we finished our brief for the flight and before we walked to the aircraft, I printed a picture of a Norman Rockwell rendering of the jolly old elf, which I handed to my young charges. They looked at it, and almost in unison piped up, “Teacher, this is Captain Scoot!” I laughed hard, and said, “You're right! You’ll have to show him later!” One folded the picture, stuck it in his flight suit, and we headed out to the aircraft. We got back from the flight, I urged my studs to show Scooter the photo. They needed just a bit of extra coaxing, but finally found Scooter on the outside steps to our office. Finally catching a glimpse of humor, they followed him up the stairs and into the office, myself in trail. Sheepishly, but with a mischievous twinkle in their eyes, they approached Scooter. Gingerly unfolding the printout and showing it to him, the senior student said, “Teacher, Captain Mark said we should show you this picture of you he found on the internet.” Scooter busted out in a great belly laugh, and said, “Yep, that sure looks like me!!”

Santa Claus, er rather Scooter, at the controls.

I remember the pride on the faces of our students, and the locals who worked in the laundry and various shops on base, who voted in the second-round run-off of the presidential election on June 14, 2014. All voters received an indelible ink spot on their index finger indicating that they had voted; an attempt to prevent fraud.

One day in the summer of 2014, I walked into the brief space to find my student, Vafi, looking at Facebook. He asked if I was on FB. At the time I had nothing on my profile, using the account only to stay up on family postings. My sister, however, had a small newspaper that focused on day trips about the Virginias, so I told him about her FB page. He was enthralled by the photos of lush, vibrant autumn colored forests, waterfalls, vistas of gently rolling mountains, and other scenic delights of Appalachia. Before I could say anything, he sent my sister a friend request. I called her later in the day to give her a heads up. She accepted the friend request from Vafi, later sending him school supplies for his young nieces and nephews, and continues to correspond with him to this day.

On June 3, 2014, Vafi and I were sitting at the hold short at FOB Shank waiting to takeoff and return to Kabul. The crew of a Beech 1900 on a transport run from Bagram relayed to tower that they had spotted an emergency orange blanket in the mountains to the north; because of their schedule and fuel state they were unable to investigate. I called the crew on tower frequency and asked if they had a location. We switched to different frequency, they passed me the latitude and longitude, which I plugged into the flight computer, and then called tower back for takeoff clearance. The spot the 1900 crew had passed was over rugged mountainous terrain, with many valleys and jagged peaks. Nonetheless, if some allied forces were stranded without radio, Vafi and I had enough gas, and time, to get a closer look, and better location, and we could pass that info to the appropriate units when we got back home to Kabul. I took the controls from the right seat and we descended into the valleys. Sure enough, we both got a “tally”,” a visual acquiring, of something that was emergency orange. I started a left hand turn so that Vafi could be the principal lookout. As we got lower, it finally became apparent that there was a single orange blanket among several tents. It dawned on both of us at about the same instant that this was a Bedouin camp. “Captain, these are not good people,” was all Vafi needed to say as I added max power and began a max performance climb out of the hills!

Selfie of your humble author at the controls.

But there were serious times as well. I can’t recall how many times I walked out to the aircraft with a student to see a blast go off in the embassy district, just to the south of the base, which is located on the north side of the international airport. We always just shrugged it off and went on with our preflight.

In the last week of January 2015, a VBID, (Vehicle Borne Incendiary Device) blew up the gas station outside the north gate to the base. The gas station was only about half a mile away from the converted CONEX trailer that served as our showers, which I was in when the incident occurred. Not only did I hear the blast, but I felt the showers rock from the shock wave. Shops on the NATO side of the base had windows blown out and the ceiling tiles in our hangar offices on the Afghan side had compression damage.

Four days later, after we had all finished flying and gone back to our “hooches” on the more secure NATO side of the base, a sleeper Taliban agent, who had infiltrated as a junior enlisted Afghan soldier assigned to flight line security started firing on the US contract security personnel assigned to our hangar and aircraft. He killed three of the contractors. A fourth, who managed to kill the Taliban agent, was critically wounded. One of the aircraft was severely damaged as well. The next day we were in formation with the active duty military personnel as our three dead colleagues were loaded onto a C-130 Hercules for the flight back to Dover and then home. Flight ops were suspended for a week as the US and Afghan military worked together to rout out nearly a dozen other Taliban infiltrators.

