Fast-Food from the Frontline
To the disappointment of uniformed doughnut lovers, Tim Hortons is leaving the front. The Canadian chain of all things baked and brewed will end a five-year deployment to Kandahar airfield (KAF), as Canadian forces are scheduled to ship out of the country by the end of July. Popular with both Canadians and non-Canadians, hour-long lines frequently snake out of the coffee shop and down the KAF boardwalk, a hollow quadrangle of stores that hosts friendly pick-up games and the occasional Toby Keith concert at its center. In Kandahar’sfierce heat, the iced capp machine has been put through its paces.By the end of most shifts it is nothing more than a quivering mass after sputtering out one last frozen cappuccino.
Around the corner from the Tim Hortons stands the T.G.I. Friday's, complete with requisite surfboard and guitar latched to the wall, above couples on awkward first dates.Apart from the complete dearth of children, the equally dry bar and burgers, the errant rocket attack, the camouflaged clientele, and the seemingly all-Bangladeshi staff, you could be in any midwestern, suburban strip mall.
Tim Hortons and T.G.I. Friday's are among the few fast-food purveyors in Afghanistan to survive a nationwide culling last year.
Back in March 2010, Command Sgt. Maj. Michael T. Hall, a deputy to then-top U.S. commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal, wrote on an ISAF blog: "This is a warzone – not an amusement park... In the coming weeks and months, concessions such as Orange Julius, Burger King, Pizza Hut [and] Dairy Queen...will close their doors," in an effort to help the alliance, "accommodate the troop increase and get refocused on the mission at hand." It's reported that in private, McChrystal told senior officers he was shuttering the food-court detritus because he didn't want to be the first American general to tell a grieving mother that her son died delivering frozen pizza.
Prior to the austerity measures the lines at Burger King and Subway ran 20 to 30 deep, despite the fact that fast-food outlets were routinely out of ingredients (supplies would often get stuck at customs along the Pakistani border for weeks or months—that is, when the supply convoys weren't attacked en route). More than a few times, the Burger King at KAF was down to serving only french fries, wrote the Wall Street Journal.
The prohibition did not last long however.In a fast-food about-face, McChrystal's replacement, Gen. David Petraeus, reversed his predecessor's decision, hoping to restore M.W.R.—the military's acronym for "morale, welfare, and recreation." The first Pizza Hut reopenned in February of this year, with Burger King not far behind.
T.G.I. Friday's skirted the 2010 ban by virtue of being Afghan-owned, as NATO officials wanted to avoid hurting the local economy.
Tim Hortons' fate, on the other hand, was more a matter of grease-trap diplomacy.At the time, the U.S. was trying to convince its Canadian partners not to pull its combat forces out of Kandahar in 2011. In these negotiations, the doughnut store became a pawn of international intrigue. The offer, however, was not sweet enough.
An army may march on its stomach, but not even the promise of crullers could tempt the Canadians to stay.
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