Sunday, April 6, 2014

Leaving Khayr Kot Castle


November 2011

I'm in a Blackhawk UH-60 helicopter sitting across from our interpreter, wearing body armor and a helmet, and we're taking off from Khayr Kot Castle in Paktika, Afghanistan, which is almost within sight of Pakistan. It's just a few months after the 10th anniversary of 9/11, which I spent in Kabul. I was in DC on 9/11 ten years earlier and had to spend a few more days waiting for air traffic to return. It never did, so I took my rental car and drove it past New York City on the way home. I remember seeing fire trucks driving from more rural areas of New York towards the city, and I remember returning my rental car to the airport where no planes were taking off or moving for that matter. One short decade later, there I was, in Afghanistan where the whole saga began.

Leaving Khayr Kot Castle, November 2011

I was in Paktika to observe a Shura, a meeting between officials from the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA) and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) from Kabul, and the local leaders of Yahya Khel District who were being asked to support VSO/ALP (Village Stability Operations/Afghan Local Police) in their district. I was with the group from Kabul who had flown down for the Shura, which involved having the local leaders from Yahya Khel stand up and say they were ready to support VSO/ALP by identifying and vouching for local military age males who would be trained to be ALP, with the idea being that even though they wouldn't be able to fight as well, they could tell who belonged from who didn't belong, something with which international forces had a tougher time. VSO/ALP is an implementation of the Foreign Internal Defense (FID) mission in Afghanistan, which is the specialty of US Army Special Forces (SF), otherwise known as "Green Berets." Within the Special Operations Forces (SOF) community, SF differs from Navy SEALS in that SF works closely with the locals while SEALS are more, "pure shooters." So if SF are the good cops, then SEALs are the bad cops. From the perspective of a political economist, SF are the more interesting group because they address the full range of security, governance, and development activities required by counterinsurgency (COIN) as opposed to purely putting rounds downrange.

My colleague MAJ Erik had put me on this mission to help me better understand VSO/ALP and to help tell the story of what the special operation command was trying to accomplish. After the Shura, the senior personnel shared some meat and bread to celebrate the event. I followed my boss, COL Pat, and found myself in the middle of thing, there on the right in the black fleece. This photograph forms the centerpiece of my time in Afghanistan, around which all the other experiences revolve.

Sharing meat and bread after the Yahya Khel District Shura

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