PANJSHIR VALLEY, AFGHANISTAN --Earlier this week, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, flew to Afghanistan’s Panjshir Valley, where he visited a school for girls built by Greg Mortenson, author of the bestselling Three Cups of Tea.
The Panjshir Valley, in military parlance, is considered “permissive.” The high-walled valley was a famous redoubt against the Soviets and the Taliban, and Panjshiris take pride in protecting their guests. Nevertheless, a small force led by Staff Sgt. Gabriel Castillo went out to the Panjshir to provide backup security for the chief’s visit, and the team rolled out from Bagram Airfield in a convoy of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles.
The super-sized armored trucks were not originally designed for off-road driving, nor were they meant to navigate narrow switchback roads. While the main road through the Panjshir is now reasonably well paved, Castillo’s team had to steer through village streets that were at some points barely wider than the trucks themselves.
After passing through the main gate to the valley, the crews lowered the barrels of their heavy weapons. It was, more than anything, a gesture of trust: Traveling guns-up in the Panjshir would definitely send the wrong signal. Nonetheless, the lieutenant who was hitching a ride with the team wasn’t particularly happy. “I don’t like that,” he said. “I just came from Kapisa” -- a province where the fighting still rages.
Getting used to working in the Panjshir is not easy, especially for soldiers and civilians who have worked in much more violent regions of Afghanistan. Matthew Burns, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers representative on the Panjshir Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), came to the valley after working stints in Jalalabad and Kabul. When he first heard about how the PRT operated – driving around in pickup trucks, not living in some Fortress America behind high concrete T-walls, he was skeptical. “When I first heard about it, I didn’t want anything to do with it,” he said.
But the relatively secure environment of the Panjshir means that the PRT can undertake and oversee more reconstruction projects than any other team. Burns said his team had done 80 site visits in three months; sometimes they can visit a dozen project sites in one day. In Kabul, by contrast, he was lucky if he got out once a week.
“This is definitely the boomtown of Afghanistan,” Burns said. “They do stuff here that we don’t do anywhere else.”
Not everyone is fan of the military's embrace of the humanitarian mission. Since their inception in late 2002 as “Joint Regional Teams,” many in the aid and development community have worried that the PRTs were encroaching on a traditional humanitarian space, blurring the line between civilian aid work and military operations. In a recent opinion piece, Anna Husarska of the International Rescue Committee quotes an unnamed colleague who tut-tutted that the PRTs are “Humvees in a china shop.” For the purists, relief and development work are a task best done by independent aid agencies, not the military.
In the Panjshir, however, the aim seems to be keeping this mission as low-key as possible. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t risks. In late May, a convoy carrying members of the Panjshir PRT was hit by a suicide car bomber while it crossed through neighboring Kapisa province; four members of the team were killed, including the commander, Lt. Col. Mark Stratton.
[PHOTO: Nathan Hodge]
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