Josh Anderson, FVC’s Volunteers Coordinator, sent me this article from the Army Times about the National Guard’s Agribusiness Development Team, working right now in Afghanistan. While FVC works to help train former soldiers to find work in the farming business, the mirror image is the active military with farming skills, transferring knowledge to people their fellow soldiers are fighting to help.
Two excerpts:
In Afghanistan, eight of 10 workers scratch a living from the bleak landscape. Just 12 percent of the land in a country about the size of Texas can support crops. Devastating droughts are common here; overgrazing has depleted pastures. Small improvements can help make farming more viable, Leppert says. They also can help wean some farmers off opium poppies, which feed the heroin trade and in turn nourish militants such as the Taliban.
The war in Afghanistan, says Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, will be won in rural areas with programs like the Guard’s Agribusiness Development Team effort. Such aid will be as important as bullets, he says. Afghans won’t reject the fundamentalist Muslim Taliban and the narcotics trade until they feel more secure and see government efforts to improve their lives.
“These are the tactics that have been responsible for virtually every modern success in irregular warfare, and the Guard’s efforts are an example of the only path to success,” he says.
The National Guard’s teams began deploying here this year. The program is based on efforts over the past 20 years by the Guardsmen to improve farming in Central and South America.
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Lt. Col. Howard Schauer of the Nebraska National Guard has worked as a farmhand and a state meat inspector. One of the biggest challenges for Afghan farmers, he says, is that decades of conflict have destroyed farming traditions. Prior to Soviet occupation in 1979 and the civil war that followed, Afghanistan could feed itself and export crops. Today, the country must import wheat and many citizens rely on international aid programs for food, according to the State Department.
“They lost a whole generation of farmers with 30 years of war,” Schauer says. “A lot of them knew how to farm by watching their fathers and grandfathers. That disappeared. Our challenge is to show them benefits. They’re hard workers, very hard workers and they’re not dumb by any stretch of the imagination.”
They need help, he says, planting the right grasses for livestock to graze on. “Right now, you’ve got a weed that barely a goat would eat,” he says.
Afghanistan remains an exquisitely dangerous place for Afghans and the Guardsmen working with them. Leppert says security forces make up more than half of each team of about 50 soldiers. But working in the field and sharing risk is critical.
“I never look at Afghans as the enemy,” Leppert says. “‘Prove me wrong’ ” is my motto. You’re not going to trust me unless I’m out there with you, if I don’t sit down and have chai with you, just be a human being with these people. We’re diplomats of the United States.”
Still, he says, his soldiers wouldn’t hesitate to use their weapons.
“We’re like the Peace Corps with an attitude,” he says.
