Armed Humanitarians

by Nathan Hodge

  It was a simple, attractive argument: Roads equaled economic development and central control. They connected isolated rural populations to the central government, and provided a means for the counterinsurgency force to cause the ink-blot of security to spread. Kilcullen was particularly effusive about what he saw in Afghanistan’s Kunar Province. While acknowledging that road construction could have “negative security and political effects, especially when executed unthinkingly or in an un-coordinated fashion,” he called what he saw in Kunar “a coordinated civil-military activity based on a political strategy of separating the insurgent from the people and connecting the people to the government. In short, this is a political maneuver with the road as a means to a political end.”12

  By 2009, road projects had become the single biggest investment by coalition forces in Afghanistan. Major General Jeffrey Schloesser, the commander of the Combined Joint Task Force 101, told reporters in a June 2009 briefing that his forces had committed around $300 million of the total pool of $485 million in the Commander’s Emergency Response Program funds to laying asphalt. “Roads still remain our biggest investment, just like last year,” he said. “They have a huge impact, as you know. They connect communities … to themselves, so they can have an economy. They connect the village to the government. And they help to increase the access to the larger cities and towns in Afghanistan.”

  All told, Schloesser said, the task force had undertaken three hundred road projects and had paved or planned to pave two thousand kilometers of road. One of the more ambitious road projects begun in the summer of 2009 was the Parwan-to-Bamyan road, a major project for the north of Afghanistan that would link the isolated highland province of Bamyan with the rest of Afghanistan, and help create an alternative northern transportation route for the country. It was of strategic importance as well. The main highway linking Afghanistan to the southern ports of Pakistan passed through the vulnerable Khyber Pass, and supply convoys passing through Pakistan had come under increased attack by militants.

  Bamyan Province was home to the Hazaras, Afghanistan’s most oppressed and downtrodden minority group, most of them Shia Muslims. Subjugated by the country’s Pashtun rulers and relegated to manual labor, they often worked as housemaids or night watchmen in Kabul. In their home province, they scratched out a living from subsistence farming. During their rule, the Taliban visited terrible violence on the Hazaras, in some cases systematically singling out Hazara men and boys for execution. The province was also the scene of the Taliban’s most dramatic act of vandalism: the destruction of the giant Buddha statues in Bamyan Valley in 2001. Things had improved little since the fall of the Taliban. The province rarely seemed to command the attention of the central government, and in terms of development, Bamyan remained pretty much off the grid.

  A new highway, it was thought, would not only connect the impoverished dwellers of Bamyan to markets but also, more important, bring them closer to the capital. The journey to Parwan Province, just north of Kabul, usually took twelve or fourteen hours by car; when the new highway was finished, travel time would be reduced to two or three hours. It was a major undertaking that would turn the dingy market town of Charikar into a central hub for travel, and create a bypass around the Salang Tunnel, the main north–south link in Afghanistan.

  Responsibility for managing the road projects in Bamyan fell to the Bamyan Provincial Reconstruction Team, a 150-strong contingent of the New Zealand military based at a former Soviet airstrip just outside the town of Bamyan. The Bamyan PRT was generally seen as one of the more successful civil-military teams. New Zealand’s soldiers had plenty of experience on peacekeeping operations; Kiwis had been deployed on peacekeeping operations and U.N. missions in around a dozen countries, including East Timor, the Solomon Islands, and Kosovo. They had a reputation for a low-key approach that was less aggressive than the Americans’. Equally important, the province’s political leader, Habiba Surabi—Afghanistan’s first female governor—was a strong proponent of development work. Around 125 different projects were under way in the province, with a total value of around forty million dollars. Some projects were modest in scale, such as flood protection walls, footbridges, school repairs, and wells. The largest share of funding came from the U.S. military, which was helping fund the more ambitious projects like the Parwan-to-Bamyan road.

