Besides writing a regular column for East Africa Flyer/Aviation East Africa, taking up some other less-war-related writing gigs (to be revealed shortly), and working as an anti-human trafficking attorney here in DC, I’ve also been pounding away on several book projects. They’re coming along well, though these things never get done as quickly as you’d like them to. Last year would’ve been nice.

I’ve also been spending a good amount of time with my dog, Puck, who is pretty much my parents’ dog at this point but still obeys me better than anyone else (just stating the facts). Went for a solo camp with him out in Shenandoah Valley last weekend. Thought I might share the photographic gem above with the world, because you can always use more huge pink dog tongue in your life.

More updates & articles coming very soon.

Sergeant William Stacey Tribute from Alex Kirkwood on Vimeo.

For those who have been following, you’ll know who Sgt. Stacey is (left, above). He was killed this morning by an IED. He was one of the most humane and wise human beings I have ever met, and a hell of a Marine. I wrote the following on my typewriter while getting personal with a bottle of scotch this evening.

There aren’t too many Marines that I wanted to get a beer with once we were back home. I made good friends with many of them, but there weren’t more than a dozen who I really thought I’d spend time with once we’d returned to the civilized world of women and booze and concerns about what type of blinds to put on the windows. A lot of the real world doesn’t make sense out there. A lot of the things people here worry about. Try watchingReal Housewives and imagine what it looks like to a Marine just returned from their deployment. Beer makes sense though. Everyone makes plans to get a beer together once they’re back. I drank a lot of non-alcoholic Becks over there but needless to say it just ain’t the same.

Sergeant Stacey—Will, as he became once I’d returned to the States and exchanged a few emails with his mother—was one of the few I made plans with. He commanded the squad I was embedded with when I ended up in my first firefight, and it was plainer than anything that he kept the men under his command alive. I’ve already written about him, his confidence and charisma and strangely rugged wisdom for a young man of twenty-three, his ridiculous mustache, but now there is more to say because Will is dead.

Full article is here.

I will never forget him. He, and his family, deserved better than this. But with the life he had, he did something incredible, something very few people achieve with a full ninety years. So here’s to you, Will. You’re a great fucking guy.

Picked up a copy of the IHT’s Magazine while I was passing through Germany on the way back stateside. Had a fascinating set of essays from some very interesting people about power, politics, and passion–basically, what the hell is going on with these kids these days, tearing down governments, I don’t know, in my day we just had a barn dance and called it a night.

Felt some of the more thought-provoking pieces, on Burma’s continuing decades-long struggle and the Muslim Brotherhood in particular, raised a very important question about modern revolutions–and, by implication, most modern wars.

For The Faster Times:

The International Herald Tribune Magazine chose to mark the world’s passage into yet another lap around the sun this month with a collection of meditations, from brief to ponderous, on the intersection of politics, passion, and power. Many took the chance to comment on the revolutions that seem to have swept the planet while it was staggering out the current circuit. Many rehashed the same question that’s been asked since the old Tunisian regime first began to look wobbly: what the hell made this time different?

Popular unrest is hardly a new thing. Only two and a half years ago Iran came closer to a complete regime change than it has since 1979, when it actually didgo through one. Two years before that the people of Burma/Myanmar launched a non-violent resistance movement remarkable for its breadth, its resilience in the face of brutal crackdown, and its ultimate failure. The Tamil Tigers waged an insurrection against the Sri Lankan government for decades, veering wildly between guerilla warfare, democratic participation, and outright terrorism, until they were literally pummeled into a bloody smear across the earth by an artillery siege in 2009.

Yet after years of failed revolutions, and with some early speculation that the era of catastrophic regime change might be done and gone, a bloody wash of them suddenly spilled across the Middle East like so much Red Dye No. 5. The Arab Spring seems to have changed not only the playbook (replacing Molotovs, secret codes, and sharp rocks with Twitter, Facebook, and cell phone cameras as the weapons of the proletariat) but the fundamental rules of the regime-change game (which were starting to look something like “Don’t Bother,”). It’s happening again, as though regimes—like ducks, sperm whales, and other natural prey to our species—occasionally become ‘in season’ and must be slaughtered en masse, at maximum velocity, before we allow them another period of respite.

Full article can be found here.

Returned to Washington, DC, yesterday.

