Mission #1 Part 1

It's Thursday and we are packed and ready to go off to our first Forward Base visit. We are packed as light as possible and we are still loaded down with 5 large bags. Dave K and I are actually excited to get out today because the weather is perfect - crisp blue skies and not much smog. We meet our driver and head off to the air park racing through the streets of Kabul one more time. As we weave through the teeming streets, full of children going home after a half day of school, it occurs to me that just yesterday at this very time, in these very streets, there was a mass of humanity. Three hundred Afghan women held a public protest - an incredibly rare event in this strict muslim society - against a new Islamic law that was passed this past week. The law basically would permit marital rape as it gave a husband the right to demand sex from his wife. How brave were these 300? As they marched, the number of men in the crowd started to swell, until there were literally thousands. Soon they not only shouted at the women, they began to stone them! Fortunately the Afghan security forces came to their rescue. Yes, we are in a land where there is war, but greater than that is the need for a war against ignorance and human indignity! And remember, all this happened on the same day that an 8 year old Saudi girl's mother was denied the right to have her little girl divorced from a Saudi man. An eight year old!! There needs to be an outcry, a force that brings enlightenment, education and basic human rights to women and children, not only in Afghanistan, but around the world. We have to remember this when we enjoy the freedom and rights we take for granted each and every day in the United States of America.

At the air park we are checked in and given a briefing before our flight out. One of our security team goes over emergency operations in case there is an "incident". We are told where the med kit is along with the emergency sat phone and how to use it. We are also briefed on exiting a downed chopper and finally how to use his small caliber weapon as a last resort. We load up and with a "gunner" on each side of me, we lift off and head over the white capped mountains to our destination...