From the beginning of August 2018, I was in Afghanistan/Kabul for a year for the German Police Project Team (GPPT) and am now back safe and sound.
It took almost two years from my first request, the subsequent selection process and preparation in Germany to my departure, partly due to an injury on my part.
After only hearing about attacks in Kabul in the news, I landed at Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA) in Kabul early in the morning on 08.08.18, fifteen hours after leaving home. There I was picked up directly at the baggage carousel by my colleagues and taken to my accommodation in the Green Village (GV).
The GV is a specially secured international camp, with residents including international security companies, the World Food Program (WFP), UN advisors and, from Germany, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and the GPPT.
The GPPT consists of German colleagues from federal and state police forces from a wide variety of departments. Over the years of the mission in Afghanistan, the GPPT has developed from a training mission at the beginning to a purely advisory mission today.
I was deployed there as an advisor for the Afghan Border Police (ABP). We advised the general responsible for the whole of Afghanistan and the HKIA general.
A typical appointment looked like this: we made arrangements with our Local Advisor (LA, formerly known as the interpreter), he confirmed the appointment and we then set off about an hour beforehand. Every movement outside the GV was always armed with a G36 and P99 and protected by plate carriers and an armored jeep.
After the introductory words and the obligatory tea, the focus was mostly on the ABP's problems with equipment and training. In order to support the Afghan police, we carried out projects that were structured according to the scheme: advice, equipment and training.
For example, together with the Afghan major responsible for the border police dog system, I set up a dog breeding program for explosives and drug detection dogs. The need for service dogs there is enormous, the 120 dogs provided for in the establishment plan are nowhere near enough and there are currently only 35 of them left. With advice from the only police service dog kennel in Germany in Schloss Holte-Stukenbrock, the existing kennel was slightly rebuilt and two female dogs were purchased. After I left the country, the first 8 puppies were born.
They are now being raised and trained by the Afghans with German support to make the airports and border crossings safer. Even the other side has recognized the value of the dogs: two dogs were kidnapped when a checkpoint was overrun and a ransom of USD 10,000 was demanded for each of them. One of the dogs was freed by the Afghan secret service and is back in service.
This is just a small story of what I experienced that year in Afghanistan, the time in Kabul passed really quickly. And despite the constant danger on the ground there, I would go again. Looking back, the year in Kabul made me more relaxed about the "small" problems here in Germany.
When asked by family and colleagues about my safety, I always replied that I was well equipped there and that every movement outside the camp was well planned and prepared. Whereas here on duty, when we go somewhere after an emergency call, nobody knows exactly what to expect. And even though I'm safer up here at the control center now, the motto from abroad "Stay safe" applies all the more to all of us here too.
