More than half of Afghans are illiterate, making written agricultural education materials’ value limited. Farming in Kunar prov. is done almost entirely by hand. Mechanization of agriculture is many years away, but according to Kock, those are not his greatest hurdles in dealing with local farmers. “Well, a lot of it’s not only development, but trust,” Kock said. “So they’re a little bit paranoid. You know, what are we going to put in their animal? The trust issue for Afghan farmers," Kock added, "goes far beyond questions about modern agricultural techniques. In Kock’s experience, the most important issue to farmers here is whether the U.S. will continue its presence in Afghanistan beyond next year. “That’s the biggest question we have of trust,” said Kock. “There are a lot of people amassing whatever they can, because they’re getting ready for when the Americans pull out. So, we do have a lot that we’ve got to work through.” One of the military teams Kock is working with is the Iowa NG’s 734th ADT. Kock even shares an office with the ADT’s cmdr, Army Col. Craig Bargfrede. “Kevin has been a tremendous wealth of knowledge to us as we begin our ops here,” Bargfrede said. “We've a good working relationship now, and I expect it will only get better.”So why is a life-long Nebraskan working on agriculture in eastern Afghanistan? According to Kock, it's a natural career progression, at least for him. “Well, I did extension work for a long time, and this really is ‘extension-101’,” Kock said. “I did some banking and taught college a while. Then I decided I wanted to go do some int'l development stuff, and I guess there’s no better place to do int'l development stuff than right here.”
“It’s definitely a lot of work,” said Army Sgt. Bradley Denno, NCO-in-charge of the cargo mgt team. “It’s non-stop action from the time we get here until we leave.” The team is broken into 2 shifts with 2 Soldiers working together on each one. Together, they send supplies and equipment to nearly 30 FOBs and COPs.
“We supply all the FOBs in RC-East’s area of op with food, mail, ammo, weapons, repair parts and construction materials. We load pretty much anything they could possibly need or use,” said Denno.
Although the team occasionally loads military CH-47 Chinooks, they spend the majority of their time loading large, white, civilian-owned and operated, Mi-18 helicopters they call “jingle birds.” Since the jingle birds are limited to carrying only 4,000-lbs at a time, they usually have to make multiple trips to a FOB and back to transport all the needed supplies and equipment.
“Once a bird lands, we try to have it loaded and back in the air within 20-minutes,” said Denno. “That’s not always possible, but that’s our goal.”
“It’s a difficult and physically demanding job, but we're going to accomplish the mission no matter what,” said Pvt. William Foote, cargo mgt specialist. Although a majority of the helos are loaded by forklift or by hand, those aren’t the only methods the team uses to get supplies out; occasionally they use a special method called sling-loading.
Sling-loading involves using netting, ropes and hooks to attach cargo to the bottom of the helicopters. In order to pick-up the supplies, the helos hover above them while a Soldier standing below attaches the load. The team conducted more than 70 sling-loads during the month of July.
“We will sling-load anything that won’t fit inside the birds,” said Denno. “Some of the common sling-loads we do are fuel bladders, artillery pieces, generators and construction supplies. As long as the load meets the weight requirements, we'll find a way to get it to on the bird.”
“I have a great team out here, and I’m very lucky,” said Sgt. Patricia Oconnell. “Everyone is well-versed and skilled in not only their specific job, but they're also capable of doing every job out here.”
“One of the things I like most about the job is the Soldiers I work with,” said Foote. “They're really good at what they do, and I’ve learned a lot from my NCOs.”
“This job takes a lot of dedication and devotion to the mission as well as patience,” said Denno. “My team works hard and gives everything they have to support the troops outside the wire, making sure they have what they need to sustain the fight. It’s a mission we’ve been working hard on since we got here, and it’s a mission we'll continue to work hard on until we leave.”
“Once they get on the tank and start playing with the knobs, pushing buttons, seeing the sabot and the High Explosive Anti-Tank rounds and all the weapons systems, they start to get interested and take ownership of their training,” Christenson said. “That’s their tank now, and they're proud. You see it on their faces.”
