Civil Affairs Troops Aim to Win Afghan Hearts, Minds

The war is winding down. Taliban and Al Qaeda gunmen are under arrest or on the run. American troops are watching and waiting.

Now it’s up to guys like Van and Tony.

They were on the job the other day, two U.S. Army sergeants haggling with a pro-Taliban merchant over a bolt of blue cloth in a seedy textile bazaar. First the merchant tried to short them on the amount they had bought. Then he tried to substitute a cheaper fabric.

But nobody puts one over on two highly trained Special Forces soldiers--especially when they bring along a couple of Afghan gunmen, courtesy of the local warlord.

Buying fabric to make hospital gowns for indigent Afghan patients is all in a day’s work. Van and Tony, whose surnames cannot be published under military guidelines, are Army civil affairs specialists who drop into foreign countries and quietly assess humanitarian needs in the wake of war.

Carrying wads of crisp $100 bills, they try to fill in the gaps in aid groups’ service networks. In this western Afghan town, they’ve bought pharmaceuticals and surgical equipment for a hospital and paid for child immunizations. They’re planning to dredge an irrigation canal to bring water to drought-stricken farms, rebuild a pontoon bridge vital to aid convoys, and refurbish a girls’ school wrecked by the Taliban.

It’s not the kind of duty Van and Tony usually perform as Special Forces soldiers. They never quite envisioned one Green Beret asking another: Do you like the stripes or the florals?

“It’s not soldier’s work, but only a soldier can do it,” said Van, 33, a laconic sergeant with a Missouri drawl.

Civil affairs soldiers offer a counterpoint to U.S. airstrikes, commando attacks and support for warlords during the fighting that routed the Taliban and Al Qaeda. War destroys; civil affairs rebuilds. It’s part good deeds and part public relations--what the military in Vietnam called winning hearts and minds.

The civil affairs men look more like backpackers or dirt-bikers than soldiers. They wear jeans, sweatshirts and scuffed hiking boots. Tony, a fast-talking Bostonian in his mid-30s, favors orange-tinted sunglasses and a checkered scarf tied around his head, kaffiyeh-style. Van has the hanging-around-the-firehouse look, with a sweatshirt and volunteer fire department T-shirt.

Tony and Van cruise Herat’s bazaars and stop at humanitarian aid offices in a late-model SUV, with Tony at the wheel and their bodyguards in back, AK-47s leaning against the windows. Van jokes that the biggest security risk is Tony’s driving: “He’s only hit a car and a horse so far.”

Sometimes, things get confusing. They make appointments on local time but communicate with soldiers on Zulu, or Greenwich mean time. Van keeps Zulu time on his wristwatch and local time on a watch in his jeans pocket; he’s on his fourth cheap, locally purchased watch.

Everything is relative. Most government offices open, oh, around 8:30 a.m. and shut down after lunch. The local currency, the afghani, fluctuates maddeningly between 27,000 and 40,000 to the dollar. To make one purchase of fabric, for $6,000, Van first had to buy 162 million afghanis--70 pounds of bills that filled a crate.

“Hey, for a while there I was a multimillionaire,” he said.

The soldiers say they have spent $20,000 so far, part of an initial $2 million in Pentagon funds, in Herat and surrounding provinces. The limit for any project is $300,000. The men also distribute “excess property”--military surplus tents, clothing, trucks and blankets.

A Language Barrier

The soldiers were transferred to civil affairs for these early, risky days of duty in Herat, paving the way for more traditional reserve and National Guard civil service types--people Van calls the “real professionals,” such as physicians and engineers. The Special Forces men were pressed into duty after learning Arabic and studying Middle Eastern history and politics at Ft. Bragg in North Carolina. So, naturally, they were shipped to an Asian nation where people speak Dari and Pashto.

“So far we’ve picked up how to say ‘Go straight,’ ‘Thank you’ and ‘Goodbye,’ ” Van said. They don’t go anywhere without their interpreter.

There are roughly 100 civil affairs soldiers in the country, with more planned, according to a U.S. Army spokesman in Kabul, the capital. Their core mission, one officer said, is “to relieve immediate human suffering.”