  Like the Panjshir, Bamyan was relatively peaceful and stable, but in the weeks before I arrived, the province had seen what Group Captain Greg Elliot, the Bamyan PRT commander, called an “uptick in kinetic activity”: some roadside bombs, a recent firefight at a police outpost. The Bamyan PRT had five liaison teams stationed at remote outposts, and a security patrol in the northeast region had recently been caught in a sophisticated ambush. Before I arrived at Kiwi Base, the team had been on lockdown for several days before over a security alert. According to one civilian on the team, everyone was “keyed up” because of the upcoming presidential elections and concerns that the Taliban were looking for a target in the north to demonstrate that they could strike anywhere.

  Most of the recent violence had been confined to the northeast of Bamyan, near the border with Baghlan Province, where the Bamyan PRT was finishing a district roadbuilding project to the town of Madar. A ribbon-cutting ceremony was being planned to celebrate the completion of the road, as well as to inaugurate the western portion of the Parwan-to-Bamyan road. It would be an important photo opportunity for the coalition. To reach the far northeast corner of the province required a day-long journey. Helicopters were in short supply, and it took a bone-jarring eight-hour drive to reach the Bamyan PRT’s remote patrol base.

  I hitched a ride with two of the team’s engineers, New Zealand army Captain Paul Mead, a combat engineer, and Mike Doherty of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. They did not have their own vehicles, so they rode along with a security patrol that was heading to the northeastern patrol base. On the way, they were planning to stop and visit some other projects. It was the best chance for them to measure the progress of the construction work the coalition was funding in the province.

  The engineers’ first stop was at a district government center where laborers were spreading asphalt coating on the roof. Mead and Doherty clambered up a rickety ladder to inspect their work. Doherty praised the contractor, but pointed out a number of improvements that needed to be made at the work site: Clean up those wood shavings; don’t leave planks with nails sticking up; make sure that the ladder is fixed.

  After their walk-through, the engineers spotted some workers getting ready to mix some concrete in a wheelbarrow, a cost-cutting measure that would save diesel used to run their mixer. Doherty politely scolded the contractor. “You shouldn’t mix it in a wheelbarrow. The contract doesn’t allow hand-mixed concrete.”

  As the convoy wound farther north, the engineers stopped at more work sites, including a basic health clinic in the village of Ghandak, where they sat down to talk about building a flood wall with Nematullah, the clinic director, and the head of the local shura, or council. It was a further occasion for diplomacy. Mead began his meeting with a short, well-rehearsed speech: “The New Zealand PRT is committed to helping the people of Ghandak, and it’s important that we have the full participation of the shura and the community in this project.”

  Mead asked about the concertina wire they put around the clinic’s wall: Had it made the community feel safer?

  “The wires on the wall are very good,” Nematullah said. “During the middle of the night the patients feel safer. And the walls stop the dogs.”

  “This is good to hear,” Mead said. “The next thing that our friends from Afghan Bamaco are going to do is put up a flood protection wall for the clinic.” He introduced a local contractor, who ceremoniously unrolled a sheaf of blueprints.

  Village leaders were less than enthusiastic about that plan. “If you put the wall there, there’ll be arguments with the farmers,” said Mohammad Daoud, the village elder. “We want a flood protection wall along the ri
verbank.”

  The design of flood protection walls was a serious issue. In another village, Der Sheng, the two engineers inspected another flood wall that had caused a small disaster. The Der Sheng flood wall—perhaps built by an earlier rotation of the PRT, perhaps by a nongovernmental organization, no one was quite sure—had channeled the water into a “pinch point” that sent water hurtling down the valley at high velocity. It churned up the foundation of the flood wall and scoured out the floor of the channel, dragging along rock, soil, and boulders that covered up arable land further down the valley. People could go hungry because of good intentions.

  Doherty, a Corps of Engineers flood-protection expert, spoke up: “This is what we want to do with the wall. Make sure that it’s wide enough to accommodate the river. If the channel is too narrow, the velocity of the water will increase.”

