Green trucks with guys in the back manning PKM machine guns wearing baclavas raced into the parking lot of the Herat airport.

That is never a good sign. 

They were special officers of the Directorate of National Security.  Something was up.

Dr. Christine Fair   and I were on our way out of Herat taking the evening Pamir Airways flight.  Dr. Fair and I are working with the same client organization and it made more logistical and security sense to have us as passengers on the same flight out of Herat.

Of course like many things in Afghanistan, it was not immediately apparant what a passenger should do.

I went in first to recon while Christine stayed behind with the drivers and British gunslingers.  Even in an airport like Herat there is security.  I stepped through the metal detector and then was throughly patted down by a guy who seemed to really enjoy giving men a hand search.

Once inside it smelled like Afghanistan.

If the four pillars of Herat mark the historic gateway to Afghanistan...the Herat airport marks a clogged up escape valve.

The four pillars of Herat that mark the historical gateway to Afghanistan.

Several hundred people were crushed into a space meant only for 100.  There were no check in desks.  Just turbans, abayaas, burkas, keifyas and stench.

Being well practiced at what do these situations I found a police officer, held up the ticket I printed out from my online booking, smiled and shrugged.

He didn't know what to do with me.

So, I found another with a few chevrons on his epaulets and he led me down a halway to an unmarked room which was the Pamir Airways office.  The pilots and gate agents were drinking tea and smoking cigarettes.

"The flight has been delayed," a Pamir agent told me in english.  "Come back at five thirty."

I made my way though the mass of humanity encased in concrete to the parking lot only to see more Afghan troops amassing.

It looked like a pass in review.  The word on the street was that President Karzai was coming to town.  And the amount of troops was a give away that something was up.

NDS truck are in the distance.

A few days earlier at a hotel which Op Sec dictates I cannot name, so we'll call it the Holiday Inn Fortress Herat, which means it is basically like a Holiday Inn Express, but with lots of walls and guards with AK-47s, the old men in turbans--Maliks and Mullahs--were meeting with the political operators holding running shuras in the dining room.

The sheep trading was going on 24/7 and this was the result--a Karzai visit that would paralyze air transport in and out of Herat.

We moved our vehicles to another area in the parking lot and watched the show.  Commercial airliners from Arianna, the government run airline, and Pamir landed and disgorged soldiers.

Soldiers that looked like the best the Afghan Army had to offer--nearly three hundred of them.

They jumped into the trucks and drove off.  Then another airliner would land and other types would get off and drive away.

The President of Afghanistan travels with a lot of security.

I called the gate agent and he told us to come back in an hour.

We sat and watched the parade of soldiers, NDS officers and the advance team of the Karzai campaign arrive.

Dr. Fair and I then made out way through security.  She was searched by a woman in the women's section.  I was patted down by the guy who really enjoyed his work and we were in the terminal.

Dr. Christine Fair is an expert in South Asia speaking Urdu and Farsi and the Dari dialect of Persian used in Afghanistan.

She charmed the Pamir gate agents and we sat in the office and waited.

The Tajiks of Herat are not good liars. 

"Durogha, Durogha," Christine said to the lead gate agent.  They had told so many lies about when the flight would arrive to take us to Kabul the Pamir agents couldn't get their stories straight.

Part of it was not their fault.  They knew what was up, but were likely under orders not to disclose it.  As if the half a battalion of Afghan paratroopers and NDS special officers could mean anything other than President Karzai was coming.

The other part is they knew the planes would be coming...but did not know when.

So we sat, chit chatted and drank tea.

Christine and the lead gate agent, Matir, sang hindi songs and the greatest hits of Bollywood songs.  The advantage of travelling with poly-lingual south asian expert being the ability to bond with important people--like gate agents for Pamir Airways.  (My Arabic is all but useless in Afghanistan.)

We drank more tea and lost track of the lies.

Then we heard the planes land.  Even more special troops deplaned and the mad rush was on.

The 9am, 1pm and 5pm flights had all been delayed.  So now we were all rushing to get on the two planes.

In America people form lines.  Afghans have no such concept.  It was like festival seating at a WHO concert in the 70's.

Everyone with a pink boarding pass was in a mosh pit to get on board.  Some people were being turned back.  They didn't have a plane number on their pass.

Christine raced out of the women's boarding area and found Matin.  He scribbled "3" on our passes.

I was then at the end of the men's line.

Christine made it on the plane first and waved at me from window.  I got pulled aside.  I might be spending the night in Herat.

I pointed at the plane and said "mart, mart" while pointing at the plane.  That is the Dari word explaining I was responsible for the virtue of a woman.  He may have never heard that word out of the mouth of a westerner.  I wasn't responsible for the virtue of Christine, but I hoped the police officer would buy it.

It worked, the police officer let me on.

I was the third to last person allowed to board.

The door closed, the plane taxied and soon we were wheels up on our way back to Kabul and after that a short drive at night to the secure location of my client.

Karzai arrived to campaign in Herat the next day.

He also stayed at the Holiday Inn Fortress Herat.

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