Joshua Partlow/The Washington Post - Chris Hart, a Department of Defense civilian adviser to the Afghan national army slaughterhouse in Kabul, is part of an American shift away from combat and toward supporting Afghan forces — jobs that are less than glamorous.
Each day, the animals get herded into the slaughterhouse in the early morning, some from as far away as Pakistan. The slaughterhouse purchases its daily orders from livestock brokers.
Some of the butchers at the slaughterhouse — which is halal, meaning it adheres to Islamic principles — are former insurgents, Hart said. But they have earned his respect.
“It’s not an easy job. They’re in a very nasty, dirty environment, and it takes a strong individual to process the meat. Not everybody can go in there and start whacking on an animal all day long. And smell flesh,” he said. “I’ve cut one jugular vein since I’ve been here. I don’t make a habit of it. It’s very messy, for one. You’re going to get nailed soon as you cut that jugular vein.”
The slaughterhouse has existed for more than 50 years, but it was badly damaged during the Afghan civil war in the early 1990s and has been slowly rebuilt over the past several years under the command of Brig. Gen. Mohammad Zarif. During Hart’s tenure, the U.S. military has purchased band saws and boning knives with plastic handles, steel-toed rubber boots for the butchers and biodegradable cleaning products to replace the acid.
“We basically started from scratch with this facility because it was so badly damaged,” said Col. Sayed Ishaq Sadaat, the deputy director at the slaughterhouse. “Mr. Adviser helped us quite a lot by bringing equipment from the United States, including modern tools to chop meat. We didn’t have this type of equipment in the old days.”
Hart is working with Zarif on plans for a new slaughterhouse on the outskirts of the city near the Pul-e-Charkhi prison. The growing Afghan army will need 1.3 million pounds of meat a month just in the Kabul area, but the current slaughterhouse has a capacity to produce less than half that. Hart expects construction will begin next year.
“We’re busting at the seams here in terms of the amount of meat we process,” he said.
On a recent tour of the slaughterhouse, Hart tried to smooth out some of the rough edges that remain. He reminded the butchers to use their new plastic-
handled knives and to hold the goats’ heads down when they sliced their jugulars, so they didn’t spray blood all over. He cringed as workers dropped a goat carcass on the pavement, then picked it up and loaded it onto a truck.
“In the States, that meat would be gone as soon as it hit the ground,” he said.
But in his little patch of the war, Hart believes that he and his Afghan team are on the path to victory, and he knows exactly what that will look like when they get there.
“At this point, they’re not too worried about T-bone, porterhouse, top sirloin steaks,” he said. “They just want meat.”
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