  The interpreter struggled with the technical explanation, and the Afghans were still unconvinced. “I appreciate your concern that you have,” said Mead. “However, in my experience—and Mike is an expert in America in flood protection—we believe it’s not best if the flood wall is by the river. I ask that you trust the PRT engineers and the design that we’ve come up with.”

  The extended discussion was part of the frustrating but very necessary process of winning local commitment to the project; it required patience from the engineers, who had seen the results of poorly conceived or badly executed aid work. After debating for an hour and a half, Daoud relented. “We believe you and trust in your experience,” he said, shaking the hands of the engineers. “But the people are not happy with this.”

  Doherty and Mead seemed to care deeply about their job, and they had to work hard to convince the security teams, usually composed of younger, ready-for-action infantrymen, that these protracted negotiations were the primary mission. On a visit to a district subgovernor’s office under construction in the provincial center of Sayghan, Doherty had to argue with the patrol commander, who wanted him to hurry up and wrap up a meeting with a local building contractor.

  One of the soldiers called over the radio, “The boss wants to know when we’re done. We’ve got other patrols to do.”

  Mike snapped back, “Tell him I haven’t been here for a month. This trip is for me.”

  “But we’ve got patrols to do.”

  “I know, but if he’s got a problem, we can talk it through later.”

  For the engineers, it was a constant battle: Trying to win the trust of Afghans, and trying to persuade the other soldiers that this was a mission that deserved their time. They also had to remind the security teams about winning hearts and minds. Despite the generally lower level of violence here, the security teams often drove at high speeds through villages or refused to take off their intimidating wraparound shades when interacting with ordinary Afghans.

  During their long-range patrol in the northeast, the engineers overnighted at a small patrol base shared with a contingent of U.S. Military Police from Fort Hood, Texas. The MPs were there to train the local contingent of Afghan National Police. When not on a training mission, they played Ping-Pong or worked out in a weight room. At night they watched DVDs on a projector. There were few other distractions. This small base had no Internet or morale phones for calls home, so the troopers devised other entertainment. One diversion was the “man-jammy challenge”: When someone lost at Ping-Pong with a score of zero, they had to run around the perimeter of the small camp in a shalwar kameez, the long tunic and baggy pants worn by Afghan men. The soldiers claimed their adopted camp dogs were trained to attack anyone in man-jammies, which would double the entertainment value. It didn’t quite work that way in practice. When a soldier who lost at Ping-Pong emerged from behind the HESCO barrier in his shalwar kameez, the dog lunged after him, then stopped to sniff his hand and lick it. “She recognized him,” said one MP with disappointment. Despite the NATO command’s pronouncements, cultural sensitivity was not their strong suit.

  That night, as we set out our cots under the stars at the remote patrol base, a weary Doherty finally unburdened himself. He was frustrated not by the interminable negotiations with the Afghans, but by his work with the military. Even though this was primarily a reconstruction mission, he worried that testosterone-filled infantrymen were not suited for the job. “The Kiwis are supposed to be the low-key ones!” he said, shaking his head. “And they are so coarse and heavy-handed. Their language is so crude. Even if Afghans don’t understand English, they can tell. The muscles and the tattoos, the wraparound shades, the body language. They have this contempt for the locals.”

  It wasn’t just the New Zealanders who had that attitude, Doherty said. “Remember the movie The Beast?” he asked, referring to a Hollywood film about a Soviet tank crew in Afghanistan. “I watched that at the base in Qalat. And you know the opening scene, where the helicopters come in and destroy the village? The U.S. soldiers all cheered. And the Afghan staff watched.”

  We discussed the day’s patrol. While driving back to base, the soldiers sped through the village nearest to the patrol base, kicking up an enormous cloud of dust. I saw more than a few sidelong glances at the convoy. “It’s so inconsiderate,” Doherty said. “And one inconsiderate gesture can erase all the months of good work.”