To an individual, all of our students’ families had had direct experience, in a very negative way, with the Taliban. Family members had been threatened, maimed, or in some cases, brutally killed by the Taliban. One of our students, Kassif, had ended up in an orphanage as a young teen. How he managed to pull himself up, obtain a technical education, and earn a commission is a story that escapes my recollection. I recall on one flight where I was the off-duty instructor in the back of the airplane with him. He was looking at the Stars and Stripes newspaper that the other instructor had left in back. I generally tried to stay out of political discussions with our students, however, over the mountains of central Afghanistan, on a cross country flight to Shindand, we wandered into those topics. “Knowledge is the key to all things,” was the salient comment I always recall him making.

I have said many times that Islam is a political ideology with “religious decorations.” It shares common traits with other corrosive ideologies such as Communism, Socialism, Marxism, and Nazism. The principle connecting thread between them is an overwhelming use of coercion and intimidation. I had deployed to Bahrain numerous times in the Navy and just spent the last four years flying contracted ISR out of Kandahar. I’ve read fairly extensively on the subject and its history, so my statement is not made flagrantly. When I volunteered for the instructing job in Kabul, it was principally to have a chance to do flight instruction again, in a cool, new aircraft; but I also had in the back of my head that maybe, by example, I could plant some seeds in our prospective students’ minds. Seeds that might foster an inquisitive, critically thinking perspective about how corrosive Islam really is.

What I realized from that discussion with Kassif, and comments from nearly all of the other students, was that those seeds had already been planted as a result of their first-hand experiences with the Taliban. My perception was that all our students had begun to seriously question and examine the culture, religion, and ideology that they found themselves surrounded by purely as a happenstance of birth. They all wanted to rid the country of the Taliban, rise above the continual fighting and destruction, raise their families in peace and prosperity, and just live. And we were there to help them achieve that, or so I thought…

Another shot of a lone PC-12 Knight Ryder over the Mountains of Afghanistan.

Last Friday morning, I received a text from my sister asking if it was OK for her to pass my email address to Vafi. He was wanting apply for an expedited visa to the US as the situation was becoming dire with the accelerated drawdown. I had written a recommendation for another of our prior students in December of 2015, and would gladly do so for Vafi. I told my sister to pass my email address to him, and received a note from him a short while later. I replied briefly, telling him that I would have it to him by the end of the week. Yesterday, as Kabul was falling to the Taliban, I finally found Vafi’s grade sheets, and compiled from my logbook our flights together, which totaled eleven, and generated a recommendation letter for him. I emailed him the letter late in the afternoon, but had not heard back. More than concerned, I texted my sister wondering if she had heard from him thru FB Messenger. To my relief, she had, and he is safe as of late last night here on the east coast of North America. However, the situation is beyond dire, and he is trying to get his family to safety. That’s all we know at this time.

In my reply to Vafi yesterday I stated,

My brother is sending news links of the situation in Kabul and Afghanistan. I am embarrassed and ashamed at the way the political "leadership" has abandoned allies in your country after all these years. I pray for your safety and that of your family.

One can argue whether we should have gone into Vietnam, where my father served, or Afghanistan, or any number of other situations the US has been entangled in over the years. But when we work so very hard to win over folks on the ground to become allies, never muster the political will to win and set the situation straight, and then just outright abandon them, we fail to live up to any reasonable standard as an example of a nation.

The measure of a life is a measure of love and respect

So hard to earn, so easily burned [1]

We have wasted the precious lives and limbs of our own sons and daughters the last 20 years in Afghanistan, and now we waste the lives and limbs of the sons and daughters of those who we swore to stand by.

Who can give them back their lives

And all those wasted years?

All those precious wasted years —

Who will pay? [2]

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We really need to do better…

Namaste and thanks for reading folks.

😔🙏

Mark

August 15, 2021

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Endnote

For security concerns, I have changed the names of the students and not shown any photos of them; also, tail numbers of the aircraft have been obscured.

Santa’s mug shot used with permission.

Footnotes

[1] Lyrics by Neil Peart of Rush, from The Garden on the Clockwork Angels LP

[2] Lyrics by Neil Peart of Rush, from Heresy on the Roll the Bones LP

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Postscript August 18, 2021

The last few days I've felt disheartened, angered, and and betrayed. As Kabul continued to fall to the Taliban on Monday, I received a call from the cousin, who lives in Sacramento, of one of the students, wondering if I had heard from his kin. After making some calls, I found out that one of the schedulers who used to work with me was stuck in the military terminal at Kabul; he finally made it safely to the UK. I have word that six of the 18 PC-12s, along with some of the Mi-17s, were evacuated to Uzbekistan. My friend watched them take off under cover of the night. I have word that the Kassif made it safely there. I don't know about Vafi. The gent who was our senior student, part of our first class, and my first Afghan student is on the run in Kabul. The numeric designation for the SMW unit was 777.

Say prayers for our students. They are not the enemy.

Namaste,

Mark

August 18, 2021