U.S. packing up before pulling out of Afghanistan

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — It was nearly 2 a.m. when Army Pfc. Zach Randle jumped out of his bulky armored vehicle in southern Afghanistan for what he hoped would be the last time.

“I don’t want to see it again. It’s been through a lot,” Pfc. Randle said of the 19-ton vehicle that was his ride — and sometimes his bed — during a six-month deployment to volatile Kandahar province.

“It protected us, but I’m just in a hurry to turn it in to be closer to going home,” said Pfc. Randle, who now has left Afghanistan as part of President Obama’s drawdown of 33,000 U.S. troops by Sept. 30.

The pullout — 10,000 last year and 23,000 more this year — will be finished within days. That will leave 68,000 American troops in this country to fight militants and help prepare Afghan forces to take over security nationwide.

While some service members go home, others are busy preparing thousands of vehicles and other equipment for shipment.

It’s a laborious task that’s more difficult than it was in Iraq because of landlocked Afghanistan’s tough mountainous terrain, lack of roads and mountain passes that will soon be covered with snow.

Between now and the end of 2014, when most U.S. troops will have left, the Americans will move an estimated 50,000 vehicles, including tens of thousands of Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles like the one Pfc. Randle drove into the equipment yard.

They also will ship an estimated 100,000 metal containers — each about 20 feet long. End-to-end, the containers would stretch nearly 400 miles.

Shipping has picked up in recent months, as base closure teams have spread out across Afghanistan to help soldiers sort, pack and load up their gear.

As of the beginning of September, 208 U.S. and NATO coalition bases have been closed, 310 have been transferred to the Afghan government and 323 remain open, according to the coalition.

The packing up is going on as the war still rages. Just since Friday, insurgents attacked a base in neighboring Helmand province, killing two U.S. Marines and destroying six Harrier fighter jets. Afghan police gunned down four more U.S. service members, and a NATO airstrike mistakenly killed eight Afghan women looking for firewood.

As American forces keep fighting, thousands of civilian and military personnel will continue prepping vehicles for flight, taking tedious inventory of bullets, night scopes, radios and even recreational baseball bats. They also will clean and crate tons of other gear, anything from bags of nails to generators.

Brig. Gen. Kristin French, commanding officer of the Joint Sustainment Command in Afghanistan, likens the teams to “wedding planners” helping to organize the move.

“We are trying to take the burden off the war fighter and give it to our folks who have the mission to do it,” Gen. French said at her office at Kandahar Air Field. “If we’re busy trying to clean up our backyards, we’re not doing what our focus is and that is to continue to transition security to the Afghan security forces and partner with them.”

Vehicles are being gathered in Kandahar, Bagram Air Field near Kabul and Camp Barmal in northern Afghanistan. Containers are being staged for shipment at nine locations around the country, she said.

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