Studying Strategy in Afghanistan

November 30, 2009 | Observer Staff | Comments 0

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By Paul Kane

On 3 July, after sixteen hours in the air and one night in Dubai,fellow SAISer Gabe Serrato and I arrived at Kabul International Airport.  After walking across the tarmac to the terminal, we cleared immigration, and met our point-of-contact, an Afghan contractor.  An armored Toyota Land Cruiser shuttled us to a compound not far from the American embassy, and a few days later to Camp Julien.

Situated between two pockmarked, bombed-out palaces built by King Amanullah in the 1920’s, Camp Julien is a small collection of cement and plywood buildings, guard towers, latrines, and Tesco bomb shelters.  A spartan facility by US military standards, the camp is home to about 40 military personnel and contractors tasked with operating CTC-A.  The director, Colonel John Agoglia, is energetic, enthusiastic, unbelievably hardworking, and always entertaining.  He is also very interested in creating a mutually beneficial relationship between academia and the military; Gabe and I represent an early step in that relationship building process.  We had come to Camp Julien to conduct research on the relationship between insurgent activity and road construction in eastern Afghanistan.

The first couple of weeks included counterinsurgency seminars, training courses, and visits to the Afghan National Army (ANA) training facilities.  Shortly thereafter I flew out to a Forward Operating Base (FOB) about 20 miles from the Pakistani border in Khost province.  From the FOB in Khost, I traveled by Blackhawk up to Gardez, in Paktia province, and down to Sharan, in Paktika province.  In all three provinces—Khost, Paktia, and Paktika—I was fortunate enough to be able to interview a wide range of civilian and military personnel.  DoS Foreign Service Officers, USAID reps, Human Terrain Team (HTT) members, US Army Corps of Engineers, USDA reps, DoD civilians, Afghan interpreters, contractors, military personnel, and intelligence officers were all extremely helpful, often taking an hour or more out of their busy schedules to answer my questions.  I had a great experience out in P2K, as the region is known, but the summer was not without its challenges.

There were two challenges in particular that really stand out.  First, there was the challenge of just finding people that were qualified to answer interview questions.  The main problem was that, just prior to my arrival in Afghanistan, many of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) rotated out, meaning that in some cases I had more in-country experience than the people I was interviewing.  Making matters worse, the transmittance of institutional knowledge from one unit to the next is not the PRTs’ strong suit.  Thus, in many cases PRT members could not even relay information or lessons that they had learned from their predecessors.  Fortunately, many PRT members had been in country before, and there were always those government employees, contractors, and soldiers that were not attached to the PRTs and had been in-country longer.  Furthermore, I was able to (legally) acquire a collection of government documents that have proven to be invaluable sources of information.

Second, logistical issues, especially travel, were a frustrating exercise.  I spent several days in mid-July sitting at airfield in Kabul trying to hitch a ride on choppers heading down to the southeast.  Every time an overloaded Chinook (think olive drab, flying school bus) would swoop in, I would be engulfed in a cloud of dust and pelted with marble-sized pebbles.  Inevitably, the tail-gunner would run out, we would try to communicate over the din of the idle chopper; he would shake his head, and off they’d fly.  Eventually, though, I did find a spot in a Chinook for the one-hour flight to Khost.  A few weeks later, when the time came to leave, getting out of the province was another ordeal. I spent five days waiting for the weather to improve so the choppers could get over the pass that led out of the Khost bowl.  On one occasion, I was treated to a romantic, moonlit Blackhawk tour of half a dozen Combat Outposts (COPs) along the Pakistani border, only to be deposited back at the FOB that we had flown out of two hours earlier.

For a guy that has spent a good portion of the last five years of his life studying Afghanistan and counterinsurgency, my experience this past summer really was more than I could have hoped for. Not only was I able to make some great connections, and learn about the lives and work of the folks serving in Afghanistan, but I was also able see what it’s like to be near the front lines in a counterinsurgency campaign. Based on what I saw over the summer, I think that our people in Afghanistan—civilian and military—are the most capable, qualified, and dedicated people that our country has to offer, and, given enough time, resources, and guidance, they will be able stabilize the country.

Paul Kane is a second year M.A. candidate in South Asia Studies.

Filed Under: September 2009