You say you know it's a dumb question b/c everyone has dinner parties so I'm not sure what you are expecting us to say. There are over 8 million people there so they are not all high class. In fact certain areas like Bronx and Brooklyn are KNOWN for being low class. Even low class have dinner parties and not all New Yorkers in general have them. It's not a high class snobby thing but a "having people over to dinner" thing.

The high rollers (like the socialites in any area of the country) make sure people don't belong. That's how they can distinguish the Haves and the Have-nots.

BTW, loads of self confidence. And to most of us there is little connection between how much self confidence you have and downing bottles upon bottles of liquor. You can be confident without and actually if you need to down the bottles you aren't. Also the "social scene" of the actual high class has nothing to do with bottles upon bottles of liquor. That's the wannabe class. The high class is equally social at the country club, sporting events, high tea, Yales orientation class, etc etc.

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The Making of the Plastiki

Operation Xmas

THE OPERATION XMAS!

James Bond was not her favorite but perhaps she knows me better than myself and she knew I was a Bond addict. So before I depart she gifted me a set of DVD which included all 22 sequels of Bond series, from "Dr.No" up to "Quantum of Solace", and asked me suspiciously, "Are you proceeding for an overseas mission or going for a safari?" I grinned mysteriously in reply and she pouted. Some movement at the near horizon brought me back to reality from my retrospection and reminded me that though I am sitting in a savanna at this moment but not at all in a safari. The sentry confirmed me the innocence of the movement as it was a passerby returning from late night Christmas party.

It was a holiday before Christmas and for last whole night I goggled on Byzantine Empire, Rashidun Caliphate and Khalid bin Walid to download few reference materials to finish my writing on battle of Yarmouk. So a long nap was earned and I rewarded myself by prolonging it until my company 2iC Captain Mizan woke me up at 1630 hr. He told me to communicate immediately to my company commander Major Jahangir and I smelled another call of duty, emergency of course. My company commander asked me over mobile if I had any problem to lead a force protection. I never had any since I took the oath back in 27 December 2001 and I heard he said, "Please, hurry up." To my interpretation once an officer is asked to do something, he is already in a hurry and once he is requested in addition to do hurry means matter is urgent and the quickest response is warranted. So by next six minutes being uniformed, I took a quick shave, offered my Asar prayer, snatched up my emergency travel bag and reached to the jeep waiting for me in front of the BOQ. My company commander was waiting and told me to rush to the Juba movecon (airport) as a helicopter was waiting for me! On the way up to movcon I clarified my doubts regarding where, why, when, how and with what strength I was supposed to move.  As I mentioned, matter was emergency of course, one of the Russian helicopter assigned for a reconnaissance mission got out of order at Lafon, a county belongs to Eastern Equatorial. The mission was to reach to that helicopter before last light and secure it until repaired to fly back.

The advantage of an emergency situation is, it skips boring formalities! So I reached directly to the air strip near the helicopter, definitely skipping movcon formalities, and found my team waiting. Normally a force protection in day light is lead by a JCO but as it was an operation at dark and for the first time in BANBAT-5 tenure so at the very last moment participation of an officer was decided and ordered. However, I took over the command immediately from warrant officer Sahjalal and announced him as my 2iC for the mission. During my routine check I found them hastily prepared as they were also identically in hurry as me. I noticed that a new chopper with night flying capability was ordered to get prepared as it would be dark on its flight back. So I utilized the time, quickly reassessed the lacunas in our logistic preparation to stay the night under open sky and requested for an operator with long distance wireless instead of a rifleman. I found two military observers asking me what the situation was and what would be their role in case of such force protection of an UN helicopter.  I directed them to my Operations Officer Maj. Zahid. Soon the pilot signaled us to get boarded and they allowed only eight of us. Section remains as the minimum operational sub unit for many armies and without sufficient reason it is not advised to split it. But once a Russian pilot says ‘eight', its better not to differ!

