[The dirigible, a white 117-foot-long surveillance balloon called an aerostat by the military, and scores more like it at almost every military base in the country,
have become constant features of the skies over Kabul and Kandahar, and
anywhere else American troops are concentrated or interested in.]
By Graham Bowley
 |
Bryan Denton for The New York Times
In Kabul, Afghanistan, daily life unfolded under the watchful gaze
of an aerial surveillance balloon tethered at a military base. |
“It is there every day except the days when it is windy and
rainy,” said Suleman, 45, who goes by only one name.
“It watches us day and night,” said another trader, Mir
Akbar, 18, his eyes following the balloon as its nose swiveled with the wind
from east to west.
“I notice it all the time,” said Rahmat Shah, 28, a
secondhand car seller, who was standing slightly aside from the other men. “I
know there is a camera in it.”
The dirigible, a white 117-foot-long surveillance balloon
called an aerostat by the military, and scores more like it at almost every
military base in the country, have become constant features of the skies over
Kabul and Kandahar, and anywhere else American troops are concentrated or
interested in.
Shimmering more than 1,500 feet up in the daytime haze, or
each visible as a single light blinking at night, the balloons, with infrared
and color video cameras, are central players in the American military’s shift
toward using technology for surveillance and intelligence.
In recent years, they have become part of a widening
network of devices — drones, camera towers at military bases and a newer
network of street-level closed-circuit cameras monitoring Kabul’s roads — that
have allowed American and Afghan commanders to keep more eyes on more places
where Americans are fighting.
The dirigibles are now such a common feature in daily
Afghan life that some people here shrug and say they hardly notice them. Other
parts of the network have become lasting parts of the urban landscape as well,
particularly in Kabul
But other Afghans describe a growing sense of oppression,
the feeling that even as the Americans are starting to pack up to leave, the
foreigners’ eyes will always be on them.
It is often expressed in typically Afghan fashion, as a
grumbled undercurrent of quips and brooding pronouncements: “It is an American
kite,” or “Afghans and Americans are up there.” (They are not; there is no one
in the balloons.) “It shows us that, sure, the Americans are still here,” and,
“It is not effective because there are still these suicide attacks and car
bombs.”
For others, the cameras are an outrageous intrusion into
private lives, putting women and children on display for foreigners whom they
see as immoral.
“We cannot sleep on our rooftops anymore,” said
Mohammadullah, who goes by one name, a resident of Asadabad, the capital of
Kunar Province, where families regularly sleep on their roofs during the
summer’s sweltering heat, and who was voicing a common concern. “Whenever our
female family members walk in the yard during the day, or whenever we want to
say ‘hi’ to our wife when we sleep on rooftops, we feel someone is watching
us.”
First used in Iraq Afghanistan
American commanders love them, for giving them a perpetual
full-color view of important thoroughfares and helping to catch insurgents
planting roadside bombs. They cost less than the multimillion-dollar drones
that get headlines.
“It has been a game changer,” said Ray Gutierrez, who
trains the civilian crews, all Americans, who operate the cameras, and the
military units who use them. One recent afternoon, he stood in the small control
room beneath the old fort where two men with joysticks scanned close-up views
of the hillsides several miles away, practically as if they could reach out and
touch them. “It lets us see the battlefield as we have never been able to see
it before.”
For the Taliban, the blimps have become things to fear.
In Kandahar Province — where there are at least eight in
the city of Kandahar alone and more in the districts — residents say the
insurgents call them “frogs” because their big eyes are ever watchful, or “shameless”
because there is nothing they will not peer into. (The residents in Helmand have
their own name for them: “milk fish” because of their fins and milky color.)
The insurgents avoid the areas under the balloons and have
taken to disguising themselves as farmers to avoid detection — and a deadly
follow-up airstrike, residents say.
In the Zhare district of Kandahar Province, a focus of the
Obama administration’s troop increase in 2010, at least one aerostat can be
seen from almost every village. While bigger ones float over cities like Kabul
Beyond just seeing the Taliban, the aerostats deter them,
too, making ambushes rarer along routes in their view, the Americans say.
“We can’t be fighting for these roads every day,” said Col.
Brian Mennes, the commander of Fourth Brigade Combat Team of the 82nd Airborne
Division, which is responsible for Zhare and neighboring Maiwand district.
The street cameras in Kabul
Inside the police headquarters in downtown Kabul
General Salangi said the cameras played an important role
in handling the riots in February when the burning of Korans by American
military personnel touched off angry protests. The police were praised for
swiftly bringing the crowds under control, especially in the east of Kabul
“Seventy percent of that was down to the cameras,” he said.
“We were watching, and the cameras helped us to find out where we had to have
antiriot units.”
It was also the cameras, he said, that spied a car packed
with explosives in the ground floor of a building that was under construction,
from which heavily armed insurgents were attacking the American Embassy and NATO headquarters in September. “What I did, I told my
strike force to stand by and we sent our emergency team in to defuse it,” he
said.
Though the balloons may not stay after the last American
combat troops are gone — that is still being negotiated — they will have an
even more important role amid the withdrawal of military forces, as planners
hope the technology will help a dwindling force stay effective. And the
military is building a bigger, 300-foot, untethered airship with more powerful
surveillance capabilities intended for use here.
In the meantime, the Americans have mounted a publicity
campaign devised to reassure Afghans that the cameras are not spying on women
or children, and cannot peer through walls. But while some resent the
intrusion, still others complain that the main problem is the cameras are not
doing enough.
Sayed Agha, a resident of Asadabad, said he was in court
recently where three Afghan fuel contractors were on trial for unloading
American fuel tankers to private vendors in the local market. When the
contractors denied the allegations, the Americans showed video images captured
from a balloon.
“It was really bright and clear, as if someone followed
them and filmed them while they were selling the fuel in the market,” he said.
“But it raises one question, that how come they could see the fuel contractors
selling fuel in the market but not the armed opposition?”
The program is clearly not infallible, nor is it
invulnerable. From time to time, Afghanistan
Often when crews bring the balloons down, for maintenance
or to protect them from storms, says Eddy Hogan, who manages the aerostats, they
find bullet holes all over, attesting to the balloons’ role as an object of
resentment.
The balloons’ size, and the fact that helium is not
explosive, means they can stay aloft even with lots of small holes in them.
“You can tell when, you bring it down and see hundreds of
bullet holes in it, that they don’t like it,” he said. But, he added, “It takes
hundreds and hundreds of rounds to bring them down.”