Iowa Guard troops in Afghanistan

Soldiers with the Iowa National Guard 1-133rd Battalion gather for a mission briefing at COP Xio Haq. The briefing included walking through the operation on this to-scale map in the dirt.

Rodney White Photo

By MEGAN LYNCHXpress reporter

As Iowa Guard troops see firsthand, stability in Afghanistan is still years away

Shane Taylor of Slater pro-vides security during a patrol through Parwan Province in the mountains outside Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan.

Rodney White Photo

The promise and challenges of America’s efforts in Af-ghanistan were on display

here on a mid-March afternoon.First came the promise, in the

form of a canny Afghan National Army officer named Pallawana.

The fierce-looking platoon com-mander has uncovered numerous caches of Taliban rifles, ammuni-tion, land mines and explosives. He often leads his 110 soldiers on joint patrols with the Iowa National Guard through towns that used to be dominated by insurgent fighters.

The Taliban fear him, and

the local people respect him, the Iowans say. Residents of near-by villages routinely tell him what the insurgents are up to.

Soldiers like Pallawana are the key to the U.S. goal of handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, said Capt. Michael Minard, who leads the Iowa Guard company that shares Combat Outpost Rah-man Kheyl with Pallawana’s men.

Pallawana, a first lieutenant who uses one name, said the Afghan army has four times more soldiers in this turbulent province than it had three years ago. The troops are also much better trained and more expe-

Kurt Cain of Dubuque, 21, center, helps train ANA soldiers on a truck mounted .50cal machine gun at a range outside Mehter Lam Monday morning after patrol.

Rodney White Photo

AFGHAN SOLDIERSCONTINUE TODEVELOP

The Iowa City TimesMonday, July 23, 2012

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rienced than they used to be, he said.But the Afghan soldiers still are

developing, and their problems in-clude men who desert when spring brings more job opportunities and higher risks of fighting. The Afghan soldiers are far from ready to take on the insurgents by themselves, the lieutenant said. “Right now,” he said through an interpreter, “the Taliban are better than we are.”

SUCCESS STILL A FAR-OFF GOAL

American soldiers know they can’t bring peace to Afghanistan by themselves. Long-term stabil-ity depends on whether Afghan soldiers and police can become strong enough to handle most du-ties. That’s why improving the local forces is the top goal of the 2,800 Iowa Guard troops and other U.S. troops deployed to Afghanistan.

Iowa Guard soldiers, from the infantry grunts to the top com-manders, see progress. But they say success is a long way off.

U.S. soldiers sometimes joke

about their Afghan counterparts’ tardiness or seeming lack of disci-pline. They also note the Afghans’ courage. While American troops rarely leave their bases without the protection of million-dollar armored trucks, the Afghans rou-tinely ride in the open beds of Toyota Hilux or Ford Ranger pick-ups. Some Afghan units have been given hand-me-down U.S. Hum-vees with armor to protect against roadside bombs. But those heavy vehicles usually remain parked, be-cause the Afghans prefer the speed and agility of their little pickups.

ILLETERACY SEEN AS A BIG OBSTACLE

Second Lt. Brian TeKippe, 31, of Waukee, helps lead a military police unit that is part of the Iowa Guard’s 1-113th Cavalry Squadron in Parwan province. He said illiter-acy is one of the biggest hurdles to training Afghan soldiers and police. Only 28 percent of Afghan adults are considered literate, compared with 74 percent of Iraqi adults and 99 percent of U.S. adults.

Conventional military training relies on books, maps, diagrams and PowerPoint presentations, which many Afghan men struggle to decipher. “And to try to teach them how to write a police report? It’s impossible,” TeKippe said.

He said corruption remains “readily evident” among the local police. Junior officers tell him their superiors often demand regular payments in return for jobs. To raise money for those payments, TeKip-pe said, the officers shake down civilians they stop at roadblocks.

The lieutenant said the po-lice forces are improving, “but they’re still nowhere near what you’d expect from police of-ficers in the United States.”

TeKippe takes heart from the fact that most Afghan children - including girls - are now in school, and he believes Afghanistan will be stabilized eventually. “I’d rather get it taken care of now than have my kids have to come back here and do the same thing in 20 years,” he said.