The Operation Onslaught

So operation XMAS (there was no official name for this mission, so I named it such!) was onslaught. It was already dark when we reached at Lafon followed by a 45 minutes flight and quickly descended. The rotors did not stop and the chopper took off soon with the four crews of the busted chopper creating a mini tornado of sands on us. It was moonless dark and in starlight I saw the outline of the helicopter few yards away. It was an MI8 and the doors were locked. I deployed 3 sentries around the chopper and inform our safe arrival to senior operation officer, Lt.Col. Kamal, over satellite phone. My 2iC along with others managed a veranda of a nearby hospital to stay and we opened the MRE to dine our dinner. I could not like the location of the veranda as it was on the other side of the hospital which was few hundred yards away from the chopper. So I called the team together to brief them the nature of threat I assumed and the way I wanted to secure the chopper. The area was unknown to us and we occupied the ground at night. Neither our strength nor the starlight allowed me to plan for a recce the area to determine any most probable threat.

There are differences between conventional military operations and UN peacekeeping operations. For obvious reasons a peacekeeping operation negates the very requirement of camouflage & concealment. Presence of UN is not a matter to hide rather it must be safely prominent, as showing UN presence is always of paramount importance in a mission area. But we were eight to secure a fat MI8, it was dark and to me it is not wise for a soldier's survival to attempt to remain a pure peacekeeper at night when the assailers' visibility is more restricted to recognize us. So I widened the circle, divided the area into right forward, left forward and the rear of the chopper and allowed them to conceal themselves along with their personal weapons and night vision devices. For each post a pair of sentries was employed and I let them to divide their duty for the night between themselves. I told my 2iC to remain as guard commander up to 0300 hr and from then onward up to next morning I myself was the guard commander. So whole the night 3 sentries were on duty at a time and others were resting beside with individual weapons on their laps.

There was no feature available to take cover against and fire back and the worst case scenario as I predicted was an all round assault on us. Even if any one of us would be wounded there was no place to render him first aid until reinforcement reaches. So it was necessary for me to utilize the potential cover promised by the thick body of the MI8 in case of emergency. So I used the emergency handle to access inside the chopper and instructed my team to take shelter inside when their stay at respective positions would be untenable. I placed the wireless inside the chopper and distributed 8 windows out of 10 amongst my team keeping one LMG for each side. The wireless communication was established with Torit team site and battalion headquarter and I requested to remain in hourly call to save battery. My moon calculation proved correct and by 2230 the moon raised. So in moonlight I along with the JCO checked all three posts. At last when all seemed set, I entered the chopper and sat beside the window.

The atmosphere here is way clearer than Dhaka. The night sky remains so starry that many of the stars I saw here could never see those back at home. The size of the moon also seemed to me to be larger and shiner. Guzzling a whole bottle of water I was peeping through the oval window to witness a tropical moonlit night and soliloquized, "am I in a safari?"   

The Inception

Dag Hammarskjold said, "Peacekeeping is not a job for soldiers, but only soldiers can do it." Hats off to Mr. Hammarskjold and his bona fide peacekeeping as it taught me to be nostalgic and often retrospect me to those days of preparation for this mission. On a June morning my commandant arranged a "Tea Out" for his staff captain and as a farewell remark I uttered "...I got a new grid reference to go, which is somewhere near JUBA in South Sudan. Please pray for my men, me & success of my assignment, sir."

Soon I joined my new unit which was a composite infantry company of 175 and I was appointed as one of the rifle platoon commander. We were known as the Additional Infantry Company, BANBAT 4 (UNMIS) and supposed to join UNMIS by August 2009. So massive preparation began as we were supposed to collect or procure all necessary belongings to be deployed afresh. We were concentrated at Dhaka under 46 Brigade and accommodate ourselves at deployment cell at 10EB. Soon the PDT and PDI finished but Overseas Operations dte was unable to confirm our flight schedule. By September arduous shipment also ended yet uncertainty erupted and frustration howled nooks and corner of the company. However On February 6, 2010 I looked back from other side of the glass wall of the airport immigration terminal and found my beloved wife weeping and my one year old sweet daughter waving her soft palms with bundles of questions in her eyes.

