War Is Boring » Reconstruction

Axeghanistan ’11: From the Czech Republic, with Love

David Axe — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 05:17:36 +0000

by DAVID AXE

The Czech Provincial Reconstruction Team assigned to Logar, eastern Afghanistan, consults with Afghan National Army officers on the construction of new facilities for the ANA. Meanwhile, the Czech security detail visits the weapons range alongside some American troops.

Offiziere.ch: In Eastern Afghanistan, Czech Reconstruction Team Gets Mixed Reception

David Axe — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 12:54:16 +0000

Lt. Jan Karasek from the Czech PRT is turned away from a school in Darvish, Logar, Afghanistan, March 30, 2011. David Axe photo.

by DAVID AXE

For such a short journey, it sure did cover a lot of ground.

On March 30, a patrol from the roughly 300-strong Czech Provincial Reconstruction Team deployed to Logar province, eastern Afghanistan, visited two schools in the vicinity of Forward Operating Base Shank, the province’s major NATO outpost. The Czechs’ reception at the two schools could not have been more different — and illustrates the continuing difficulty NATO faces in winning the consent of the Afghan populace. Ten years into the U.S.-led Afghanistan war, progress is still difficult and results, mixed.

The Czechs’ first stop was the Hamid Karzai primary school in the village of Khadar, just a few miles from FOB Shank. Khadar is “no good” for NATO forces, said Lt. Marcel Armlich, the patrol leader. Just a few days prior, an Improvised Explosive Device had exploded alongside a convoy belonging to some U.S. Army engineers as the convoy moved through Khadar. No one was injured, but one American vehicle was damaged and local residents were startled.

Despite this, the headmaster of the Karzai school, Ismatullah, greeted Czech Lt. Jan Karasek at the gate and happily ushered the officer in. In Ismatullah’s second-story office, echoing with the chatter of students down the hall, the headmaster and Karasek discussed the school’s needs and how the Czechs might help meet them. The school needed computers and, to support them, a reliable power source, Ismatullah said. Karasek took careful notes. “I cannot promise anything, but I can promise we’ll come back very soon,” Karasek said.

Read the rest at Offiziere.ch.

Japan Security Watch: Tanks Deployed to Stricken N-Plant

Kyle Mizokami — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 13:40:51 +0000

Type 74 Main Battle Tank with Dozer Attachment. Image via Military-Today.com

by KYLE MIZOKAMI

According to the Daily Yomiuri, the GSDF is sending two Type 74 main battle tanks to the Fukushima Daiichi reactor to help clean up rubble and debris from the earthquake, tsunami, and explosions at the reactor site. The rubble and debris are hampering emergency efforts to repair the reactors. The GSDF is using tanks instead of bulldozers because the thick steel hull of the Type 74 is effective at blocking some radiation from the crew. The tanks also have NBC air filtration systems.

The article says that the tanks will be sent from Camp Komakado, which according to Wikipedia is the headquarters of the 1st Tank Battalion, as well as the 1st Armored Training Unit. Other sources on the Internet indicate that one Type 74 per tank company is equipped with a dozer blade, in which case the 1st Tank Battalion probably has three such tanks on hand.

Kyodo News Agency has a picture of one of the tanks chained to a tank transporter.

Type 74 with dozer attachment. Kyodo News Agency.

Originally published at Japan Security Watch.

Voice of America: U.N. Peacekeepers Construct Vital Road

David Axe — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 05:00:55 +0000

by DAVID AXE

In eastern Congo, warring rebels and rogue government troops have displaced some 2 million people in a decade of fighting. The region’s vast size, thick forests and lack of infrastructure complicate humanitarian efforts. In all of Congo, there are just 300 miles of roads that amount to more than footpaths. A U.N. peacekeeping force is trying to change that.

In eastern Congo’s Orientale Province, U.N. peacekeepers from Morocco escort a World Food Program convoy from the center of Dungu to the town of Ngilima, where rebel attacks have disrupted farming.

The road – essentially an enlarged animal path – is typical in remote eastern Congo. It’s poorly maintained and hardly passable.

It takes four hours for the convoy to make the journey — 80 kilometers — and another four hours to return to base.

A lack of good roads is endemic to Congo — and a headache for humanitarians. Sidou Hamani works for the U.N. office for coordination of humanitarian affairs.

“Sometimes 200 kilometers, have to spend days, three days, four days in some situations — to go from point A to point B,” he said. “If there’s no access from point A to point B, how can you assist populations in need?”

The U.N.’s peacekeeping force for Congo is trying to help. Indonesian army engineers are building a road to connect Dungu to the neighboring town of Faradje. Once complete, the road — spanning 150 kilometers — should help speed up U.N. operations.

