"Up close and Personal," from "Stars and Stripes."
GIs' other role in Afghanistan: diplomacy
By Steve Liewer, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Tuesday, September 3, 2002
KVOST-AB, Afghanistan, Sometimes armies achieve their goals with rifles and tanks on a battlefield.
Sometimes, they use soft words while sitting cross-legged on a rug, sipping sweet tea.
That's what Capt. John Miller, commander of a 2nd Battalion infantry company serving in Afghanistan with the 1st Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, found himself doing last week.
This was an odd position for Miller, 30, a laid-back Southern Californian with an easy grin and a trace of the beach in his voice.
No one in infantry joined to become a civil affairs soldier,? he said, talking about the small group of troops who carry out humanitarian projects.
But this is a strange war, one in which foot soldiers sometimes find themselves acting as diplomats. On this day, in this village, the job required quiet talk ? backed up by big guns.
In June, an American soldier had been shot and wounded when a U.S. patrol drove through Kvost-Ab, a village of 500 families near Kandahar Airfield in southern Afghanistan. Although Canadian and American troops had helped to build a new schoolhouse there last spring, U.S. authorities had marked it as a potentially hostile place.
Miller, a history and political science major in college, had studied up on Kvost-Ab before this mission. He knew that the village had been a source of mujahideen raids when Soviet troops used the Kandahar airport as a base.
"The Soviets would take reprisals by robbing and murdering," Miller said.
He also knew the United States had dropped bombs in the Kandahar area during last fall's aerial bombardment. He worried this might be a village especially hostile to outside forces.
Armed with this knowledge, the convoy of six Humvees, including several military police as well as members of Miller's Delta Company, crawled down the dusty gravel road into Kvost-Ab.
Children dressed in colorful robes ran up, shouting, to greet the visitors.
They swarmed around the Humvees, fascinated by the soldiers? battle gear and uniforms. Some of the soldiers took digital photos, then showed them to the fascinated youngsters.
Miller and 1st Lt. Kyle McCoy emerged from two of the vehicles. They asked a teenager to find a community leader.
After a few minutes, a short, stocky fellow with a gray beard and light blue turban appeared and, through a translator, introduced himself as Haji Mohammad Zahir, the village elder.
Flanked by three soldiers and a translator, Miller and McCoy followed Zahir into the sky-blue schoolhouse. They sat down on threadbare carpets. One of Zahir?s teenage bodyguards, a soldier in the Afghan militia, brought chai, the sweetened tea commonly served to guests in the Middle East.
Miller presented a box of notebooks, crayons, pens and papers for the village?s schoolchildren, a gift from the U.S. Army.
?We?re happy to be here,? he said. ?It makes us feel very good as soldiers to be here in peace.?
Zahir looked over the gifts and thanked him, saying the townspeople were grateful the Army would think of the children. He said the village had not had a school for a long time.
?We?re happy that, after the war, Americans are trying to help us,? Zahir said. ?These are the gifts of the American people.?
Miller said his unit, which had been in Afghanistan about two weeks, had driven through the village without stopping.
?We heard some reports of children holding rocks. We weren?t sure how we would be greeted when we got here,? Miller said. ?We want to be sure Americans don?t get frightened. We?re new here, new to Kandahar.?
Zahir said the children didn?t intend to throw rocks but were excited because Canadian soldiers who patrolled there frequently earlier this year used to throw them pens and candy.
McCoy asked if there were any mines on the road or in the fields nearby. He said he was afraid the children might step on them. He didn?t say it, but he also feared American soldiers might drive over one, as had happened just two weeks before.
Zahir told him the road near the village was safe, but he didn?t know about the area near the base. He said the American airplanes had dropped a lot of bombs last fall that did not explode.
He also said there were no weapons hidden in Kvost-Ab.
?Americans and Canadians have searched our village,? Zahir said. ?There are no weapons in our area, but I don?t know about the other villages.?
Miller told Zahir that the Americans frequently patrol at night. He wanted to make sure it would not inconvenience the villagers if they were asked to stay indoors after dark.
?As long as people stay in their houses, they will be safe,? he said.
He also asked Zahir to make certain his Afghan militia soldiers who stand guard along the road do not point their rifles at the Army patrols.
?That would provoke a response. If a soldier with a weapon would walk up and not stop, we wouldn?t know,? Miller said. ?In the daytime, we know they are our friends. At night time, we?re a little nervous.?
He told them he knew that mujahideen from the village had fought the Soviets, but Zahir assured him the people of Kvost-Ab regard the Americans much differently than the former occupiers.
?There was a big difference between you and the Russians. The Russians wanted to capture our country, and you want to help us,? Zahir said. ?They were not able to stop and talk to us and have tea. They would not get out of their trucks.?
Miller asked what things Americans could do to help the village. Zahir mentioned electricity (Kvost-Ab has none), pumps for the farmers? wells, and medical assistance. Miller promised to go back to his commanders and see what assistance the Army can offer.
After their visit, the Americans rose to leave, and their hosts bid them goodbye. Zahir assured his visitors they had friends in Kvost-Ab.
?Our village is for America,? he said. ?If you come even without your trucks, you can walk, and you will be safe.?
The soldiers climbed back in their Humvees and drove on, reassured ? at least for now.
?We would love to get closer to the villagers and show them a little piece of America,? Miller reflected later that day. ?But we?ll never, ever drop our guard.?
He said much of the world seems to have forgotten all the good Americans have done for people around the world, especially in the years after World War II.
He sees this as an opportunity for the Army to give Afghans a better view of the United States. He hopes someone helps them with the electricity, the pumps, and the medical care they need.
?We would be foolish if we didn?t follow up what we achieved today,? Miller said. ?We?ve got to make sure we get [assistance] to them.?
The Army?s job, he said, is to find people who wish Americans ill and neutralize them.
?But maybe,? he added, ?the best way to neutralize them is by helping them.?http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=10279 |