It’s been an incredible month in Afghanistan. I’ve had the honor to meet, live, and work with some of the finest people in the world. Marines, Afghans, NATO soldiers and even the occasional UK government employee. These are people whose stories are riddled with courage, resilience, and faith, in the face of great danger and great privation. They make sacrifices on a daily basis that we in the ‘real’ world (as it is often called over there) never hear about, sometimes overwhelming ones, just to budge the tide of the war that little bit towards the better.

I haven’t made my mind up about the war in Afghanistan. If anything, I’ve decided it’s dangerous  to ‘make your mind up’ about something of this sort–there are so many things going on, pushing in so many directions, changing so rapidly and unpredictably, that settling into any one viewpoint can only mean blinding yourself to a significant part of what is really happening. But I do believe that a lot of very good people are doing the best they can in very difficult circumstances, and that is always admirable, especially when they do it in the face of a lot of complete assholes doing everything they can to make everyone else’s life miserable.

I have a small mountain of unused material from my expedition still with me. What I’ve published so far barely scratches the surface of what I collected while I was there; most of the biggest, most interesting stories I simply didn’t have time to sit down and write up in the field. I will continue to publish articles and entries here about Afghanistan for at least the next couple of months, while I transition into reporting on the foreign policy scene in Washington.

I will return to Afghanistan sometime in the fall of 2012. Currently percolating on what other fieldwork to try and set up. First step: learning Arabic. Thank you, guy selling pirate copies of Rosetta Stone for twenty-five bucks at Camp Leatherneck.

Thank you, everyone, for all your support. It’s good to be home (but I’m already chafing to get back out).

A written account of the firefight can be found here.

Ended up in a firefight the other day, with sixteen Marines and an onion on my side. Thought I might write something on it.

For The Faster Times:

Kurghay, Afghanistan—We were rambling down the pass from the Bedouin’s tents when the first bullets winged by overhead. Long, drawn-out whistling sounds, almost musical, nothing like the zipI’d heard in flicks. The Sergeant thought it might be overshot fire from a couple klicks away,  aimed at a vehicle unit—Cat One—halfway between us and an insurgent position on the far side of the valley. Then Lance-Corporal Stephen Johnson, a combat cameraman a few meters behind me, piped up.

“Hey Sarge,” he said calmly, “that one landed right by my foot.”

Full article can be found here.

Scott’s (very flattering) comments on the video:

Some footage of a correspondent, friend of mine, here in Afghanistan. No doubt that Lars Dabney is willing to suffer the elements to report on the war in Afghanistan. It was rainy, muddy, cold, dangerous, and miserable. And…he ate with us, traveled with us, slept in the mud, and did all things inherent to combat…other than toting a weapon. Lars earned the respect and trust of several Marines here…and he can go anywhere he likes with me. Footage is post gunfight in a lightning and rain storm. Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

Have a Nice Day!

Important things I learned in Kurghay:

Marines are bad for my smoking habit.

Condensation will get your sleeping bag wetter than rain.

The mangina is also known as a ‘Reverse Fruit Basket’.

Being shot at is a rush.

A poncho is not large enough to cover a sleeping bag.

It is possible to step on an IED and have it explode and not be injured.

Spooning is completely acceptable between men at night when it is cold, as long as you don’t make humping motions while trying to scratch your butt.

People did not draw penises in their friends’ textbooks twenty years ago.

The ground at night is cold and lumpy if you do not have a mat.

Turkeys are known as ‘ditch chickens,’ even though that makes more sense for pheasants.

A certian Lieutenant’s pubic hair could function as a comb-over to conceal his manhood, it has grown so long.

Chinese technical writing on dated military equipment is waaaaay beyond what I remember.

Placing the heads of two penises together, at least one uncircumcised, and rolling the foreskin back and forth across them both is known as ‘schnoodling.’

Always wake up before everyone else if you are catching a flight/convoy at an unknown hour the next day, even if this means staying up all night.

You cannot wear body armor, be in a Mine Resistant Armored Personnel Carrier, and sleep, all at the same time.

Blast diapers will strip you of nut hair.

Not removing your boots for 36 hours is bad. It is much worse when you haven’t showered in six days.

I should be very, very afraid of going to Vegas when 2/4 gets back in April.

For an inhospitable place, Afghanistan can be remarkably beautiful.

The stars. Oh, the stars.