5th august 2010: Fabio Caressa’s journey to Afghanistan begins. He is the only civilian in a flight of men in uniform. Fabio leaves the C130 in the Herat airport with his traveling companion, Sergio Ramazzotti, writer and photo-reporter. General Claudio Berto shows the Italian Army operation before Fabio can see the hard life of soldiers: a dangerous night patrolling aboard the “Lince” and “Freccia” armored vehicles, along the Highway One, the most important paved road and often strewn with explosives. And while we see a Skype conversation between a family in Salerno and their son in the base, Fabio comments a national team’s match that soldiers are watching on TV.
Fabio Caressa spends an entire day to see the most technological aircrafts, owned by the Army and the Air Force, and the men that can pilot them. He sees the Predator take off. This is a without-pilot airplain that allows to take photos and locate insurgents and Taliban. He watch the flight of the fighter-bomber AMX and gets on board of a Mangusta, discovering its secrets. At the end of this day, he’s amused by seeing the pilots dinner that, finally, after a lot of stress, they can have fun and sing.
Fabio Caressa, along with some soldiers from Herat Base, lives on a C130 and an American Black Hawk to the Shindand forward operative base. Meanwhile, Sergio Ramazzotti moves to the Safe House outpost, 20 kilometers south of Shindand in the Zeerko Valley, a kill zone at risk of Taliban attacks. From the base Fabio stays in radio contact with him. Then he tries himself what means to wear like a Hurt Locker. a deminer. In that moment is recalled the tragic episode of Mauro Gigli, killed in an explosion together with his colleague Pierdavide De Cillis. Caressa sees the dog unit in action with the anti-explosives dog Tana. The evening is a guest of a dinner with improvised dances and spaghetti.
In the hearth of Herat, Fabio Caressa and Sergio Ramazzotti see the PRT at work. The PRT is the organ used to rebuild and help afghan provinces. They visit the hospital and the surgery inside the PRT. The leitmotiv is the role and the difficulties that afghan women meet in the Islamic culture. Caressa, after having watched paints made by local women at the Visual Art Center, enters a women’s prison, walking through the citadel and the splendid Blue Mosque. At the end of the day, Fabio returns to be a commentator in a singular soccer match, the final of the PRT trophy.
Mission after mission…While Sergio Ramazzotti, surrounded by children is in Mandel at the cerymony for the knocking of the foundation stone of a school, Fabio Caressa witnesses the inauguration of a well in another village. He interviews the Eldes, the village heads, and he meets the chief of Afghan Police. Then he enters the Afghan Police’s training center led by our Carabinieri and he meets doctor and nurses that work closely with the soldiers. Ramazzotti interviews children at Farah orphanage and witnesses some moments of tension in Bala Baluk.
The FOB (Forward Operating Base) is a military outpost, with purpose of support in the tactical operations and it is the most subject to attacks by the Taliban. Bala Morghab is one of the kill zones explored by Fabio Caressa and Sergio Ramazzotti to understand how much hard is a soldier’s life in those places, with a temperature of 40° while digging trenches and creating ouposts while insurgents and Taliban shoot on sight. Fabio visits villages on the green line of Bala Morghab and then he is welcomed in an Elder’s house. The level of danger given by our armed forces is 7 and Fabio understands it when he does his first tactic flight.