“We're very proud of this group of Soldiers,” Yasein said, “especially because the majority of them have previous experience with the Russian tanks, and now they've experience on the M1A1 tanks.” “It's a pleasure to receive new equipment, but we have to always think of how to maintain it,” said IA Col. Sahib, cmdr at the BCTC. “As we say, the NCOs are the backbone of the Army, and maintenance is the backbone of tanks and all equipment.”“The M1A1 Abrams is the biggest, baddest beast on the range,” said Army Lt. Col. David Beachman, senior advisor with Iraq Training and Advisory Mission-Army at FOB Hammer. “But, it can't do its job if it's not out there on the range due to maintenance issues. It's through the system maintainers’ hands that the tank is going to be able to do its mission, which is saving lives.” Beachman said that he likes to look at the M1 tank as a lion. “The lion hunts all night and then lies in the shade during the day, confident in knowing that it’s the baddest thing out there, and nothing is going to attack it,” Beachman said.
However, IA Maj. Gen. Ali, the man who advises the Ministry of Interior on how to make that happen, is up to the task. As Dep. Dir. of the MoI General Directorate for Planning and Tracking, Administration and Finance, Ali’s confidence is based on years of experience as a civil engr, the knowledge learned from the tough daily grind of working as an officer and engr with the traffic police under Saddam Hussein’s regime, and to the knowledge gleaned from a recent trip to California. On a sweltering August day in central Baghdad, in the dim, always-under-renovation, erratically a/c MoI high-rise, Ali’s enthusiasm shone, as he told visitors about an advanced level strategic planning course he attended in Monterey, Calif. The first Iraqi to graduate from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, Defense Resource Mgt Institute, Senior Int'l Defense Mgt Course, Ali described how senior govt officials from 21 countries gathered to learn about strategic planning, threat assessment, and budget creation and execution from world renowned experts and each other. The program, intended to develop ministerial capacity in integrated strategic planning and budget formulation, teaches senior leaders how to allocate resources to optimize the budget process and achieve national security objectives. Ali's professional development began with workshops the British Dept organized for Int'l Development, and progressed under Iraq Training and Advisory Mission-MoI. “Major Gen. Ali quickly established himself as a leader, by embracing new methods for strategic planning,” said Col. Francis Holinaty, ITAM-MoI dir. of Financial Mgt and Contracting. Ali facilitated the ministry’s first 3-year strategic plan, published in Aug. 2009, and served as an MoI instructor for training events and subject matter expert for MoI Joint Review Committee forums. These accomplishments led to the ITAM-MoI advisory team to nominate him as the first Iraqi to attend the course."This is a critical time for Iraq’s ministries and it's essential," Holinaty said, "that the ministry continues to integrate mission requirements with available resources to man, equip, train, maintain and sustain the IP Forces to execute the ministry's security mission." “We worked on how to put together a 3-year plan specific to each country, linking budget with strategic goals, how to analyze threats and risks, and methods to deal with them, ” Ali said. He outlined Iraq’s key strategic goals, for the next 3 years: provide security, improve capability, develop mgt skills, and encourage citizen participation. However, the key to achieving those goals is creating and executing a budget. “The instructors provided us with info to think and see from different sides,” Ali said. “They taught us to take advantage of resources and evaluate risks. “The greatest risk here in Iraq is terrorism. We discussed how to improve our work to minimize risk, and how to use our resources to prevent terrorism. It's crucial that we improve the IP capability,” he said. A proven method to expand police capacity is to increase their technical skills by providing weapons and training. Other strategies include empowering the police and civilian defense employees through training and building infrastructure. Key to this effort is building roads near int'l borders to enable patrols by ISF. “The strategic plan we developed at the course reflects the ministry’s vision – MoI Bolani supports our work,” Ali said.The collegial relationships Ali built were as important as the knowledge he gained. He recalled his friendship with a Saudi Arabian officer. “We talked about many things, some of them Iraqi. We had long discussions about how terrorists destroyed our cultures and killed people.” He spoke of other newfound friends with whom he discovered common ground. “I became friends with a Czech officer,” Ali said. “We had many interesting discussions and spent time together shopping for our families. I'm in contact with these officers and others from the class.” But, it was the Americans who most surprised him. “This visit changed my view of Americans –we see them on television, and that is very different from reality,” he said. Rather than the Hollywood stereotypes he expected, the Americans Ali interacted with were “very nice and quiet. We can build good friendships with Americans,” Ali said. “Everyone I met wanted Iraq to improve.”