Left of Bang

14 July 2011

A few years ago, a British officer said to me they want to get as far left of bang as possible.  The farther left of bang, the better.  Right of bang is a crater and a memorial service.

A main goal in staying left of bang is to disrupt enemy bomb-making cells.  In the early days of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, if a bomb blew up our people, we would be apt to arrest every male in the village old enough to sport pubic hair.  We paid for that with more blood and may or may not have gotten the right guys.  It was as if we were dealing with a thousand mysterious unibombers.  In America, if a bomb hit the local National Guard headquarters and the Guard responded by flooding out and arresting the entire neighborhood, the Guard could be assured that any positive or neutral feelings would be toxified to the point where previously friendly eyes would become enemy spies.  The formula is simple and works every time.

Somewhere along the line, some very smart person must have gotten the idea that we needed forensics and law enforcement experts to join battle.  I don’t recall when it first started to happen, but at some point our people started collecting the evidence, and that’s when I sat in on a then-classified briefing after which the British officer began educating me on the concept and techniques involved in staying “left of bang.”

This fingerprint technician above said that her brother is a Marine in Anbar, and she came because she wanted to protect him.  A lucky Marine has a great sister.  She’s the second sister of Marines I met who does such things not in word, but deed.

Force Multipliers: forensics experts in Afghanistan

Today, “customers” such as military units will send evidence to experts such as these on Kandahar Airfield.  (There are labs on other bases.)  When you meet the forensics team, they have that positive air that people get when they know they are doing good and valuable work.  Importantly, they must be able to “sell” themselves so that units understand their capabilities, and to keep the evidence coming.

I’ve written numerous times about fingerprinting database creation in Iraq and Afghanistan, such as in Penguins of Afghanistan.  In Iraq, men would line up to apply for police jobs and they were entering fingerprints into computer.  One day, there was a “hit.”  I have no idea how his prints got into the system but when he put his prints in that day, the system—even while offline—immediately made a “hit.”  Were his prints found on a bomb?  Whatever the case, the man was quietly taken.  That must have happened many times but only once was I present.

The powerful computers and software allow nearly instant searching even in the field.  The small, portable systems that digitally scan prints, make a photo, and perform an iris scan also contain an internal database.  I’ve been to Afghan villages in which the men literally line up to get entered into the systems because they want an ID card.  They’ve never had ID cards and they want them.  The villagers are not forced to enter the system but they just line up.  If one of those prints is already in the handheld unit, there will be an alert and more data can be accessed right there on the spot without even having radio contact.  There might be a note that if this guy is encountered, he’s dangerous and take him on the spot.  If one of those prints was found on a bomb or weapon, or maybe he was a prisoner, well, needless to say that’s good to know.  When the unit is taken back to base, the memory is uploaded, ID cards are made and later the troops bring back the ID cards.

A bomb-maker from Afghanistan who wants to come to America or Europe might already be in the database.

Booby traps.

The computer and software do some magic, and makes cool pictures to boot.

CSI Combat: I’ll have to email this dispatch to Gary Sinise, a star in CSI New York.  Gary will probably get a kick out of this considering how many times he’s gone to Iraq and Afghanistan.

NDS is the Afghan National Directorate for Security.   It’s the rough equivalent of a synthesis between the FBI and CIA.  They have a pretty solid reputation with our people for getting the job done.  Though this forensics work is not certified to be used in Afghan courts, the NDS is being trained in collection techniques.

It’s easy to understand that DNA analysis is complex business, but I did not realize how complex fingerprint work is until coming to the labs.  It’s surprisingly rich with technical minutiae.

Science-loving kids would love to see these labs.  Iodine fuming kit?  What’s that for?  Unfortunately, for every question there was time to ask, there were a hundred more questions in the queue.

They’ve even got lasers.  And not the puny ones.

And laser glasses.

Got to know your way around a camera here.

The weapons and tools lab was particularly neat.  Great mixture between applied science, getting to shoot guns for testing, and solving puzzles.

Rockets, bombs, bullets, science.  C’mon.  This isn’t even a real job.

If you get shot in the chest by an AK-47, don’t keep the bullet for a souvenir after you get off your backside and pick the bullet out of your plate.  Give it to these guys and maybe they can match it to a weapon, and maybe they can match that weapon to a fingerprint.

The processes involved in this important weapons and tools lab were complex, and as with the other labs, you’ve got to be a smart cat to be any good at this work.

Weapons leave their own “fingerprints” on bullets and casings.

DNA lab.  This is where you get neck deep in mitochondria.  We couldn’t go into the lab because they wanted to keep contamination down.

An NDS boss asks the (female) DNA expert if it were possible to match if, say, ten men raped a woman.  Would this lab be able to figure out who did it?  She said it would be difficult but possible.  I got the idea that he had a case in mind and wanted to crack some heads.  The NDS does not play.

Staying left of bang is serious business for serious people.  This is one of those unsung corners of the war that delivers big bang for the buck.

Read the complete post at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/michaelyon-online/~3/Xp0G1seTfyw/left-of-bang.htm