Presidential Palace...AWESOME!!!!

Today was a great day to be a communicator in Afghanistan. If you had asked me a year ago or even a month ago if I would ever get to go inside the Afghan Presidential Palace, I would have laughed. But as of 1035 local Afghan time, I can laugh no more.

Going to the Palace requires some pre-approval and some pre-planning. First, just like going to the White House, no weapons are allowed. Yes, leaving the camp without a weapon does feel weird after 2 months of taking my musket everywhere with me, but hey, the Palace is just a short walk from our camp and is still in the Green Zone, so I felt relatively safe. Once we reached the first checkpoint, the fun began. Our pre-approval was not there, so we were held up. The Presidential Palace is guarded by the Afghan Special Forces and they don’t play. If you aren’t on an approved list or don’t have an approved pass, you don’t get in…period! Of course, I don’t mind being held up due to strong security. It makes me feel good that they take it very serious. On the upside, our escort told us not to worry. In fact, only one time has the right list been at the first checkpoint on all of his previous visits. After about 40 minutes of waiting and multiple phone calls, we finally cleared the first checkpoint. Our walk continued down a long shaded path. It was very pretty and peaceful. In fact, it didn’t even feel like a warzone.

After walking about 300 yards or so, we came to the second checkpoint. This one went fairly easy. A check of the list, we are all on it and inside the perimeter wall we go. Once inside, we were able to bypass what I am told is the first strip search. Yeah for us! We then walked up a drive and around a corner. WOW…what a view. Here is the Presidential Palace with the beautiful Afghan Mountains behind it…still capped in snow! Awesome! Another wall surrounds the actual palace, so even though I thought we were done with checkpoints…another one is coming. Evidence of the long standing wars in Afghanistan can be seen in the damage to the buildings that has been repaired or the repair work that is still going on in the compound. So, we hit our final checkpoint and the list is once again verified. 3 ID checks…and I am still not in the actual Palace yet. At this point, we have to wait for our escort. Now, comes the strip search…or so I thought…thank you LtCol Vrable…I was actually expecting a strip search…it wasn’t actually a strip search. We had to empty our pockets of all things, take off our belts, go through a metal detector, get patted down, and have our things checked. They kept cell phones and 3 of 4 ink pens (I got to keep mine for some reason), everything else we got to carry in with us.

After we cleared security, our escort walked us to the building inside the inner Presidential Palace grounds where our meeting was held. We waited in a very nice sitting room until person we were meeting came to get us. He led us to a conference room where we had tea and proceeded to discuss possible options for the comm build out of President Karzai’s Situation Room. WOW again!!!! I was just in awe that I was actually meeting to discuss it...seriously, I never thought when I came to Afghanistan that I would be meeting with one of President Karzai’s IT consultants to discuss the Afghan President’s situation room. Pretty amazing…or as I said in the beginning of this story….AWESOME!!!!