Just before boarding we were informed that the flight was delayed for another 24hours as clearance from Sudan authority could not be obtained yet. So that was a pleasant surprise for our families and a momentous message regarding the forthcoming mission in Sudan. However on the very next day we started towards Sudan and for most of us that remained as the first overseas flight experience.

The TORIT Episode

As the aircraft landed, the south Sudanese mirage over the Juba runway and the tropical sunshine flashed our eyes. We were warmly received by Bangladeshi officers and men from BANBAT 4. The welcome tea party was eventful. My lungs were cursing the flight with ‘Jordan Airways' as a smoker. Someone offered me a local cigarette to introduce me with Sudanese tobacco and Captain.Jamil lent his cell phone to communicate at home. I witnessed the quickest exchange of vital experiments, currencies and mobile SIMs among the arriving and departing troops. A Russian white chopper was waiting for my platoon and soon we started towards our next destination, TORIT.

Torit was a team site located in Eastern Equatorial. There was a lone neem tree inside the team site boundary. Accommodations for troops and other UN staffs, known as CORIMEC containers were orderly laid. Source of water was river KENNETI and food used to be supplied each Friday from Juba by road. Providing force protection to the UN personnel and property was the main task within an area of responsibility of 82,542 km² by company strength of troops. However, the handing and taking over procedure started immediately. Soon it appeared to me that peacekeeping was much more challenging and command in such complex scenario was going to be a real Acid Test for me.

TORIT is not an orthodox military camp, rather a team site which accommodates various UN agencies in it. There are UN military observers, polices, other civilian UN staffs and us as the representatives of the troops contributing countries. The ultimate responsibility of securing & protecting UN personnel & property use to encompass almost 17 definite tasks as delineated in the operational order.

Consolidation at TORIT

Besides my responsibility as the 9th platoon commander, my company commander appointed me as the company 2iC to look after the administration, discipline, security and training of the company. Other two captains were responsible for operations and logistics respectively. It was the fifth year as Bangladeshi battalion took over the peacekeeping responsibilities here and thus most of the things were already well organized. Yet it is a basic in case of command that existing standard must be reviewed periodically to ameliorate its efficiency. Again even in army, command is to be earned and it can only be established through individual art & dynamism. So my company commander wished me to review the existing capabilities and to notice him the lacunas. Thus TORIT became an opportunity for me to experiment my capability in an overseas scenario and turned me more empirical in deed.

To provide relentless security along the perimeter of the team site and to ensure force protection to the UN movement were the major two tasks for us. As I have already mentioned that there are significant differences between conventional military operations and UN peacekeeping operations. So to me it was always the most important part for a peacekeeper is the induction. Peacekeeping itself has already been turned into embalm with its existing SOP & ROE. So if not carefully trained and inducted, there is always a chance of contradiction between conventional soldierly axioms against purely peacekeeping ethos. Fortunately Bangladesh army conducts fruitful pre deployment training which appeared so useful that today Bangladesh is the highest troop contributor in UN peacekeeping efforts. However training remains like a pencil and practice & rehearsal act as the sharpener to it which ensures a worthy sketching on a given canvas. So for first few weeks we put our best to orient our troops with the terrain, threats, situation, SOP and ROE.

I personally believe that a good commander always ensure participation of his under command and shares reasonable amount of his responsibility with them. Obviously one must be circumspect in relegating such flexibility. One must also realize the difference between his duties & his responsibilities as well. Such participation and sharing enable better response from the under command and allows the commander to spend a bit more time behind the welfare, motivation and morale of the under commands.

