Building on Faith
fter nearly six months in Afghanistan, Army Reserve Col. Darrel Branhagen, coordinator of the Army's rebuilding efforts in the capital city of Kabul, thought he had heard all the horror stories about the nation's largest women's hospital. The Rabia Balkhi Women's Hospital in Kabul has been nicknamed the "Placenta Palace" by U.S. soldiers because of the astounding number of births there, more than 200 a week, and the practice of discarding afterbirth in open trash cans, until the Army brought in an incinerator. Women often share beds during childbirth. Some give birth on sidewalks outside the hospital because the facility's check-in process is interminably slow. Doctors earn only $38 a month and work from textbooks written a decade before the AIDS virus was discovered. And until recently, one woman a day was dying during labor.
Despite all that, Branhagen still shook his head in amazement after learning recently what the hospital does with its discarded hypodermic needles. Instead of throwing them out, enterprising medical personnel twist the thin needles into paper clips, because the hospital cannot afford to buy the kind sold at places like Office Depot. "Can you believe that? Paper clips!" he says. "We had Centers for Disease Control nurses here who said they hadn't seen that since the mid-1980s in Africa."
Welcome to Afghanistan, a nation whose most modern city, Kabul, has nary a building that hasn't been pockmarked with bullet holes or reduced to rubble after more than two decades of Soviet occupation, civil wars and U.S. air strikes aimed at ousting the Taliban in 2001. Power flickers on and mostly off for those who can afford it, but most can't since the average annual salary is about $500 per year. In Afghanistan, the U.S. military faces one of its biggest reconstruction projects since rebuilding Germany and Japan after World War II. The United States has about 10,000 troops in Afghanistan, but the burden of rebuilding falls mainly on a cadre of 350 Army reservists in Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations units. Those soldiers are struggling for respect inside and outside the Army as they experiment with ways to manage the 21st century's first great humanitarian crisis.
IN RESERVE
Civil affairs personnel are the military's version of social workers. They don't fight battles, but rather seek to win over civilian populations by providing humanitarian assistance. In Afghanistan, that has meant managing $20 million a year in Defense projects such as building 130 schools and more than 30 medical clinics and drilling more than 400 wells since October 2001. It also has entailed assisting Afghan government officials in developing a database of the country's hospitals, running medical clinics for both people and livestock, keeping tabs on nongovernmental aid groups, helping to train a new Afghan army, and laying the groundwork for a constitutional convention. The goal of civil affairs soldiers is first to earn the respect of Afghans by offering support and then to teach them to sustain and govern themselves. "Our primary mission is to get people to go to their own government," says Branhagen.
More than 90 percent of the Army's nearly 6,000 civil affairs soldiers are either in the Army Reserve or the National Guard. The only active duty battalion is based at Fort Bragg, N.C. And like other reserve forces, civil affairs troops have seen their deployments rise sharply over the past decade as peacekeeping missions have increased. About 85 percent of the military's civil affairs force is deployed, compared with just 17 percent of the overall reserve component.
More than a dozen civil affairs officers interviewed by Government Executive in Afghanistan have been deployed during the past 10 years, many to Bosnia or Kosovo. And most expect to be called back to Afghanistan within 18 months of returning home in the spring. Army Reserve Col. Mackey Hancock, commander of civil affairs operations in the country, has been on three deployments since 1990-to the Persian Gulf, the Balkans and Afghanistan-compared with none during the first 12 years of his civil affairs career. He says the quickening pace of trips overseas likely will make it tough for the force to hang on to its soldiers. "I know I'll lose some of the younger guys when we get back," says Hancock.
Last spring, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress that he wants to shed 300,000 support jobs from the active duty ranks in order to add active duty positions the services need more. That would include civil affairs units. Rumsfeld also is considering creating a permanent, active duty peacekeeping and reconstruction force of tens of thousands of soldiers that presumably would rely heavily on civil affairs personnel. The Army meanwhile, plans to create an additional active duty civil affairs battalion.
