In a showing of mutual support for Piagari and other veterans, Maj. Toby Logsdon organized a version of the run at the same time as the run in Chicago. “She was doing the run in Chicago to raise awareness for wounded military personnel and their families,” said Logsdon.
“As all the announcements were being made before the race started, they mentioned how much I raised, and who I was running for,” Piagari said. “Thousands of people all heard that I had a cousin in Afghanistan, and that he was running alongside me from there.”
The org. also sent the run’s official T-shirts at no cost to the Soldiers running, Logsdon said. While participation was limited to only 5 people in Afghanistan, everything went off without a hitch. The Soldiers’ efforts didn’t go unnoticed on either end.
“It was important for me to make sure that I did well for my cousin. I wanted to make him proud of me. I knew he was proud the second I heard that he had not only run the race, but had gotten other soldiers from his unit to do it, too,” Piagari said. “This just reaffirms to me that our soldiers are the bravest people on the planet, and we need to do more for them.”
For more info on “Team Salute” and ways to assist their efforts, visit www.saluteinc.org.
“I promise you the same dedication, devotion and professionalism from TF Bastogne, as we're committed to support you in your progress toward a safe and prosperous Afghanistan,” said Poppas. “Thank you for giving me the opportunity to stand by your side. Colonel George, thank you for giving me the opportunity to command everything in your area. Bastogne, air assault, all the way.”
Those who understand it, like Army Maj. Bryce Jones, a Reserve civil affairs officer with the 405th CAB, say it’s critical for winning the war. “We want to get the populous to say ‘you know what—we don’t need Taliban anymore because CF are making our lives better,’” said Jones, who spent 8 months helping to implement U.S.-funded development projects in Panjshir prov.
Development is particularly important in RC-East, one of 5 regional joint TF command territories. This territory, the battle space of Combined Joint TF-82, is roughly the size of Mississippi. It contains 14 of the country’s 34 provs surrounding the capital, Kabul, and about 9.9 million people, who make up roughly a third of the country’s population.Dawn Liberi, the civilian counterpart of Army Maj. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, the cmdr of CJTF-82, said 41 of the 81 regional development zones selected by the GoA for special attention are found within RC-East.
Capacity Building: The old saying, “Catch a man a fish, feed him for a day; teach a man how to fish, feed him for a lifetime,” captures much of the essence of the buzzword, Capacity Building. “Capacity Building is really enabling—Afghans in this case—to essentially do the tasks that they need to do in order to make their country work, to make it run,” Liberi said. For example, one civilian from the Dept of Agriculture began hosting weekly demos to show Afghans how to farm better. Fifty Afghans arrived to the 1st demo, 150 to the 2nd, and 800 people to the 3rd. Unified Action: How is it that diverse civilian entities and the military are able to function together coherently in the same battle space? Unified Action is the answer. “First and foremost it’s enabling all of the civilian agencies under the U.S. govt to essentially work together in a chain of command, if you will, under chief of mission authority, which comes from the ambassador,” Liberi said. “So instead of having separate agencies doing different things on their own, Unified Action enables there to be one structure and one unified chain, which didn’t exist before. The second thing that it does is enables the civilians at each level to be counterparts to the military.”Army Maj. Gary Kramlich, an op analyst with CJTF-82, explained why Unified Action matters. “Unified Action is putting the right people in the right place with the right skills,” Kramlich said. “The military’s very good with org. We have the equipment to sustain ourselves in any environment, but we’re not necessarily the best qualified to teach mayors how to be mayors, or farmers how to be farmers. However, people from Dept of State, Dept of Agriculture, USAID, are.” Combined Action: It's the integration of ISAF and the Afghan troops into a single team. While Combined Action is usually talked about in reference to combat ops, Kramlich said there's “no doubt” about its being important to development as well. “The U.S. military and NATO mission has incredible capacity, but we struggle when and comes to understanding the culture, the language, and that’s why our Combined Action with the ANSF is building the right solution. They understand the people, the tribal dynamics, the sensitivities that we may inadvertently make worse.” PRTs: Provincial Reconstruction Teams in RC-East organize and implement a wide range of projects, using at least 80% local labor. These projects focus on such different things as education, rule of law, health and sanitation, and transportation. The Parwan PRT is involved in constructing