FOB Shank | Day 34 -- There's a very important portion of the Afghanistan story that I feel we haven't told successfully. It's the story of the troops living in holes next to the Afghan National Security Forces while fighting to secure this country.I look back on 30 Days, and the only time we spent with them was at Strong Point Khyber. It was a great day, a great story with great people helping us to tell it, but I feel like we should have done more. Yes, I feel mass media sensationalizes the amount of fighting going on. Yes, I do feel the global view of Afghanistan is skewed towards this place being 100 percent hell hole when it isn't. But there is a lot of fighting going on here and Ken and I did everything we could to get out there to cover the story. Produced by Tech Sgt. Raimondi.

30 Days Through Afghanistan

30 Days Through Afghanistan: Day 34

FOB Shank | Day 35 -- This is it, the final blog and the end to the greatest military experience of my life. Looking back I hope this project has not only opened civilian eyes to what life is like in Afghanistan, but opened military eyes as to the power of social media.In many ways this project has been a massive success. I still have all of the rank I carried before this project started and none of my words have been censored in anyway. I had the complete freedom to write anything I wanted to as long as it didn't violate operational security and was honest and truthful. Produced by Tech Sgt. Raimondi.

30 Days Through Afghanistan: Day 35

FOB Shank | Day 33 -- When times are slow, and missions fall through, I always have our 30 Day visitors to fall back on. In many ways I prefer taking your questions and directly answering them because I know that's exactly what you all want to hear and learn about versus what I'm seeing and bringing to you. I love that aspect of this project.So our plans have fallen through today leaving me with another opportunity to address your questions and ideas I remember one person asking on the forums about how everyday people can help Afghanistan. I had addressed this is a previous blog, but I want to touch on the subject again because I learned one 30 Days participant is really helping, more on him later. ISAF isn't the only organization in Afghanistan. Produced by Tech Sgt. Raimondi.

30 Days Through Afghanistan: Day 33

Padkhvab-e Shanah | Day 32 — It was a little strange being out in the province again after we’ve spent so much time in the major cities of Afghanistan. It was actually quite nice. I’m more of a country guy versus a city guy.We headed out with soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team on a mission with a special Agricultural Development Team. It may not sound like a massive forward operation to clear the Taliban from their most well defended havens, but we learned agricultural development missions can be just as important. Produced by Tech Sgt. Raimondi.

30 Days Through Afghanistan: Day 32

FOB Shank | Day 31 — We’re in overtime! Due to the travel delays, we weren’t able to get to all of the regions in 30 days, so we’ve extended our trip until Sunday. We are now in Regional Command East, the "bread basket" of Afghanistan, or so I have been told. The goal now is to cover eastern Afghanistan. Throughout the trip we’ve been heavily concentrating on all of the international forces in Afghanistan. Looking back, I wish we could have covered more. There are 44 contributing nations here, and it’s really easy to write the number but it’s really hard to show what that number really means. Some countries are contributing thousands of troops while others are contributing a few. Other countries, like Japan, have contributed more than $5 Billion dollars to various projects in this country. We could spend years talking about all of this, but we’re restricted to 30 days because Ken and I are really looking forward to going back to our families. Produced by Tech Sgt. Raimondi.

30 Days Through Afghanistan: Day 31

Bagram Air Field | Day 30 — In honor of our project saviors I’m dedicating, what was supposed to be my last blog, to the aircrew of the U.S. Air Force C-130 who picked us up today. I didn’t have a business card handy when I was on the aircraft, so they may never even see this, but they are awesome.Everything started off peachy keen as Ken and I got all packed up and ready to fly out to Kabul. We check in, throw our baggage in the appropriate area and wait patiently in the terminal for some time. Then tragedy struck, the air terminal man pointed at me and said "Gallahan, you not going." Major Sabula was there with us and immediately asked about Ken and the man said "Raimondi, you not going." Then he walked away.

30 Days Through Afghanistan: Day 30

PRT Herat | Day 29 - Afghanistan is such a huge topic across the world, it's easy to forget the individual stories here. So many people are grouped together and called Romanians, Croatians, Dutch or Americans, I tend to forget sometimes there are individual people here with their own individual stories and beliefs. Nazifa's story was particularly touching. To me, these stories highlight not only the caring nature of humanity, but the caring nature of nations. Visa processes are very difficult, I know because I'm trying to navigate the maze right now with my wife. So for a nation like Italy to allow Nazifa in for the medical treatment symbolizes something greater, something I believe hearkens to the soul of nations. Somehow during my thoughts, I remembered talking with the Lithuanians at PRT Chagcharan. They told me how they asked their country to knit 500 caps for them to hand out to Afghan children during the winter. They were very proud to say their country not only knit 500, but knit 5,000 caps. I remembered how proud they were to serve in Afghanistan and help bring peace to a country with a population eight times larger than their own.