Civil affairs officers caution that adding active duty personnel may not be an ideal way to expand their ranks. They say the military services benefit from having a cadre of reservists with real-world experience that active duty personnel lack. For example, Hancock, a judge in west Texas, and Branhagen, a corporate lawyer for a Texas branch of the international consulting firm Siemens, have helped rewrite Afghanistan's laws. Col. Donald Fuller, Virginia-based consulting firm Booz Allen & Hamilton's project manager for its Air Force public key infrastructure program in Texas, oversees spending for civil affairs construction projects. Col. Daniel Renya, New Mexico's top official managing health care along the U.S. border with Mexico, has developed standards for clinics in Afghanistan. "Nearly all of us are using our civilian skills," says Col. Warren Beyer, a retired federal bank examiner for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, who has been working with the Afghan Ministry of Finance to create a reliable central banking system.
RECONSTRUCTION TEAMS
The successful rebuilding of Afghanistan is tied to the business experience of civil affairs soldiers. The new approach to managing reconstruction operations here is provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs) managed by civil affairs officers. The teams, made up of as many as 150 combat and civil affairs soldiers, Special Forces troops, support personnel and employees of U.S. federal agencies such as the Agency for International Development, are deployed to outposts around Afghanistan. They are conduits for military aid and provide a U.S. foothold in areas still hostile to American forces and even to the Afghan government. Several reconstruction teams were set up in 2003 and in 2004; eventually, as many as 12 will be up and running.
In the southeastern region of Gardez, where warlords still hold great sway, a reconstruction team has focused on frequent patrols to demonstrate the U.S. presence. In the more stable area that includes Bagram Air Force Base north of Kabul, a team is scouting out locations for new schools and medical clinics and hiring local contractors to build them. And in mountainous and remote areas in the central part of the nation, efforts have focused on repairing bridges and roadways needed for delivering aid.
A common feature of each provincial reconstruction team is a civil military operations center, a humanitarian storefront staffed by civil affairs soldiers who daily consider requests for aid and respond to residents' concerns. Pakita province Gov. Raz Muhammed Dalili told reporters at a news conference in Gardez last spring that having a direct link between residents and the military at the operations center has paved the way for improvements in the region. "The suspicion between the local people and the central government has lessened because of the coalition [reconstruction teams]. [People] see that the central government is working to reconstruct their country, and because of the security forces, there is now a sense of security here," Dalili said. The United Nations peacekeeping forces in Afghanistan also have signaled support for the provincial reconstruction teams. In October, UN officials agreed to provide security outside Kabul, and said they may expand the UN presence by adding international soldiers to the teams.
SEEKING RESPECT
At the operations center for the Parwan province north of Kabul, Maj. Carman Oldre, an Army civil affairs reservist who normally sells waterfront real estate in Minnesota, leans forward in her chair, pushes her blonde hair out of her eyes and prepares to negotiate with a powerful militia leader. Based at Bagram Air Force Base, a former Soviet airfield that has become the hub for military operations across Afghanistan, Oldre is a top officer for the Parwan reconstruction team. The province is relatively stable. Oldre wants to expand an all-boys school in one of the villages to accommodate girls, who have been banned from schools for more than a decade under Taliban law. But before awarding a contract, she needs to know that local workers will not run into any resistance. "We want to build this school. Can you help us?" she asks the militia leader through an interpreter.
Gul Zamon, a Northern Alliance leader who still commands the loyalty of hundreds if not thousands of soldiers in north central Afghanistan, stares straight ahead and fingers a light blue string of prayer beads. The reconstruction team has called on him because he has the clout to ensure that remnants of the Taliban will not fire on the construction workers or contaminate their drinking water. Zamon asks who will do the work and insists it be awarded to local contractors of his choosing. Oldre says the Army wants the work to go to locals. Indeed, about 75 percent of construction work the Army does in Afghanistan goes to local companies. But, she says, there must be a competitive bidding process open to all eligible contractors. She asks him for the name of two contractors who might bid for the work. Then, Oldre presses the point. "We want to build the school. Can you help us?"