American military leaders estimate that it costs roughly $1 million to keep a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan for a year - an astounding figure until you see the way supplies are distributed and services are procured.

TRANSPORTATIONThe country has no seaport and almost no railroads. “Everything has to come a long way by truck, or it has to come in by air,” said Lt. Col. John Perkins of Johnston.Many of the trucks are driven by private contractors, who have to be compensated for the risk they face from insurgents’ bombs. Also, the mountain roads’ ruts slow traffic to a crawl and cause truck breakdowns.

WATERPerkins, one of the Iowa National Guard’s leading experts on logistics, said that costs are especially high in Afghanistan because it is such an undeveloped country. For example, he said, almost no local water is considered safe to drink, so military trucks must carry in pallet after pallet of bottled water. “Shipping bottled water is probably the least ef-ficient way to ship water,” but it is the only alternative in most circum-stances, Perkins said.

MRAPSThe cost also includes the routine use of the military’s new Mine Resis-tant Ambush Protected trucks, the heavily armored vehicles that have replaced most Humvees in Afghanistan. The MRAPs’ extra protection comes at a price of more than $1 million per truck.

MAINTENANCEUnder U.S. military policy, local men are hired to do as many tasks as possible. The idea is to tighten the locals’ bonds to the Americans and to inject money into the economy.

RUGGED TERRAIN MAKES LOGISTICS TRICKY, EXPENSIVE

Iowa Guard troops in Afghanistan

Iowa National Guard Alpha Troop 1-113 Cav solidiers put their hands in before an afternoon patrol from Pul-e Sayad into the surounding area in Parwan Province Sunday morning outside Bagram Airfield.

Rodney White Photo

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Iowa National Guardsman Staff Sgt. Clint Koerperich of Cedar Rapids talks with Pashtun villagers from just outside Combat Outpost Rhaman Kheyl in the Paktia Province when they asked for help digging a water channel.

Rodney White Photo

Iowa National Guard Alpha Troop 1-113 Cav waited for a flock of shep to pass Sunday along with this motorcycle cart carrying Afghan women wearing the all-enveloping burqa clothing north of Bagram Airfield in the Parwan Province.

Rodney White Photo

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Iowa National Guard Alpha Troop 1-113 Cav medic Pfc. Cody Larson of Sioux City high fives an Afghan boy Monday afternoon while on patrol outside of Bagram Airfield in Parwan Province of Afghani-stan.

Rodney White Photo

RETURNEES NOTICE A DIFFERENCE

Several hundred Iowa troops have extra insight on the situation, because they served a year in Af-ghanistan in 2004-05, and they’re back for a second deployment.

Staff Sgt. Jesse Ross, 39, of Des Moines, helps lead 1-113th Cavalry patrols out of an outpost, said Afghan forces are much more effective now than they were be-fore. “I don’t want to say they were bungling idiots back then, but they weren’t well-trained,” he said.

Back then, he said, Afghan po-lice often came along on his unit’s humanitarian missions, but they

Spc. Kurt Cain , 21, of Dubuque, watches an Afghan interpreter practice with an M4 after at patrol in Eslamabad, Afghanistan.Rodney White Photo

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 2A were rudderless. “We would have to micromanage them. We’d have to tell them, ‘Stand here, do this, manage the crowd this way,’ “ he r e c a l l e d . “Now, you just tell them what you want, and they can pretty much do it for you, with just a little direction.”

When asked how long it would be before Afghan soldiers and po-lice could take primary respon-sibility for their country’s secu-rity, the staff sergeant stared at the floor for a few seconds, con-sidering how he should answer.

“After the last time I was here,

I said it would be 100 years,” he said. “This time, with how far they’ve advanced, I’d say 25 years.”

Ross said he believes everyday Afghans are weary of war, and they must see that the insurgents cause far more civilian casualties than the Americans and their allies cause. He predicts the Taliban will run out of support. “I think we’re winning this, I really do,” he said. “But if we walked out tomorrow, things would probably collapse.”

“After the last time I was here, I said it would be 100 years,” he said. “This time, with how far they’ve advanced, I’d say 25 years.”

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