With their Special Forces skills, Van and Tony are equipped to operate in a hostile environment where Taliban supporters are still active. They don’t travel without two gunmen provided by Herat warlord Ismail Khan, who was supported by U.S. forces when he drove the Taliban from the city in November. Asked whether the Americans carry weapons, their commander, a captain named Curt, replied, “Well, we’re U.S. soldiers.”

One of the first things the Herat team did after arriving several weeks ago was to seek an audience with Khan, the power broker in five western provinces. “He’s very concerned about our safety,” Curt said. “He seems determined to make sure nothing happens to us. He’s been the perfect host.”

The soldiers won’t say where they are staying. Khan’s security officers say the Americans live at one of the garrisons used by Khan’s forces, along with about two dozen other U.S. soldiers.

Thanks to a relaxation of grooming rules in deference to their unorthodox mission, the soldiers don’t shave often. Even Curt, an earnest and engaging 33-year-old from Minnesota, has a scraggy beard, an Afghan scarf and hair that has evolved past the crew-cut stage.

The men don’t hide who they are or what they’re doing, but they do maintain a low profile. A visit to the bazaar to buy goods for an aid project can involve a complicated series of radio and satellite calls to set up security. The soldiers introduce themselves not as Army personnel but “from USG”--the U.S. government.

Being government employees, they grind out the paperwork. They suggest projects, which are subject to approval by headquarters in Kabul or higher up the chain of command. They type up proposals on laptop computers and e-mail them, complete with digital photos of schools, clinics, hospitals and bridges.

In the incomprehensible argot of the military, the Herat team is a CHLC that reports to a C/JCMOTF--a Civil Humanitarian Liaison Cell under a Combined/Joint Civil Military Operations Task Force.

The men visit elders in rural villages and provincial ministers in the cities. They meet with aid groups to ensure that they aren’t duplicating services.

During a visit with a UNICEF official, Van discovered that a project he was considering was also being eyed by an aid group--a fact not mentioned by the intended local recipient. “These people don’t always share their information with us,” Van told the official. “That’s why we check in with you guys.”

The work can be trying, the sergeants said, and they miss their wives and families. Care packages from home sustain them--junk food, cigarettes, magazines and printouts of e-mails from friends. They can call home once a week, but Van couldn’t wait. “Hey,” he said to a reporter, “tell my wife thanks for the care packages and I love her.”

Haggling Over Fabric

Van made the request en route to a fabric merchant. Along for the ride was Ghulam Rabani, director of services at Herat’s main hospital, who would help the soldiers hire people to sew the fabric into gowns and pajamas.

Soon, Van was on his knees inside the merchant’s tiny, airless stall, rubbing fabric swatches between his fingers. There was much haggling about quality, quantity and price. Tony, Van and Rabani conducted simultaneous colloquies about colors and patterns and what would be suitable for male and female patients.

After negotiations in Dari, Pashto and English, a price was set for a lovely blue fabric: $420 for 1,000 square meters, or 37 rolls. Van pulled out his pocket calculator, pounded the digits furiously, then peeled off four new $100 bills and 800,000 afghanis.

As they were leaving, an interpreter overheard the merchant telling an associate that he planned to deliver the fabric in yards, not meters, cheating the soldiers out of several rolls. The interpreter berated the merchant, saying he was robbing fellow Afghans, not the Americans.

“He’s exactly right,” Van said. “This stuff is for their own people.”

The merchant apologized and sent them to a decrepit warehouse next to a garbage dump. There, a worker led the soldiers down into a dark basement. Van held back. “What is this, some kind of ambush?” he asked. He made certain the bodyguards were properly posted, then ducked into the darkness to discover that the merchant was trying to sell them a cheaper fabric of a different color.

They drove back to the merchant. Van was angry but wary. He had been warned that the merchant and his friends were Taliban supporters.

With the bodyguards bringing up the rear, Van and Tony confronted the merchant. The man looked stricken. He had been warned by a telephone call from the warehouse. He silently handed back every last dollar and afghani.

Van snatched the money from his hand and said he was taking his business elsewhere. He and Tony and the warlord’s gunmen piled into the vehicle, slowly pulling away in search of the perfect blue fabric.