Zamon, like most leaders in Afghanistan, knows little about competitive bids. He grows agitated and says the Army has promised work before without coming through. He says he was slighted earlier in the week when he was not invited to a bidders conference. (Oldre says her team tried to invite him, but could not find him.) Zamon shakes his head and seems disgusted. Unless he picks the contractors, the military leader will not guarantee safety. For 90 minutes, Oldre and Zamon go back and forth. She talks about schools, he talks about who'll get the work. The meeting ends without resolution. Oldre promises she'll be in touch. Zamon leaves without saying much more.
Winning respect may be the toughest challenge for civil affairs officers in Afghanistan. They must seek approval from the growing collection of wannabe political leaders and powerbrokers who believe they run the country, from active duty troops who sometimes view civil affairs personnel as less than true soldiers and from dozens of nongovernmental organizations that are wary of working with the military. In order to rebuild the nation, civil affairs officers first must build faith among their doubters and detractors.
Army Reserve Lt. Col. Elizabeth Damonte, commander of the Parwan reconstruction team, stresses the importance of making only promises that can be kept. During a recent visit to a local school with Korean military officers, who are considering building an addition there, Damonte reminded them that they'd already visited the school three times and the principal and teachers expected the project to come through. "We can't just keep coming out here and not doing anything," she warned her Korean counterparts.
Maj. Mark Donlin, who oversees the Army's humanitarian storefront in Gardez, says "baby steps" are the key to dealing with Afghanistan's daunting challenges. For example, Gardez has struggled to provide garbage collection service because it lacks trucks. U.S. officials encouraged local residents to use wheelbarrows until they could buy a garbage truck. Now, the city has a truck, and officials are teaching garbage collectors about composting. "Look at the soil here; they could really use it," Donlin says.
Donlin points to the capture of several anti-government warlords in Gardez this summer as a prime example of winning trust among the local population. The capture was based largely on tips that civil affairs officers gathered simply by talking with Gardez denizens, Donlin says. Initially, the conversations helped them track down small-time crime bosses. But once residents saw arrests being made-without revealing informants' identities-they offered valuable intelligence that led to the capture of the city's most notorious ethnic gang leaders.
STRAINED RELATIONS
Winning the respect of their active duty counterparts hasn't been as easy for civil affairs officers. Active duty troops sometimes dismiss reservists as poorly trained weekend warriors. Most civil affairs officers interviewed by Government Executive did not want to be named when discussing the aversion to reservists in the active duty ranks. "There's some distrust because we don't play Army 365 days a year," says one senior civil affairs reservist.
Reserve Col. Fuller, manager of much of the military reconstruction budget in Afghanistan, says building reconstruction team centers has been a challenge because active duty officers would rather spend money on warfighting operations. He says the opening of two facilities last fall had to be pushed back by a few months because there was no construction money for civil affairs. But civil affairs Cmdr. Hancock sounds like the politician he is back in Texas when asked about relations with active duty Army personnel. "If they did not like us, why would they keep giving us more to do?" says Hancock, citing the growth of the reconstruction teams.
While civil affairs soldiers are careful when characterizing their relationship with their active duty counterparts, they're blunt about their unhappiness with the alphabet soup of nongovernmental organizations in the nation. Maj. Oldre is frustrated with civilian aid organizations that decline military security and then refuse to take on projects due to security concerns. In some cases, she says, those same aid workers will show up at the ribbon-cutting ceremony once the Army completes a project they turned down "so they can have their pictures taken for their newsletters." Many NGOs have declined to work with the military, saying they fear becoming targets and jeopardizing their role as impartial relief workers.
"We want the coalition to provide security, so we can do our jobs and deliver assistance to the Afghani people. But the very nature of the PRT blurs that line between soldier and aid worker, and that increases our insecurity," Rafael Robillard, executive director for Agencies Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief, an
NGO in Kabul, told The Christian Science Monitor last spring. Robillard was quoted in a story reporting that a girls school set up by provincial reconstruction teams was burned down and two wells set up by civil affairs forces were sabotaged.
