Afganistan. Relacja BORowika (Book)

This is a book that will certainly open the eyes of many readers who know next to nothing about Afghanistan, what our soldiers are doing there, or what protecting buildings and people actually involves.
First, it is a very good thing that the book is written in lively, highly amusing language. Accounts like these have no place in pompous prose.
Second, my view of journalists in print, radio and television matches the authors’ view exactly. Media people have completely lost their heads, men and women alike. They have convinced themselves that they are the country’s fourth estate. I share the authors’ opinion, and need only repeat their words: “…media representatives will do anything to sell their product well, so they put on a spectacle for us, and that spectacle needs actors and blood.” There is nothing to add or take away.
Third, congratulations on the restrained account of NANGAR KHEL. Restrained, because there was really no other way to write it. And the major’s “role reversal” with the journalists is an ABSOLUTE MASTERSTROKE. Listening to and watching the childish antics of those uniformed “prosecutor” types over NANGAR KHEL drove me up the wall. Appalling.
Fourth, the descriptions of the Foreign Ministry men, the so-called “diplomats”, are brilliant. Bloody true to life. That is a subject in itself; you could write any number of books about them. Most are megalomaniacs with their noses held so high that Warsaw’s tram wires have to be raised to keep them from getting caught.
Now a few words about the story:
In 2007, a young officer of Poland’s Government Protection Bureau (BOR), top of his training course and an excellent marksman, was assigned to protect the Polish embassy being established in Afghanistan. He found himself in the middle of a shambles and decided to record it in a diary, breaking the rule that nothing from the “firm” ever gets out. He allowed himself both indirect and direct criticism of pointless procedures, disingenuous superiors and some colleagues comfortably avoiding difficult assignments back home. Did you know that the embassy in Kabul was guarded by four officers and a few local guards? The officers slept in the basement and were less well equipped than the specialists serving with the Polish military contingent. They preferred to eat at ISAF bases, although they lost radio contact with the embassy shortly after leaving it. Their reports to Warsaw requesting an armored car for the ambassador would “go missing”, while no one there believed their descriptions of the embassy’s disastrous location.