3d Battalion, 8th Marines, 3d Platoon, India Company
FOB Bakwa, Farah Province, Afghanistan

The Bakwa District in Afghanistan is so far out, the desert almost ran out of sand– I said almost! In fact, Bakwa is nearly all sand. When the wind whips across this endless sandbox, the tiny grains turn into vicious pellets that sting your skin red. There is so much brown here that the Marines claim there are a hundred different shades of brown.

Bakwa does have a few scrawny streams, rivers if you want to call them that, a scattering of impoverished Afghans, patches of green wheat and red-white-purple poppy plants that famers toil over, but the brown desert defines Bakwa.

Forward Operating Base Bakwa – it’s a big stretch to call this small mostly tent site a FOB – lies in the southwest of Afghanistan in the province of Farah. This is the western end of Marines deployed in Afghanistan. It might also be the end of the planet earth.

The Marines in Bakwa keep a bumpy, “natural” road open that leads to Delaram, a regional center, which the Taliban attempt to close by planting IEDs. The Marines converse with locals, driving across the dessert for hours, to insure isolated Afghans that the United States is in Afghanistan to help them. And of course the Marines are constantly seaching for security information, the type that keeps the Taliban on the defensive, and Marines alive. And then there is the mentoring and training to build up the local Afghan National Police detachment.

All of this is the mission of 3rd Platoon (Reinforced), India Company, 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines at FOB Bakwa. I visited the platoon for six days. Here are my photos.

Stewart Nusbaumer
snusbaumer@gmail.com

Leatherneck’s correspondent