  Doherty’s biggest concern, though, was the road to Madar, where the ribbon-cutting ceremony was to take place in two days. Local contractors had bulldozed over part of the local bazaar and paved over some of the fields without compensating anyone. The road looked great on paper. It was a deliverable result, and would be a public relations boost for the coalition, but the local residents were still simmering. Worse still, the local government had no budget or equipment to maintain and repair the roads. Unless they received continued subsidy, the roads would quickly fall into disrepair. “You have colonels in Bagram making decisions about the inches of asphalt, and they have no clue,” Doherty said with a sigh.

  Two days later, top officers were helicoptered in from Bagram for the road-opening ceremony, which also marked the launch of the western portion of the Parwan-to-Bamyan road. The event was presided over by Habiba Surabi, the governor of Bamyan Province. Surabi appeared at the ribbon-cutting with Colonel Scott Spellmon, the commander of Task Force Warrior, and Group Captain Elliot, the PRT commander, who was photographed at the ribbon cutting wearing a traditional lambskin cap and a woolen cloak.

  It was a marvelous photo opportunity, but the goodwill did not last. A few days after the ceremony, Abdullah Abdullah, an Afghan presidential candidate, paid a visit to the province for a campaign event. When Surabi’s car arrived at the checkpoint outside the event, her guards emerged from the vehicle, only to have the U.S. MPs draw their weapons on them. Surabi was infuriated; I later learned that she called all government officials in Kabul demanding that the Americans leave Bamyan. Colonel Spellmon, the commander of Task Force Warrior, flew up to Bamyan to smooth things over, but also warned the locals that if the Americans left, they would take all their money with them.

  The school visit in the Panjshir was not a mere photo opportunity intended to win over the Beltway elites with images of progress; the valley was not a Potemkin village. The Bagram outreach was a genuine effort to win friends and influence people in the communities around a vital base. Road projects were some measure of progress, even if they weren’t sustainable. But to replicate this success throughout Afghanistan would require a generation-long military commitment and a generation-long investment by the U.S. taxpayer. It would require a military and diplomatic apparatus that was completely reorganized around a new mission of building the rudiments of a functioning Afghan state. It would be armed development work on a massive scale, involving combat troops, military advisors, cultural and development experts, and local administrators, in a reprise of the “successful” Iraq strategy. It meant more troops would live out among the population, away from the fortified sanctuary of the forward operating base, and commanders would turn on a stream of development money through the Comman
der’s Emergency Response Program. And this time, civilian agencies would have to chip in on a much larger scale and step up to the task of administering a state down to the district level. Could this be done? Or was the ribbon-cutting scene in the Panjshir girls’ school just a symbol of an elusive dream?

  Since 2001, Congress has appropriated more than $50 billion for humanitarian and reconstruction aid to Afghanistan, yet all the money spent in Afghanistan has not guaranteed success. Violence was on the rise in the summer of 2009; August 2009 was the deadliest month on record for U.S. troops, but by June 2010 the security situation had deteriorated further. In fact, the infusion of aid was to some extent enabling the corruption that was undermining support for the Afghan government. It was fairly common knowledge that the increase in aid had created more opportunities for kickbacks and bribery. For example, the owner of an Afghan logistics firm casually disclosed to me in 2008 that he was spending $5,000 to pay off militia commanders every time he sent a fuel convoy to Kandahar. But the U.S. government was slow to act. In September 2009, prompted in part by an investigation in the online newspaper GlobalPost, USAID launched a belated investigation into allegations that money for highway and bridge projects was ending up in the hands of Taliban commanders, who extracted protection money from roadbuilders.13 But increased oversight could never be enough, given the sheer volume of dollars arriving in Afghanistan. Even Secretary of Defense Robert Gates acknowledged this reality in a press conference with President Hamid Karzai, saying: “I do have concerns that with the billions and billions of dollars coming into Afghanistan from the international community, that that assistance itself has become one of those sources of corruption.”