a 26-room high school, and a 16-classroom girls school. The Panjshir PRT used local labor to complete about 25 miles of a road that will eventually connect Kabul to China, via Badakhshan prov., the panhandle of eastern Afghanistan. There're currently 27 PRTs operating in Afghanistan. Of these, 14 are in RC-East. ADTs: Agribusiness Development Teams function similar to PRTs, but are more focused on projects that deal with agriculture. They regularly engage in building greenhouses, conducting quality control on local slaughterhouses and planting trees.According to the Army’s handbook for ADTs, the ADT originated in 2007, when Secretary of the Army, Pete Geren, Dir. of the Army NG; Lt. Gen. Clyde Vaughn, and civilian and military leaders in the state of Missouri, developed the idea to deploy troops with expertise in agriculture. The 2007 brainstorm resulted in the creation of the Missouri NG’s 935th ADT. Several other states followed suit, including Texas, Neb., Ill., Tenn. and Kentucky. RC-East contains 8 of the 9 ADTs in Afghanistan. Speaking of these, Scaparrotti said, “They’re worth their weight in gold.” DSTs: District Support Teams are similar to PRTs, but they operate at a more local level of govt. (For a rough analogy with the U.S., think of provs. as states and districts as counties.) DSTs were formed largely to keep PRTs from being stretched too thin over large amounts of territory, Kramlich explained. DSTs, company-sized elements with mixed military and civilian members, are excellent exemplars of Unified Action. Ideally, each DST would contain 3 civilians, 1 from USAID, 1 from the Dept of Agriculture, and 1 from the Dept of State. The civilians in DSTs stay at district centers for 12 to 18 months in order to establish long-term relationships with district-level officials.Both Liberi and Scaparrotti mentioned DSTs as important components to the development success CJTF-82 has found over the course of the last year. CJTF-82 began their deployment at a time when no DSTs were operating in RC-East. “We now have 19 District Support Teams in RC-East, and it will go up to 23 very shortly,” Liberi said during a May 11 interview. This represents more than half of the DSTs in Afghanistan.“Under the Taliban there were 700,000 kids in school; now there're 7.2 million. A lot of that is because of programs we’ve enabled the ministry of education to develop,” Liberi said. “As a result of programs with the Ministry of Health, 80% of Afghans have access to healthcare where they didn’t before. So these are the kinds of programs that have made a difference in people’s lives.”Kramlich said the improvements in basic services translate into greater trust in GIRoA. “We find that if it’s a PRT that’s doing it, an ADT, or whether it’s us doing it through CERP funds, whether it’s a non-governmental agency providing those services, they still see it as the GoA providing the services to them, and that’s the part that keeps them looking to GoA as the best alternative to the Taliban,” Kramlich said.Geary gives credit for the success of the project to his engineer staff and its commitment to building Iraq's technical capacity. "Project Engr Bob Player worked closely with engr Mohammad Maulood, and quality assurance rep Natheer Hamid, who spent countless hours at the site to ensure a quality product would be delivered," Geary said. "In addition to their technical expertise, the Iraqi engrs' ability to liaise directly with the local education dept reps made the project handover quick and simple."
Maj. Stephen Bert, Stability and Transition Team, 2nd HBCT, 3rd ID, teaches an IA officer proper kneeling techniques for firing the M-16 rifle during marksmanship training for IA officer instructors at IA base Al-Kisik, May 23, 2010. With this training, the Iraqi officers will now instruct their NCOs, who, in turn, will instruct the Soldiers within their ranks.
Sgt. Chelsie Kirkland, an intel analyst with Regimental Troop Sqdrn, 278th ACR, 13th ESC, passes out donated shoes to an Iraqi boy during a humanitarian and intel gathering mission in Taji, May 25, 2010.
"We got to talk to some of the villagers about how they felt about security, in and around the area, and to see if there're any direct threats, to try to learn things that support our intel mission," said Kirkland. She also stressed the importance of humanitarian missions like this, as they increase the likelihood that the populace would be more forthcoming with info in the future.
Hundreds of donated shoes and clothing items were sent to the U.S. Soldiers from orgs. in the U.S., while some Soldiers spent their own money to purchase school supplies. Pallets of nonperishable canned and dry goods were donated as well.The village of Taji, which is located adjacent to COB Taji, is home to about 3,000 people.While such missions surely help the Iraqis, they're also positive for the U.S. Soldiers as well. The Soldiers with RTS, 278th ACR volunteered to be a part of the mission, because they believed in its necessity and what it would accomplish; easing the hardship of poverty and improving the relationship between Iraqis and U.S. forces, Kirkland said.