Afghan tour is sobering
By Doug Robinson Deseret News Published: Monday, March 9, 2009 11:46 p.m. MDT

From time to time I receive e-mails from soldiers in the Middle East — often fascinating accounts of their feelings and experiences. Recently, another of those e-mails arrived from a Utah soldier who is stationed in Afghanistan. After receiving his initial e-mail, I asked him to elaborate on his experiences there. His response was so compelling and well-written that I decided to turn today's column over to him. He requests anonymity because what he does is so secret that not even his wife knows what he does over there.

I'm about halfway done over here, and it has been an interesting ride. … I live in a dilapidated wooden hut on an air base in what is arguably the most desperate country in the world, working with the enemy daily.

The lawlessness and violence here are remarkable. The pace of the war is relentless and rages 24/7 — helicopters, jet afterburners, gritty tough-talking soldiers of all service branches talking at wee hours of the morning to decompress after days pulling patrol, subjecting themselves to the deadly IED

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I feel like I've been dropped off in hell, but surprisingly morale is high and all of us are resolute in prosecuting the mission. I wish the American public could really see what is going on here. It angers those of us who live this every day to see what the public is being fed (by the media). They would be sobered by the quality of our youth and efforts to ultimately bring a higher quality of life to these people.

My day-to-day job here is very sensitive and controversial, and with Guantanamo Bay closing we will be squarely under the political microscope more than we already are.

Our Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) are busy getting running water and electricity to people who live in remote villages ravaged by poverty and disease even though our teams are under constant fire and IED attacks during this process. It is very stressful. Tuberculosis, malaria, hepatitis and other diseases are rampant. The teams assist in bringing in vaccines and medical and dental care, as well as setting up locals with running water, generators, solar ovens and other technology to improve their standard of living. The average lifespan of the male is only 43 years old.

Terrorist organizations don't want us here; they want the people to remain under a strict, oppressive law. We build bridges and roads, they blow them up. We build and fund schools, they threaten and destroy them. The terror that is exacted by various groups such as the Taliban and Hiqqani network, among others, is devastating. They deliver documents called "night letters" to the villagers' doors, telling them that if they cooperate with coalition forces they will be killed and their houses burned. They kidnap people to ransom or rob them to pay for weapons brought across the border from Pakistan. They are steeped in the illegal drug trade of opium.

They march into schools and threaten teachers not to teach anything but anti-U.S. doctrine. They remove pens, pencils or paper the children have for learning and tell the principal they will kill him/her if they don't have every child bring in money each month to support the insurgency. They want to keep the people uneducated because education means independence and ultimately choice and freedom.

I wish the American public could see the thousands of service members line up along both sides of the main road here to pay respects when a comrade falls. This happens at all hours of the day or night. When the announcement is made, you get up, get dressed and pay your respects. It is difficult to see a beat-up truck come down the street with a silver coffin in the back draped with the American flag and his comrades riding along with stoic, tear-streaked faces. It's sobering to see everyone render a final salute as the vehicles pass by en route to loading the casket in an aircraft headed for the States somewhere. I wonder what the family is thinking or feeling on the receiving end. I wish the mothers and fathers of these soldiers knew what their kids were really doing. They would burst with pride.

Everyone I talk with is altered permanently by their experience in some way. I wonder if I'll be the same. Everything comes with a price tag, I suppose. You just get with your buddies and try to blow off some steam because you know nobody at home is going to understand, no matter how close they are to you. To think that in just a few days of travel you can be taken from a remarkably high-stress environment — where it is dirty, noisy and alive 24/7 and you worry about your own and others' safety and your family back home — to sitting in your own living room trying to make sense of the experience and wondering what to say to others. No wonder servicemen feel out of place or have feelings of estrangement from family/friends or a general sense of detachment.

I went for a run around the perimeter of the base with a couple of coworkers, and these little Afghan kids came up to the fence and watched us run by. I was in my $60 New Balance shoes, and they were barefoot among their goats and sheep in the cold. The homes looked like Dresden after the Allied bombing in WWII.

We treat wounded enemy combatants as well as our own and with modern medicine and allow them to live another day. We deliver humanitarian aid.

The only way we will win the war against terror is to help improve the quality of life and independence of these people. We will never win it with military might. Afghanistan has never been conquered — Alexander the Great, Genghis Kahn, the British, the Soviets have all come and gone. It's hard to believe the 9/11 attacks were planned and trained for not far from here.

Is it worth it? I guess if our efforts allow a people who have been constantly at war for at least the last 30 years to obtain some measure of peace in life, while contributing to the safety of the United States and all we have, I think so. I have a general sense of guilt wondering by what magician's trick I was born into the circumstances I was. I have no answer for that one. Doug Robinson's column runs on Tuesdays. Please send e-mail to drob@desnews.com

 

 

 

 

nd controversial, and with Guantanamo Bay closing we will be squarely under the political microscope more than we already are. Our Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) are busy getting running water and electricity to people who live in remote villages ravaged by poverty and disease even though our teams are under constant fire and IED attacks during this process. It is very stressful. Tuberculosis, malaria, hepatitis and other diseases are rampant. The teams assist in bringing in vaccines and medical and dental care, as well as setting up locals with running water, generators, solar ovens and other technology to improve their standard of living. The average lifespan of the male is only 43 years old. Terrorist organizations don't want us here; they want the people to remain under a strict, oppressive law. We build bridges and roads, they blow them up. We build and fund schools, they threaten and destroy them. The terror that is exacted by various groups such as the Taliban and Hiqqani network, among others, is devastating. They deliver documents called "night letters" to the villagers' doors, telling them that if they cooperate with coalition forces they will be killed and their houses burned. They kidnap people to ransom or rob them to pay for weapons brought across the border from Pakistan. They are steeped in the illegal drug trade of opium. They march into schools and threaten teachers not to teach anything but anti-U.S. doctrine. They remove pens, pencils or paper the children have for learning and tell the principal they will kill him/her if they don't have every child bring in money each month to support the insurgency. They want to keep the people uneducated because education means independence and ultimately choice and freedom.