The war is going slower than planned, victory remains elusive and the Taleban are inflicting record casualties on coalition forces, but there is, it seems, a glimmer of good news for soldiers in southern Afghanistan: T.G.I. Friday’s is here to stay. The American-themed diner at Kandahar airfield has survived a cull of fast-food joints despite strict orders from the commander of Nato forces to crack down on junk-food concessions.
General Stanley McChrystal, the notoriously austere commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan — he runs eight miles a day, eats one meal and sleeps four hours a night — demanded that the Burger Kings, Pizza Huts, Dairy Queens and other “amenities” close at the main logistics bases. The idea was to remind soldiers that they were in “a war zone – not an amusement park”.
At the time, in March, General McChrystal’s command Sergeant-Major, Michael T. Hall, revealed in a military blog about how supplying fast-food outlets was getting in the way of the war effort. “Supplying non-essential luxuries to big bases like Bagram and Kandahar makes it harder to get essential items to combat outposts and forward operating bases, where troops who are in the fight each day need resupplied with ammunition, food and water,” he wrote.
T.G.I. Friday’s, one of the newest and swankiest additions to Nato’s gargantuan southern base, has had a stay of execution, according to the British camp commander, Air Commodore Gordon Moulds.
“T.G.I. Friday’s will maintain,” he said. The real threat to the garish red-and-white striped restaurant, complete with a life-sized Yoda above the bar, traditional diner-style booths and wall-to-wall Americana, comes not from killjoy generals but from poor food hygiene. “We work a three-card policy,” Air Commodore Moulds said. “They have been closed twice for food hygiene. If they get a third they will be out.”
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Treats on the T.G.I. Friday’s menu include baby back ribs, sesame chicken strips and Key West shrimp. At $25 (£17) a steak, it is by far the most expensive restaurant on the camp but it is still packed at most mealtimes.
There are more than 15,000 soldiers, sailors and airmen based at Kandahar airfield and at least 9,000 contractors — the modern-day camp followers. They consume 31 million gallons of water a month and about 1.4 million kilos of food — including 600,000 cans of fizzy pop and half-a-million eggs.
With 328 aircraft making about 5,000 sorties a week, officials say that Kandahar is now the busiest single-runway airport in the world.
Most of the restaurants operating under US licences from the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, the American equivalent of the British Naafi, have now closed. That includes almost all the stalls at Bagram, the main American base north of Kabul, as well as the Pizza Hut and the Burger King at Kandahar. Because Kandahar airfield is a Nato base, and not wholly American, it has been spared the full reach of General McChrystal’s reforms.
Troops in Kandahar are still free to buy filter coffee from the Canadian Tim Hortons, milkshakes and sundaes from the Cold Mountain ice cream parlour, pizzas from Mama Mia’s and almond croissants from the French Deli KAF.
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Air Commodore Moulds hopes to open a sports café on the edge of the base’s boardwalk, a covered decking walkway, where the Pizza Hut once stood. Nato makes about $100,000 from the businesses on the boardwalk and the money is being used to fund a running track and a new football field.
“I believe we need facilities,” he added. “Most people are working a 12-hour day. A lot of people work more than that. If you can break the afternoon by getting a coffee and a doughnut, it’s a sensible thing to have.”