Civil affairs officers have questioned the effectiveness of some nongovernmental organizations and have pushed for greater accountability in tracking various projects. "We are clearly butting heads," says Col. Renya, the civil affairs liaison to the Afghan Ministry of Health. For example, international organizations, such as UNICEF and the World Health Organization, have clashed with the Army over whether civil affairs medical teams can provide immunizations. Renya says NGOs don't want the military to participate because they disagree on the eradication rates for measles and polio. The NGOs estimate a 90 percent success rate, while Renya says they are "nowhere near that" and has reported those findings to the Afghanistan Ministry of Health.
Another problem has been project coordination. Until about six months ago, there was no way to keep track of hundreds of health care clinics being built by the military and NGOs. As a result, a military team might arrive at a site only to find an NGO already at work. In other cases, a site might be passed over because erroneous information showed a clinic already was under construction there. Civil affairs officers and the Ministry of Health now track all clinic construction in a single database. Civil affairs officers and the Afghan government want a similar information system for tracking all humanitarian work and money flowing into the country.
Sebastian Trives, who heads United Nations humanitarian efforts in Gardez, concedes that most NGOs have been concerned about the role of the military in reconstruction. "What we have been saying from the outset is we welcome PRTs, but we'd like PRTs and the coalition to make sure they are filling nontraditional reconstruction roles not done by NGOs in order not to blur the lines," he says. NGOs say the military should stick to security operations and undertake relief operations only in regions that are unsafe for aid groups. Often, Trives says, the UN acts as an information conduit between the two sides because nongovernmental organizations will not talk with the military. "We have to do more of that," he adds.
SAYING A PRAYER
Back on the front lines of humanitarian operations, Maj. Donlin shrugs off concerns about military and NGO relations, arguing there are enough challenges facing Afghanistan to go around. He sees those problems every day in Gardez at the civil affairs storefront. The crumpled government building has only intermittent power, missing windows and no flushing toilets. On a Monday morning in November, Donlin seems like a doctor at a walk-in clinic as local residents wander into the operations center with problems, requests and sometimes illnesses. Two brothers want money to replace a fuel truck destroyed during a U.S. bombing run. Donlin says he'll review the request with a lawyer. The weary leader of nomadic camel herdsmen requests food for his people and seeks treatment for his cold. Donlin arranges for a civil affairs team visit. A 12-year-old boy says he's the head of a family that has nothing to eat. Donlin calls for a sports utility vehicle to take a team to the boy's home.
Thirty minutes later, the boy tells Donlin and other civil affairs soldiers riding in the SUV to stop outside a cracked and sagging mud wall with a beat-up green, wooden door. This is his home. "We have nothing," he says through an interpreter. On the other side of the door, a small grassless yard is littered with rocks and scraps of wood. The stench of raw sewage stings the eyes. The yard holds about a dozen children, most under age 8, with black dirt on their faces; a few chickens; a manual water well; and ragged clothes drying on a rope line hanging from the branches of a dying tree. Teen-age girls in torn burkas are huddled to the side.
At the other end of the yard, jutting out from the rear mud wall, are two rooms-neither bigger than a typical college dorm room-with ripped plastic windows. This is where the family lives. The rooms have no chairs, tables or light except for a single fluorescent bulb, powered with electricity borrowed from a neighbor's generator. There are no amenities such as toilets. Throw rugs cover a dirt floor; only one bed is visible. A small fireplace with a narrow ledge holding a single pot with a mismatched lid is both kitchen and heater. Donlin asks how many people live there. "Twenty-three," says the boy, who, as the oldest male, heads the family.
Donlin asks more questions. "When was your last meal?" "Where are you getting firewood?" "Last night," and "Neighbors," says the man of the house. Donlin seems relieved. Other civil affairs soldiers take notes as Donlin continues questioning. As the soldiers begin to leave, children crowd around asking for pens, candy, MREs, anything. The boy wants to know when they'll be back. The major tells him he'll check to see what assistance might be available and adds, "I can't promise you anything, but that I'll pray for you."