Reasons which motivated a soldier to join the peacekeeping mission and reasons to motivate him to serve as a useful peacekeeper can be different. So a pragmatic study on the requirement to keep him motivated and boost his morale is momentous. Any soldier apart from his family, away from his regiment and country may initially try to pass his 365 days as fast as possible. But arduous peacekeeping tasks would soon fatigue him unless iteratively motivated. A sub continental soldier serves for some unique causes which may not be so familiar for anybody from elsewhere. Family bondage is so strong for them that family is ultimately a part of one's patriotism. 'Izzat' (a combination of self respect, honor and loyalty for one's family, commanders and regiment or battalion) is an intangible and non-negotiable spirit, which overwhelms sub continental soldiers. So our soldiers can do and undo anything to keep the 'izzat' of their unit free from any stigma. A good soldier serves according to the cause portrayed by his superior. However if such cause can be explained a bit to him and can be related to his personal achievement, that helps him to expedite himself to achieve the success of his team mission. So there were rooms to work on such areas to restore the regimental spirit amongst the men to accomplish peacekeeping assignments.

Someone advised me prior this overseas assignment to shun my additional initiative in the mission area. May be the extent of flexibility of existing operational command and control remains limited enough to accept any shortfall of an initiative taken, as any initiative is subjected to such risk. However, with the previous experience as Counter Insurgency camp commander and other independent responsibilities I tried to cross examine the existing SOPs and our state of preparedness. Systematically I scrutinized the lacunas along with my fellow officers and suggested formidable solutions to my company commander. Major Kabir was a pragmatic company commander and veteran as well. So together we started to review each sector of operation, administration and logistics.

The main advantage for a commander in such a camp is probably the staidness of the troops who are going to be almost static for next one year and there is hardly any absence on leave, training or sickness. We employed daily duty officer, duty JCO and duty NCO through daily part I order to ensure contentious supervision on the parades and activities. Most of the NCOs were experienced on previous UN mission and unfortunately they only could recall the comfort part of the past. So it was really difficult to combat against some of their complaisance and the very ill motivation. We distributed appointments and created an alternative list as well to offset any chance of scarcity in case of emergency. We arranged on job training to ensure standard response from each of the equipments and its users, e.g.: APC, MG, individual weapon, water browsers and communication means etc. we prepared standard checklist for various operations and practiced loading. We revised the existing alarm scheme, fire fight and emergency evacuation plans and rehearsed. Soon we observed the level of efficiency raised and professional attitude was restored even in a water collection patrols.

Operational Activities

In turn we all used to go for LRPs which we used to plan at least 15 days ahead sitting with UNMOs. Torit was the lone Team Site in EES and we could hardly cover such vast area. I can remember one day while renovating our ops room I found beyond the farthest county named Kapoeta, for another 200 km we hardly patrolled. The LRPs were difficult as there were no metal road at all. The sun was scorching and miles after miles the roads across savanna are without single tree to get shed. We used to move very slowly making convoy and stayed nights under tents. The UNMOs used to dine and the national monitors from SPLA and SAF used to reside with us. There was only one road, road to Imatong, which used to remain inaccessible for being level 3 almost throughout the year. Kapoeta was divided into three; north, east and south Kapoeta. Those were the remote counties and tribes like Toposas lived those areas away from modern civilization. There was a gold mine at East Kapoeta and but unfortunately I could not manage to visit it. Chukudum and Ikotos were neighboring counties and both mountainous. The roads through the cornices of the mountains I still remember. Lafon was a wide featherless county on the contrary Magwi, the most beautiful county, was collocated to Uganda and Kenya. Torit was the capital and was the hub of all life lines for EES. It was a lightly populated state and people were not that arduous. Plenty of liquor shops were available along the roads and near any habitations. It seemed to me that whole south Sudan was a hinder land of NGOs. At Torit I found approximately 22 NGOs working. SPLA was neither friendly nor hostile to us. They fought so long and it appeared to me that they did not bother UN presence and did not expect much as well from UN intervention. But they were hopeless too and used to desire a cessation for what they lacked any visible preparation.