For the last year, the engineers have been living and working in an area without running water or electricity. A few Moroccan troops guard them. It’s difficult work.

“First we clear the area where we will make the road, we take wood from the holes, we fill it with limonite and maybe stone then we compact it,” said Lt. Col. Arnold Ritiauw, engineer commander.

Progress is slow, just a half kilometer a day, on a good day.

“If it rains, we don’t work. All equipment and troops come back to camp,” said Capt. Sihombing Maruahal, engineer officer.

Rain’s not the only obstacle.

“The most difficult challenge, besides the weather: we find many animals — wild animals — like black mamba snakes, and sometimes elephants, sometimes lions. We stay away,” said Colonel Ritiauw.

Now, the road is nearly complete. The troops will rotate home and another company of engineers will take their place. The U.N. hasn’t said whether the new engineers will build more roads.

But, it’s clear, the need remains.

World Politics Review: U.N. Peacekeepers Build Vital Road in Congo

David Axe — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 05:00:35 +0000

David Axe photo.

by DAVID AXE

DUNGU, Democratic Republic of Congo — When the Ugandan rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army, attacked the town of Duru in eastern Congo two years ago, it took a convoy of U.N. peacekeepers and humanitarian workers 10 days by road to reach the devastated town. Representatives of the U.N. high commissioner for refugees found Duru residents in “urgent need of assistance.”

Six months ago, the LRA attacked again, this time in neighboring Central African Republic. As thousands of Central African refugees streamed into Congo’s remote Bondo district, UNHCR humanitarian workers organized flights to the closest airstrip, some 50 miles from the refugees’ temporary camp. It took three days for them to cover the remaining distance on motorcycles and bicycles.

It was incidents like these that spurred the U.N., in late 2009, to launch a road-building project in eastern Congo. At just 60 miles long, the Dungu-to-Faradje clay road will make only a tiny dent in the country’s transportation problem when it is completed. But it’s a start.

On Sept. 23, a contingent of Indonesian army engineers hacked an additional quarter-mile through the Congolese tropical forest. Every week for a year, the Indonesians have advanced no more than two miles from their main base at an airstrip outside Dungu. Miles away through the nearly impenetrable forest, their Nepalese counterparts advance at a similar pace from Faradje.

Sometime in the next couple months, the two road segments will meet. And for the first time, U.N. soldiers and aid workers will be able to speed between two major eastern towns without resorting to costly air transport. The road should also prove a boon to the local economy. “Imagine how many hours they can save,” Lt. Col. Arnold Ritiauw, the Indonesian commander, says after a Congolese bike caravan passes by, heavily laden with cans of gasoline and cooking oil, and bags of food.

For Congo’s 17,000 U.N. peacekeepers and thousands of humanitarian workers, the terrain and lack of road infrastructure are among the biggest challenges in providing security and assistance to vulnerable populations. The size of Western Europe or the U.S. east of the Mississippi, Congo has just 300 miles of paved roads — and those are concentrated in the western half of the country in and around the capital of Kinshasa. In the east, dirt roads — many of them simply expanded animal trails — are rarely more than six feet wide and can sport potholes the size of swimming pools that, when filled with rainwater, are deep enough to swallow smaller vehicles.

Read the rest at World Politics Review.

Axeghanistan ’10: A River Ran through It

David Axe — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 13:18:11 +0000

There’s a new Afghanistan war plan. Last fall, NATO commander General Stanley McChrystal rolled out more restrictive rules of engagement, heralding a “population-centric” approach to the war. U.S. President Barack Obama announced more U.S. troops. While U.S.-led forces in eastern Afghanistan doubled their efforts to prop up faltering local governance, troops in the south identified Taliban strongholds in Marjah and Kandahar and went on the offensive. “Has the U.S. broken the Taliban’s momentum?” reporter Nathan Hodge asked. Maybe. But there are new risks, too: the Dutch might pull out of a key southern province, and Afghan national leadership remains weak. The war might be going our way, for once, but it’s far from over. David Axe and Greg Scott head to “The ‘Stan” to see for themselves.

PFC Kevin Conklin, TF Gladius, Parwan. Greg Scott photo.

by DAVID AXE

Thirty years ago, the valley surrounding the city of Bagram was lush from east to west, Afghans say. Today, you can stand at the NATO airbase adjacent to Bagram, look west and see green fields, look east and see nothing but parched, red earth. Afghans say the air base, built by the Russians decades ago, is to blame. The facility’s acres of concrete and steel have disrupted the natural flow of water across the valley.

What was once rich grape country is now nearly lifeless. In the town of Usbashi, just outside the airbase gate, one farmer said two-thirds of his 1,500 grape trees died. On March 11, members of the new Parwan Provincial Reconstruction Team, composed of U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen and civilians, visited Usbashi to put the finishing touches on a plan for a 1.8-million-gallon-a-day irrigation project.

