Walking a fine line on MWR

Via e-mail correspondence with The Torch's Macallan Moving Correspondent via The Stupid Shall Be Punished, we learn of coming changes to the "Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) facilities" in Afghanistan - changes which will affect Canadian troops as they're co-located with Americans at KAF:

Many of you have heard that there are plans to shut down some of the “amenities” throughout Afghanistan. This is not rumor. It is fact. This is a warzone – not an amusement park. From the moment GEN McChrystal and I arrived in Afghanistan last summer, we began looking for ways to do things more efficiently across the battlefield – the optimization of ISAF. This effort includes moving and reallocating resources to better accomplish our mission.

One of the ways we’re going to do that -- in order to accommodate the troop increase and get re-focused on the mission at hand -- is to cut back on some of the nonessentials. That includes some of the morale, welfare and recreation facilities throughout Afghanistan. In the coming weeks and months, concessions such as Orange Julius, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Dairy Queen and Military Car Sales will close their doors.

Other changes will not be so obvious. We will also reduce the amount of canned and bottled goods coming into country, as well as first-run movie showings and non-USO entertainment shows.

What it comes down to is focus, and to using the resources we have in the most efficient and effective ways possible. Supplying nonessential luxuries to big bases like Bagram and Kandahar makes it harder to get essential items to combat outposts and forward operating bases, where troops who are in the fight each day need resupplied with ammunition, food and water.

Hall elaborates a bit more here:

Eight years into the war here, U.S. combat troops are still asking for simple things, such as lighter equipment to help them keep up with their enemies. Meanwhile, troops and civilians stationed at major headquarters bases in Kabul, Bagram and Kandahar enjoy many of the comforts of home: Burger joints, cafes, dance parties and shops where one can buy a flat-screen television, then duck in for an hour-long massage.

To Hall these amenities are tangible examples of lost focus.

Instead of flying bullets and food rations to troops at austere combat outposts, some planes and helicopters are instead being used to ferry ice cream and fried chicken to troops far from the front. Troops who should be on patrol to help protect Afghan civilians from insurgents instead get stuck pulling guard duty while their comrades whoop it up at hip-hop night.

He wants to put a stop to it.

Hall recently swung through combat outposts in Afghanistan’s east and asked troops what they thought about shutting down the Pizza Huts, Burger Kings and Popeye’s Chickens, “and they started to make fun of me,” he said. “They said they had everything they need out here and they were here to do a mission, and (all that other stuff) … didn’t really matter to them.”

Beyond that, he said, the front-line troops understood that supplying nonessential luxuries to big bases like Bagram and Kandahar made it harder to get essential items to far-flung bases like Combat Outpost Monti.

“It wasn’t a matter of I’m suffering and you need to suffer also,” he said. “They were talking about what they need to do the mission, and they know that those were distractions.”

I've been asked about this particular issue by civilians in the past, and I don't think I'm offside with the majority working in a Canadian uniform when I say "luxuries" are fine as long as they don't take away from the mission - either physically or mentally. American CSM Hall and GEN McChrystal have obviously decided that some of these frills are doing just that. I don't have a problem with that reasoning, but I find the justification a bit spotty in parts.

I distinctly remember gawping like a landed fish just over a year ago on the boardwalk at KAF when I found out that you could get Pizza Hut delivered on the base. But after that initial shock, I thought "hey, if everyone's getting the bullets and beans they need, then why the hell not?" Of course, if you're shipping mountains of cardboard pizza boxes into KAF when there's a backlog of personnel and materiel waiting to get into the country, that's a problem. I have yet to hear soldiers complaining about a lack of essentials in theatre, but just because I haven't heard it doesn't mean it's not happening. Perhaps ammunition is sitting in crates on the ramp at an airfield somewhere while Burger King wrappers are loaded into the back of a waiting Hercules instead.

But when the CSM starts talking about cutting out first-run movies, my spidey-sense starts tingling. Surely you can find room for a few DVD's on a resupply flight.

No, when you start eliminating frills like that, it's not about physical capacity. It's not even about focus as far as I can see: everyone I met and watched over there was very, very focused on what they were doing.

I think it's about narrowing the lifestyle gap between those at the very pointiest end - at the FOBs, at the ANP outposts, out mentoring the ANA, etc - and those ISAF troops on the bigger bases in order to limit friction between the two groups. While there are certainly some surprising amenities at Kandahar Air Field, it is hardly a five-star resort. My overwhelming impression was of a rather depressing summer camp - mud and dust everywhere, a couple of places to go (like Canada House) and things to do (like wander around on the boardwalk) that get old extremely quickly. Outside the wire, though, the conditions are...well, austere is too plush a word.

Some of the troops who spend a lot of time outside the wire resent those who never step foot off the base at KAF. The crazy part is that it's not like most troops have a choice: you largely go where you're told to go. If you're a pay clerk, you're probably not going to get many opportunities go out on patrol. And if you're an infanteer with the Battle Group, you're likely not inside the wire much, regardless of what you'd prefer. Oh, there are exceptions - times when the boss at HQ asks for volunteers from the support staff to go someplace dangerous as a one-off, or times when a combat arms soldier can't or won't go out again and finds an excuse to be left behind. But those are the exceptions.

Most of the support soldiers I met were anxious to get out into the field again. KAF could be a soul-sucking place to spend a full tour - away from home and family, but without the adrenaline and satisfaction of being at the tip of the spear. Most of the Battle Group soldiers I met wouldn't have minded a couple more days at KAF to take wet showers and drink Tim Horton's coffee before heading back out into the dust and IEDs.

I don't have thirty years leading men and women in uniform like Command Sergeant Major Hall and General McChrystal. Their instincts on this issue are likely far more finely honed than mine. They're on the ground, with their fingers on the pulse of their troops, I'm sure. All the same, I'm not sure I agree with them in this instance.

I get the fairness issue, really I do. And soldiers in almost every major war over the past century have survived with morale intact sans Pizza Hut delivery and first-run movies. I'm just not sure there was much of a problem to fix in this case. Morale's a funny thing, and this strikes me as one of those trade-offs that could cost you more than you get back.

Of course, I'm just some guy typing at a keyboard a few thousand kilometres away, and there's no clear-cut best course here. Your mileage may vary.