California National Guard troops help Afghan farmers

Reporting from Naray, Afghanistan — 

Army Spc. Kathy Tanson, who grew up on a farm in Corning in Northern California, is wrestling goats and sheep into submission so they can be vaccinated against parasites and anthrax.

Spc. Jose Lopez, who worked at his uncle’s irrigation company in Tulare County, is putting headlocks on cattle so they stand still for their shots, one for rabies and another one to provide a vitamin boost to help them through the brutal Afghan winter.

And Col. Eric Grimm, who attended veterinary school before joining the military, is demonstrating the proper way to subdue a balky donkey without getting kicked: Grab it by the head with one hand, and lift up its tail with the other.

Tanson, Lopez, Grimm and other members of the California Army National Guard’s 40th Infantry Division have deployed to this isolated, mountainous section of Afghanistan to win the hearts and minds of rural Afghans -- traditionally deeply distrustful of outsiders -- by helping them improve their farming methods and livestock management.

The division’s agribusiness development team is the first group from California to participate in the Pentagon’s agribusiness program, begun four years ago. Seven National Guard units from farm states are now in Afghanistan doing similar work; two more are expected after Jan. 1.

Even as the United States plans to deploy 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, generals emphasize that the war cannot be won merely by killing Taliban militants.

The key to victory, top commander Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal has said, is winning support among the population by providing security and boosting the economy, which, in much of the country, is based on subsistence farming.

To get to Naray, a village backed up against snowcapped mountains separating Afghanistan and Pakistan, the 64 troops took their convoy on a 60-mile journey on a narrow, winding, unpaved road.

To the left of the slow-moving trucks was a sloping mountain, providing perfect positions for an ambush. The convoy had been warned attacks were possible.

To the right, hundreds of feet below, was the rushing Kunar River. Often the tires of the massive vehicles had only inches to spare to keep from plunging down to the river.

Villagers ran out of mud huts to watch the procession.

The hulks of three dozen civilian convoy vehicles littered the slanting area between the road and the river -- some burned-out hulks from ambushes, others crumpled wrecks from a driver’s inability to negotiate the tight turns, shifting gravel and frequent boulders.

The convoy from Forward Operating Base Wright, the unit’s home base, to Forward Operating Base Bostick took six hours, but the troops were determined to get here to provide care for several hundred farm animals. This is a region where a family’s livelihood is dependent on its livestock and the animal mortality rate in winter can leave it impoverished.

In military terms, it’s a “non-kinetic” mission, which means the main goal is not to kill the enemy but to bond an uncertain populace with its local government, which is assisting in the vaccination program.

Of the soldiers in the unit, a quarter have farming in their background; another 25% are headquarters and support troops; and half are there to provide security.

“In a kinetic mission, if you kill one Taliban, you haven’t reduced the insurgency by one because 20 of his relatives will probably join up,” said Lt. Col. Dave Kelly, 45. “But if you build a pump system that can irrigate 20 farms, you’ve undermined everything the insurgency stands for.”

Kelly, a civil engineer who has built citrus processing plants throughout Southern California and Mexico, has drawn up plans to improve the irrigation methods in the Kunar Valley. Many of the canals were destroyed by Soviet troops during their decade-long occupation.

The bulk of the work would be done by Afghans.

“If we built it, we could probably do it in two months,” Grimm said. “We’d feel real good about ourselves, but what would the Afghans have learned? Nothing.”

The California unit has undertaken other veterinary programs since arriving in October, but the push to Naray was its most ambitious to date.

In Naray, which lacks electricity, cellphone coverage and running water, animals have to do without veterinary care that is standard in other regions. Parasites are rampant and livestock feed is not particularly nourishing.

By American standards, the animals are small and scruffy.

“They’re in horrible shape,” said Sgt. Scott Flynn, 43, who grew up on a dairy farm, has an agriculture degree from Cal State Chico and works for the U.S. Forest Service in Lassen National Forest.

On Thursday, Tanson, 20, used a combination of coaxing and brute force to handle a goat that had fear and anger in its pointy face. “Come on, come on, it’s good for you,” she said.

By the end of the day, the Californians had inoculated 204 cattle, 183 goats, 54 sheep and 21 donkeys.

The Naray district governor, Haji Gul Zamon, who had arrived early, nodded his approval. “This is good,” he said, as if no further words were needed.

Naray officials helped plan the effort, which included five Afghan veterinary technicians from Jalalabad, a regional center of government and commerce. Officials said more sessions are planned, both here and at other villages.

The goal, said Grimm, the team’s commander, is to boost the capability of the local government and then step back.

Lopez, 33, noted that the area is dotted with small farms -- a world away from the mammoth agri-corporations that dominate much of California farming.

“It’s like the 19th century here, small farms, mom-and-pop and the kids,” he said. “I can relate to it. It’s like my mother would talk about in Mexico [about] when she grew up.”

On Saturday, two days after the vaccination program, two groups of Taliban fighters attacked a guard convoy heading back to Forward Operating Base Wright. U.S. troops fought through the assault; there were no American casualties.

The Californians arrived in October after training at Cal Poly Pomona and are not slated to return home until August. All are volunteers, leaving their civilian jobs for the yearlong deployment.

“This seems right to me,” said Sgt. David Bentley, 31, whose family owns a cattle ranch near Salinas.

tony.perry@latimes.com