But the valley needs much more than that. U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Chris Eubank wants to install a canal. But that requires new land, and no one around Bagram is willing to lease it. After all, land is everything is Afghan farmers. It’s hard to see the long-term benefits when selling land means a short-term loss.

Axeghanistan ’10: Charikar Park Video

David Axe — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 14:42:37 +0000

by DAVID AXE

The U.S. Army’s Task Force Gladius visits Charikar, the capital of Afghanistan’s Parwan province, to talk to the governor and check out a new city park

Axeghanistan ’10: Making Do in Parwan

David Axe — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 05:07:33 +0000

Bagram shura. Greg Scott photo.

by DAVID AXE

To NATO, Afghanistan’s Parwan province is a backwater. Which is ironic, for it lies just north of Kabul, butts up against NATO’s main logistical hub at Bagram and is overwhelmingly pro-Western. If NATO truly is pursuing a “clear, hold and build” strategy, Parwan is already cleared and held, and is ready for building.

But the U.S. Army battalion task force assigned to province doesn’t have the resources to do anything but hold — and even that can be a challenge. Lieutenant Colonel Chris Eubank, 40, is a signals officer commanding a 2,000-strong task force cobbled together from the 82nd Airborne’s special troops battalion, some support units and a large division-level command post. Task Force Gladius has just 300 trigger-pullers to patrol a province the size of Rhode Island.

Parwan is a study in unmet potential. “Because it’s so close to Kabul, it has more educated people than there are out west,” Eubank said. But work is scarce, and despite funneling more than $140 million into local projects, NATO is just beginning to get serious about rebuilding the Parwan economy. The province’s first Provincial Reconstruction Team, 100 people strong, arrived last week. Before that, Eubank had to make do with a makeshift PRT comprising just eight people.

“The people here like us,” Eubank said, and several days of patrolling with the task force seems to confirm that. But the goodwill balances on NATO’s attention to the province. At the Bagram shura on Wednesday, local elders, pictured, grew impatient with what they saw as unnecessary delays in putting the community’s men to work. Neglect Parwan too long, and it might turn.

Risk notwithstanding, Parwan should be one of the first provinces to fully transfer to Afghan military control. Eubank said the Transfer of Lead Responsibility could take place in a year’s time.

World Politics Review: The Down Side of the Afghan Surge

David Axe — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:18:50 +0000

Task Force Gladius. Greg Scott photo.

by DAVID AXE

BAGRAM, Afghanistan — Standing on a mountaintop, 1st Lt. Maximilian Soto swept his arm from side to side, indicating a 400-square-mile expanse of fields, rivers and streams surrounding the village of Estalef in Parwan province, just north of Kabul. “All this,” he said, “is mine.” With a force of just 26 men from the Special Troops Battalion of the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, Soto provides security for a chunk of Afghanistan the size of a typical American county. “It’s quite difficult,” he told World Politics Review.

In December, U.S. President Barack Obama announced he would be sending 30,000 new troops to reinforce the more than eight-year-old Afghan war effort. These forces are now arriving, feeding ongoing NATO offensives in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand, as well as efforts to establish a meaningful troop presence in provinces that previously went unpatrolled, such as Logar province in the east.

But there’s a downside to the Afghan surge. The concentration of resources in the south and the more mountainous parts of the east has meant keeping troop contingents in more secure areas to the absolute minimum. “Clear and hold,” is NATO’s new mantra, but the “clear” part is receiving the bulk of the resources, while in provinces like Parwan, soldiers doing the “holding” are stretched thin. This under-resourcing could jeopardize the security and prosperity of the pro-NATO Afghan heartland in the provinces surrounding Kabul.

Read the rest at World Politics Review.

Offiziere.ch: In Afghanistan’s Logar, Filling the Deadly “Bowl”

David Axe — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 03:00:35 +0000

by DAVID AXE

Fifty miles south of Kabul, in the Kherwar district of Logar province, lies a low valley ringed by sharp peaks. U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Gukeisen, commander of coalition forces in the province, calls it “basically a bowl.” To the roughly 1,500 American, Czech and Afghan soldiers in Logar, the Kherwar bowl is legendary in its deadliness. It’s a Taliban stronghold.

The bowl, home to tens of thousands of Pashtun farmers, has only a handful of practical entrances through the mountains — on unimproved roads — making it perfect terrain for ambushes. “An entire Soviet divison was defeated here by the mujahideen” in the 1980s, Gukeisen recalls. In the current war, an American helicopter was shot down there. That taught the U.S.-led coalition that “you don’t go in unarmored.”