One day while patrolling back from a LDP I was drowsy in my seat and my jeep was leading the convoy. In army you learn best how to have a nap fastening your seatbelt and develop the sixth sense as the nap goes off whenever the vehicle tends to halt. So I woke up by my basic instinct and noticed the reduction in speed of my jeep. The eyes of the driver were exploded and sound of heavy breath was over my back by my runner and operator. I looked front and found a SPLA assault line on the road approaching holding semi automatics in their hands. I cocked my SMG calmly. The sound revived the situation and made my fellows active. The driver halted the jeep, the operator passed back information and my runner handed me over the binocular. I ordered the force protection pick up to come forward beside my jeep and blocked the road. I deployed my troop either side of the road and told them not to aim. Then I called the UNMO leader to proceed along with the SPLA national monitor to negotiate with them. By our activities the assault line also halted. As our team approached unarmed, two of them also advanced and later it was found that they were searching few lost cows of the SPLA commander of that area. Holy cow!

The Cricket Match

Cricket was the game we used to enjoy at evening. One day I challenged the whole company with my 9th platoon. The challenge was accepted and we were the underdog. Best players of the company were recruited and two majors and two captains joined opponent team. We batted first and scored 76 runs in stipulated 10 overs. It was a small target as because 90 to 110 used to be the winning score there. I was never a great individual performer yet I was always fond of competing against a challenge with a team. While our middle order collapsed, I declared my team that 70 would be the winning score for that day if we could make that at all, and we did more than that. I believe limitation in resources' makes you a good planner and so there were no reason to leave the match un fought. It was so close a match that I was instructing the bowlers almost ball by ball and changing the field positions too much to create pressure over each batsman as per their merit. However big matches often turn dramatic, I don't know why. So the situation was it requires one run to tie and two runs to win in the very last ball of the match. I called the bowler Corporal Zahurul and instructed to bowl at Yorker length with maximum of his pace. Leaving boundary we encircled the batsman and all alert in closer positions to deny any double. So Zahurul took his run up, released a legal delivery at the best of his pace and demoralizing me the ball pitched at the good length. The belligerent tail ender was already instructed by his team mates to get a contact of the ball in any way with his bat or body and to run. To cover the first run the non striker reached almost half of the pitch before the ball itself reached to the batsman. However, the batsman attacked the rising ball rigorously and began to run, but the ball foxed him and he was bowled clearly! What a victory that was! Within a moment I discovered myself over the shoulder of my platoon mates. Later at Juba also my 18th platoon became the champion in cricket and I received a medal for the first time in my life as their team captain. As FM slim wrote in his "Defeat into Victory", ‘it is one of the four best commands in the service –a platoon, a battalion, a division, and an army. A platoon, because it is your first command, because you are young, and because, if you are any good, you know the men in it better than their mothers do and love them as much.' Slim was empirical and I loved both my platoons. on july after my annual leave i joined juba my new platoon and never returned Torit.

Happy Christmas!

The dawn heralded the happy Christmas and by 0700 the recovery helicopter reached Lafon. Soon the Russian technicians rejuvenated the busted chopper and we started our flight back to Juba. On the way we stopped at Torit for refueling. I stepped down passionately on the helipad as I failed to check my eagerness to have a look on my beloved teamsite Torit. I was overwhelmed as I found Maj. Kabir, the camp commander himself and Maj. Ashiq, the RMO was waiting for me in the helipad. The juice they offered was chilled and the reception was cozy. Soon Captain.Muntasir arrived and for the moment I felt it was the best possible team I ever served with. Such unexpected reunion revived me a lot and with a contented heart I returned Juba.

About the Author

del H khan is an army officer from Bangladesh, server as a peace keeper in south sudan and also other insergency environment. he is a good reader and sometimes try to write to share the way he see or do things. he is very choosy to select the most appropriate word while writing.

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