How to sell agricultural lessons. Teachers at Mata Khan boys highschool (Photo: Heimken)

Today, we first drove to Sharana and then on to Mata Khan, a much smaller combat outpost than Sar Howsa. I had fun listening to Frank Sinatra, Black Sabbath and some country tunes on our way over via an iPod connected to the intercom.

Mata Khan is home to the 1^st Platoon of Captain Perkins Apache Company 2-28. The country side surrounding it is completely flat, unlike the Sar Howza region. Although it’s only about 15 to 20 kilometers away, the climate feels different too. It’s much warmer, at least 15 degrees Celsius more.

There’s much more arable land here. We drove past some really impressive castle like Qalats, big square compounds with high mud walls and small turrets on each corner. I guess they reflect the mentality of the people living in this region. Everybody who is wealthy enough protects their fortunes out of sight. Their home really is their castle here.

It might be a testament to the fact that there is no centralised authority, called the nation state that has vowed to protect private property and enforce sanctions against people who don’t respect that right. By now there are such institutions in place in Afghanistan, but they are young and not welcome by everyone. The province of Paktika is known for being stubbornly anti-government.

Hate the state

Even in mainstream US politics there are prominent political strands that hate the idea of a powerful centralised state and love the individual’s right to fend for himself. And, in the US you find gated communities of wealthy people who rather opt to protect their wealth by private security than to trust the state to do that for them.

I don’t have a clue what the people here really want (That’s the downside of being embedded, you don’t get to meet the common people a lot). Perhaps many of them would be very happy to have a functioning state that will protect their citizen’ rights. Perhaps they would love an independent judiciary along Western lines that doesn’t know any family, clan, or tribal affiliations.

Shortly after we got here to Mata Khan we visited a boy’s school right next to the compound. Here a Lieutenant Colonel of the reserve Air Force, who is an agricultural adviser based in Sharana, met with the police chief and the governor of Mata Khan district and representatives from the school, the headmaster and some teachers.

Fisherman’s Friend

The plan was to have agricultural classes set up to teach the teachers in giving classes on how to improve agricultural techniques in the area. The simple equation being, that if farmers here improved their yield, they would become more prosperous and less susceptible to the insurgency. Peace through prosperity.

The basic idea is sound. The Western led or financed reconstruction efforts have moved on from just setting up projects like the girls school we visited yesterday without really checking sustainability, to going out and asking what the locals want to be done and then teaching them to help themselves. They shall own their projects.

However, as we witnessed today the problem with this is that the locals are still more interested in having concrete infrastructure projects financed by the Westerners than having contractors teaching them intangible knowledge that doesn’t bear immediate gains.

The officials who had gathered in the boys school either didn’t quite grasp the concept of teaching a man to fish or they simply wanted fast and tangible aid. I have now often heard or read that Afghans after 30 years of war cherish the short term over the long term gain. It sounds simplistic but actually would be quite understandable, because in Afghanistan there still is no peace and security.

This might show in the Afghan’s thinking, especially in the run up to the pull out of foreign troops. If tomorrow isn’t promised you tend to get what you can lay your hands as long as you can. Why plant trees whose fruit might take decades to harvest.

I was wondering yesterday when I saw some unkempt trees that could have been olive plants, why they weren’t growing this fruit in this country. I’m not an agricultural expert, olive trees might just not grow in this climate – or they indeed take to long to carry fruit.

The deserted compound of a girls school in Sar Howza (Photo: Heimken)

After we went on patrol to the bazaar on the outskirts of Sar Howza on Monday, 3^rd Platoon took us out to what used to be a girls school today. We got the usual briefing by the mortar pit before leaving. The school is infamous for having Taliban graffiti sprawled over the inside.

Apart from being told to watch out for IEDs by the graveyard the guys were warned by Lieutenant Wood and Staff Sergeant Nuñez not to get pissed off if the kids started pelting them with rocks again.

If the Afghan police who were to join the parade started firing in the air to scare off the youngsters, then so be it. This was there country. The soldiers were told not to hand out any presents. It hadn’t worked out last time, added Wood.

The Graveyard

The armored vehicles climbed up the slope to Sar Howza and passed the graveyard that stretched on both sides of the road. It seemed a spooky place, but in a fascinating way – very different from our grave yards.

Some of the graves had tall masts next to them, some with fluttering flags. Stones lay on most graves and brush was growing through out the huge field. The whole atmosphere was strange. For the first time since we got here, the sky was overcast. It seemed that summer is beginning to loose its grip.

The local workers were making head way paving the street into the city. However, the asphalt ended just before the graveyard began. Captain Perkins said the insurgency starts where the paved road ends.

Red Adobe

War graffiti drawn by children on the walls of the school compiled by Axel

Soon after, we passed the typical red adobe buildings the typical wooden ladders leading up to the roofs. At the end of the streets we dismounted. Together with the Afghan police we made our way through alley ways towards the school.

At one point a bunch of kids ran off into an open gate leading into one of the bigger Qalats, compounds, once Axel started taking photos. His long lenses could be mistaken for gun barrels. They seemed genuinely scared.

Some of the kids were dressed in amazing colors. It seemed as if some wealthier families were living here on the outskirts. But you can’t really tell, because all is hidden behind the red adobe walls of the compounds.

Problem Area

One of the classrooms

The school lay right at the edge of town, a steep and rocky ridge rising up behind it. Because there were caves in the ridge some of the soldiers went up to check them for any traces of the insurgency. “This is a problem area”, Staff Sergeant Nuñez let me know.

Next to one on the caves they found a firing position made of rocks. The strangest thing about this war is that the enemy is almost like a ghost. This cliff on the edge of town is where the low intensity insurgency begins. Behind it lies Talibanland, an area so remote and inaccessible, that the soldiers would only seriously venture into it by helicopter.

To choose such a site for a girls school seemed pretty thoughtless – with the benefit of hindsight. The school was built in 2008 by the local Provincial Reconstruction Team. It operated for two months, before it was shut down.

The inside of the school was indeed sprawled with graffiti. Most of the ones I picked out for the interpreter to translate, he said were poems. Anything that could be removed had been taken away. Windows and doors had all been removed. It almost seemed as ghostly a place as the graveyard.

It would be interesting to find out if it really were the hard line Taliban who closed the school down. Perhaps the ultra conservative ways of the people of this town stood in the way of this project too.

Once again nothing much happened on this patrol – we didn’t get pelted with rocks – but there is a strange feel of enigma to this country. To a Westerner it seems unreal. To grasp it’s reality it probably would take more than dismounting from our armored spacecrafts and just dipping into the world outside the gated community of the cop.

Mortars

A mortar round exploding on target on the mountain ridge

In the afternoon we drove back out with three MRAPs and did some military stuff closer to home. This time we just drove a few hundred meters off road to secure the target area for a Mortar rehearsal.

They were shooting live mortar ammo half way up the mountain ridge in some kilometers distance to the west of the COP. The 120 and 81 grenades were close on target and sent out detonations echoing through the whole area.

We just sat in the desert near a wadi on some rocks chatted and watched.