By Sgt. 1st Class Raymond Drumsta
New York Army National Guard
ALI AL SALEM AIR BASE, KUWAIT – Sometime
last April, New York Army National Guard Lt. Col. Russell Clark, other U.S.
Soldiers, and members of the Dand District Afghan National Police found their
first target – a field of purple-white, oddly beautiful opium poppy plants.
The police and Soldiers had stolen a march on
the harvest, securing the field before anyone could incise the plants' seed
pods and collect the milky white gum seeping forth – the raw material for heroin.
Shouldering their rifles and wielding long
sticks like golf clubs, the police officers walked the field for hours,
winnowing the pods from the plants, said Clark, an Angola, N.Y., resident.
Under the mentorship of Clark and his
Soldiers, the Dand District Afghan National Police (ANP), would find and secure
many acres of opium poppies and eradicate them in the same manner. With the
assistance of other Soldiers specially trained in agriculture, the citizens of
Dand would see a change in crops through to fruition.
These are some of the paradoxical but
ultimately successful missions the police and the Soldiers are performing under
the threat of IEDs and the shadow of so-called "green on blue"
killings, Clark recalled when interviewed here.
Clark gives most of the credit for these
victories to the district ANP, whom he describes as efficient officers
committed to change. They have become a stronger and more responsive presence
in the district villages, he said.
Though the green-on-blue killings have led to
greater restrictions, Clark expressed great confidence in the ANP officers.
"They lead the way on every operation,"
Clark said. "I trail behind with the leadership."
A
New York State corrections officer in his civilian life, Clark deployed to
Afghanistan with another group of Army National Guard Soldiers, most of whom
hail from New York, in February and March.
Soon after arriving, he and five other New
York Army National Guard Soldiers – two of whom also have police experience –
were picked to assist the ANP in Dand and two neighboring districts south of
Khandahar City, Clark said.
"Because of our law-enforcement
backgrounds, we head up the mentoring in these districts," Clark said of
the two Soldiers.
The Soldiers were assigned to Task Force
Arrowhead under the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. Clark began
working closely with Maj. Rahmatullah, the Dand District ANP commander.
"I have dinner with him every
night," Clark said.
Clark and the Soldiers also found themselves
in a predominantly flat countryside, interlaced with canals and wadis, arid but
for trenches irrigating many rural farms. They set about to help Rahmatullah
and his police officers achieve their first goal – eradicating the district's
opium poppy crop.
Their first foray could have ended for some of
them shortly after it started, Clark recalled. On the way to the first poppy
field, Afghan National Army soldiers working with them found and eliminated
three IEDs before they had a chance to explode, Clark said. Later on, the Dand
District police officers would go on to make many such discoveries, he added.
A
sea of green dotted with purple-white poppy flowers, the field was a fantastic
sight which reminded the Soldiers of "The Wizard of Oz," Clark said.
"It was a beautiful field," he
recalled. "They were just blossoming. We got it just in time."
There was no tractor available to destroy the
plants, so the ANP simply whittled sticks and used them to hack the seed pods
off – a process which took hours, Clark said.
"So they just did it by hand, the
old-fashioned way...like locusts descending on a field," he recalled.
Braving IEDs and other dangers, they would
repeat this process many times between mid-April and mid-May, Clark recalled.
Aerial surveillance and the ANP's own intelligence information, or intel, later
showed that the officers had wiped out the Dand district's entire poppy crop,
he added.
This sowed the seeds for the next wave of
change – replacing the poppies with marketable, legal, profitable and
traditional crops. Helped by a Kentucky Army National Guard agricultural team,
the farmers put in winter wheat, then moved on to grow cantaloupes and honeydew
melons, Clark said.
"We're trying to give them good cash
crops," Clark said. "Afghanistan is famous for its melons,
pomegranates, grapes and raisins."
None of this would have been possible without
the security established by the police, and the growing strength of
village-police relations, he said.
"Ninety percent of what we're doing is
community-based policing," Clark said.
Cordon and Search, KLE, and Tea.
That strength of these relations is
rooted in the efficiency of the police, who, guided by the American Soldiers,
routinely conduct cordon-and-search operations in the villages, then sit down
to meet with the village elders, Clark said.
The immediate task of these operations is to
find wanted criminals or insurgents, contraband such as illegal drugs or
weapons and IED factories, he explained. But the long-term goal, he stressed,
is to train the police in evidence-based investigations and prosecutions, and
build police presence in the villages.
"They're good at fighting," Clark
said of the ANP. "They can go into a village, cordon it off and clear it
in no time." There have been few serious incidents during these
operations, something he also attributes to the ANP's speed and good use of
intel.
Rolling down the district's narrow, rutted
dirt roads in Ford Ranger trucks, the police will surround a village, secure it
and then go through it, knocking on doors and asking questions, Clark
explained. The meetings with the village elders, known as key leader
engagements (KLE), are part and parcel of counter-insurgency operations, he
stressed.
"That's huge," Clark said.
"After a clearing operation, we sit down and have a KLE. You go in on high
alert, and the next thing you know, you're sitting down, drinking tea."
These good relations have also led villagers
to serve up fresh intel, helping the police find countless IEDs – including on
routes the police and soldiers use – thus saving lives, Clark said.
Clark said the village elders also help the
police walk the line between modern law and Sharia, the Islamic law based on
the Koran.
"If it's within a tribe, it's handled by
Sharia law," Clark said. "If it's between tribes, it's pushed up to
the police." The ANP investigate the whole scope of crimes, including
murder, he added.
Though he hasn't lost any troops, four police
officers were killed in small-arms and IED attacks since he arrived, Clark
said. But Rahmatullah's response to the attacks showed his true mettle, Clark
said. He described Rahmatullah's leadership style as a legacy of the old
top-down Soviet doctrine.
"He definitely rules with an iron
fist," Clark said.
Rahmatullah investigated the attacks,
determined they could have been prevented with better patrolling and
disciplined the officers responsible, he recalled. Along with consistency of
district leadership, hiring police from the villages has also built an
atmosphere of familiarity and mutual trust, Clark added.
"This is what makes Dand stand out ahead
of the other districts," Clark said, crediting his American Army and
Canadian Army predecessors for their groundwork. "Dand was already on its
way to the next level of transition."
That transition involves the police taking
over all district law-enforcement, allowing the Afghan National Army to assume
more of the role it's designed for – homeland defense, Clark said.
But before that happens, the police will have
to improve their long-term planning and become more self-sufficient in
logistics and supply. Their mentorship of the police in these areas continues,
Clark said.
"We're trying to set them up for the
future," he said.
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