30 Days Through Afghanistan: Day 29

PRT Herat | Day 26 — Thank you Chris. Your comment and questions to my "Hallelujah in Herat" blog led me on a very interesting journey. To catch everyone up, he basically asked "Why is Herat so nice," and I went out and found some answers. When I woke up this morning, I was thinking about writing about provincial reconstruction teams and what the Italians are doing here. Then I read his comments and decided to do a little Herat investigation. When I heared the answers, my ideas for a blog changed. We went into the city and saw some construction projects and when we got back we ran to get some coffee. I walked into the shop and the shopkeeper is a 23-year-old Afghan from Herat. He speaks English well enough that I asked him Chris’s questions. He told me Herat is so nice because half the people left when the Taliban took over. They moved to Iran and learned how nice life could be and when they returned, brought those dreams with them. He told me one million people used to live here before the Taliban, 500,000 left, and since the Taliban have been run out of town, the population has exploded to more than two million. I did a little fact checking with this, and the population may be quite a bit lower than his number.

30 Days Through Afghanistan: Day 26

PRT Herat | Day 27 — We’re back! We had some problems with internet, which prevented us from uploading on time. I’m really hoping Day 26 doesn’t get lost in the stack, because I’m hoping it spurs some interesting conversation. I can’t stop thinking about the "Lion of Herat" everywhere I go. So today, Ken and I jumped in an Italian provincial reconstruction team convoy and watched as they distributed food and medical supplies to a local Kuchi tribe. The Kuchi tribe is a nomadic tribe so we anticipated a great drive out to the middle of nowhere where we would see vast fields of tents and Sheppard’s. We were wrong and we learned something new. The nomadic Kuchi tribe also has some permanent homes about 15 minutes from here. They live there for a little while before migrating onto other areas. The only problem with today was the complete lack of an interpreter. It’s a pretty strange experience to be embedded with Italians, where only a handful speaks English, while visiting Afghans who don’t speak any English. We walked around with a desire to talk to any of them, but we were unsuccessful. It was still better than Kabul!

30 Days Through Afghanistan: Day 27

PRT Herat | Day 28 — I love my father and the embroiled conversations that erupt between us sometimes. I cherish the moments where we disagree and we go back and forth on various facts and ideals. I haven’t always listened to him, but over the years I’ve learned that we may not always agree, but his opinions are always based on some founding principle. Since being out in the field with Ken, I haven’t had many opportunities to talk with my father. The time we did get to chat he told me how he had to disconnect himself from this project because he felt as though he was getting too involved. I assured him I wanted him to participate as much as possible in this project, but to also learn from what we are learning out here and not to get stuck in the mud. I’ll admit, the one trait that flows through all Gallahans, is being stubborn. We’ve mastered it.

30 Days Through Afghanistan: Day 28

PRT Herat | Day 25 — The weather here astounds me. Tuesday it was beautiful blue skies and the helicopter left us standing on the helipad. Wednesday it was dark grey skies and pelting down rain preventing any helicopters from reaching us. This morning, we awoke to beautiful blue skies again and we finally made it out of Kabul. We originally planned to be in eastern Afghanistan today, but we traveled west so we could get moving. We’ve decided to extend our 30 Days Through mission for approximately five days, to give us a chance to cover everything we need to. The story is more important than the timetable. We jumped aboard a U.S. Air Force C-130, which made a quick pit stop at Kandahar Air Field. When we found out we were going back to drop some soldiers off, Ken and I just looked at each other and prayed the plane wouldn’t break. We made it to Herat this afternoon and were greeted by our Italian hosts.

30 Days Through Afghanistan: Day 25

Kabul | Day 24 — Societies are riddled with bad people; it just so happens Afghanistan has a lot more of them. We were discussing who the bad people were and how they were harming society here. Since my memory is horrible, resulting in my absolute reliance on my notebook, I decided to look into who the bad people in Afghanistan are. Since weather prevented our flight this morning, I had plenty of time to talk with an officer from the ISAF Joint Command Information Dominance Center, which is basically ISAF’s memory. I was struggling to find a simple phrase to describe "bad guys" since it’s too generic and Taliban and Al Qaeda are too specific. Then, when we were up north, one of the soldiers called them anti-Afghan fighters. Afghanistan

30 Days Through Afghanistan: Day 24

There is a magical place full of wonders and excitement filled with international soldiers and rich cultures… it’s known as eastern Afghanistan and I really hope to take you there someday. I’ve been there before, and in all honesty, it’s the one regional command I’m most excited about. I’ve already spent about a month in the east bouncing between various FOBs and covering stories and to me it seems like a place on the brink of security.

30 Days Through Afghanistan: Day 23

This morning I got up bright and early, jumped in an armored vehicle, and headed down the street with my new Canadian friends to explore the world of Afghan governance. We entered the district center and it was the biggest one I have ever seen. I’m used to the district centers housing a few buildings behind some barbed wire. This one was huge! It was more of a secure compound with majestic mountains erupting from the earth behind it. The terrain in this country constantly astounds me.

30 Days Through Afghanistan: Day 13

When I face a challenge, I have no choice but to stand up, face it, acknowledge it and talk about it. There’s no denying the fact there is a lot of politics surrounding Afghanistan. At the ground level, we are not a political entity; we are simply military service members from a bunch of different countries. With that said, it would be extremely easy to take our views and opinions and then attribute them, inappropriately, to the political will of an entire country. I hope, over the course of these 30 Days, people across the world will understand that I and the people I’m talking to, have no desire to influence political opinions. I simply want to share the lives and perspective of the everyday service member.

30 Days Through Afghanistan: Day 7

Features stories about life on the front lines in Afghanistan, created by the military men and women who serve. Provided by ISAF Joint Command.

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30 Days Through Afghanistan

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