Until January, there were just 100 coalition troops in all of Logar. Today, with more American soldiers surging into Afghanistan, there are now around 1,000 U.S. and Czech troops, plus a battalion of Afghans. But the coalition is concentrated north of the bowl, in areas that are more urban, more easily accessible and friendlier towards the foreigners.

Gukeisen knew he had to fill the Kherwar bowl, eventually. Additional reinforcements might ease his task, but he wasn’t waiting around for extra troops. Gukeisen devised a plan to slowly spread his influence from his northern redoubts, southward into the bowl. He calls it his “extreme makeover,” after a popular U.S. television show, where celebrities help lucky couples repair and improve their homes.

Read the rest at Offiziere.ch.

(Photo: David Axe)

Axeghanistan ’09: With Friends Like These …

David Axe — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 03:47:27 +0000

It was a war we thought we’d won. But after eight years of escalating violence, the Afghanistan conflict has morphed into something perhaps unwinnable. U.S.-led forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to deny sanctuary to Al Qaeda, a goal we’ve largely achieved. But in years of occupation, Washington has apparently conflated counter-terrorism with nation-building. Now the U.S., NATO and their allies are struggling to destroy a deeply-rooted insurgency in country with a corrupt, ineffective government, poor infrastructure and few prospects for everyday people, but to fight. David Axe visits U.S. forces to see for himself.

by DAVID AXE

It’s easy to slam America’s NATO allies in Afghanistan. According to stereotype, the Brits are hamstrung by stingy politicians who refuse to give them the gear they need. Likewise, the Canadians fight like wolverines but don’t have the political backing to stay more than another year or so. The Germans are lazy, scared and spoiled. The Dutch lose a couple guys and slip into a deep, institutional funk.

But our NATO allies all have something useful to contribute to the war effort. Sometimes they just need to be enabled by the bigger, wealthier, more experienced U.S. military. Take the 275-strong Czech Provincial Reconstruction Team in Logar. “They’re better than any American PRT I’ve worked with,” says Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Gukeisen, commander of the 3rd Squadron of the 71st Cav, deployed to Forward Operating Base Altimur, in Logar province. He points out the Czech team’s unusual skillfulness. The team is led by nine highly-experienced civilian engineers “motivated by altruism,” Gukeisen says.

The Czechs, who arrived more than a year ago, weren’t making much progress in Logar’s restive Kherwar district when Gukeisen took command in July. That’s not necessarily their fault. “They needed security and a plan,” Gukeisen said. 3rd Squadron probed Kherwar by ground and air and scripted a plan: identify friendly villages, offer them small infrastructure projects in exchange for their cooperation. Today, the Czechs clambered into their up-armored Humvees and rolled into Kherwar for the first time.

Elsewhere in Logar, the Czechs are collaborating with 3rd Squadron on an ambitious project to turn one district’s weakness into a strength. In Charkh district, the roads are hemmed in by water rushing down from the mountains. The Americans and Czechs have drafted a plan to divert the water away from the roads and channel it into fields for growing animal fodder. Plus, they want to add small hydro-electric generators to the irrigation canals, to feed the local power grid.

In addition to boosting the district economy, the project should wrest control of Charkh’s water resources away from the corrupt district sub-governor, who has been known to divvy up water to score political points.

(Photo: via www.mzv.cz)

In Afghanistan, Germans Hamstrung by Strict Rules

David Axe — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:07:46 +0000

by DAVID AXE

Last week, Time asked if German troops were too soft to play a meaningful part in Afghanistan. More to the point: German rules of engagement, reflecting deep domestic opposition to a war role, are absurdly strict, and bode poorly for a bigger German contribution to the fighting. Milblog Bill and Bob’s Excellent Afghan Adventure recounts this anecdote:

In January of 2008, at the German FOB in Konduz, SFC O was in the German TOC while they watched a group of insurgents set up rockets to fire at the FOB. The Germans could see them clearly on their sensors. The Germans possessed 120mm mortars which they could have easily used to put a stop to the insurgent’s activities. Instead, the Germans were calling in to their higher headquarters for permission to place magazines in their small arms. Not to load the weapons … merely to place magazines in them.

O nearly went ballistic. He asked them why they didn’t just mortar the rocketeers and get it over with. The Germans demurred. They were not permitted by their national caveats to engage, even when they saw the threat clearly and they were about to get rocketed. The Germans endured a brief rocketing (which never seem very brief when you are on the receiving end.)

The Germans have since changed some of their caveats to permit some more active roles. They are not, however, as able to take action as Americans, Brits, Canadians or Dutch troops.

Journo P.J. Tobia says that rather than fighting a losing battle with the public over ROE, Berlin should take on a bigger role in training and reconstruction in Afghanistan.

(Photo: Creative Commons)