Chiclets

Yeah, we could fix that. Take two or three days.” So said an American soldier, both easy going and fully armed, as he surveyed the remains of Radio Afghanistan’s main transmission complex. In fact, quite a lot of the station’s hardware remained: all the antennas and most of a 500 KW Soviet-made transmitter whose reach had been nation-wide. Last Oct. 8 an American cruise missile had reached even further – from an Indian Ocean warship to this hillside outside Kabul – and done just enough but no more. Radio Shariah [“Revealed Law”], as the Taliban called it, was jarred off the air in one quick strike.

Lots have happened since Oct. 8. The Taliban are defeated if not quite destroyed. Kabul, at least for now, is peaceful and America-friendly. Radio Afghanistan resumed local transmission March 16 – with a Qoranic reading, then (gasp) a taped tune by a female singer, then the news read live by (double gasp) two live female announcers. And our Operation Enduring Freedom, in the words of an amazed and admiring UN official, has “completely revised all prior assumptions about military co-capacity for destruction and construction.”

Translation: While the bulk of our effort goes towards breaking down the Taliban and al-Qaida, small groups of American Special Forces have been building up the country. “In the past,” continued the U.N. man who specializes in conflict zones, “armies like yours have restricted civil and humanitarian activity to their own defensive perimeters. Their aim was mostly security and self-preservation. Your chiclets people are everywhere in Afghanistan.”

“Chiclets” is acronymized military-speak for Coalition Humanitarian Liaison Teams. In a war where most American force has been projected from the air, these small groups of specialists, typically numbering four or five men, are very much on the ground – in first-hand touch with Afghan needs and exposed, just as directly, to Afghan risks. It’s lonely out there. “Indian country,” as some soldiers call it, still includes everywhere but Kabul, the Coalition base at Bagram, and (on good days) our fortified position at Kandahar airport.

Never mind. Lightly armed, wearing no uniforms, and substituting first names for salutes, Chiclets teams are living Afghan lives … and doing what Afghans, temporarily, can’t do for themselves. Sometimes it’s technical, sometimes political, sometimes a combination of both. Take, for instance, the sinequanon issue of water.

As elsewhere in Central Asia, water is life. Rains are scarce and erratic. Back in normal times, now two dozen years in the past, farmers depended on spring snowmelt to fill the rivers and thence the network of canals, which made agriculture possible. These networks had taken centuries to build. Largely destroyed by Chinghiz Khan in 1220 C.E., their subsequent reconstruction and maintenance represented each community’s most vital vintage investment. Maintaining and guarding them required rivalries to be set aside for the common good. Physical upkeep called for diplomatic skills as well as untold shovel hours. Each February local landowners would argue and bicker but finally agree about who would provide what labor and receive what water. Rivalries were inevitable, and suspicions rampant. Owners upstream typically possessed smaller plots, but they also had first crack at the water which, by late summer, would be in short supply.

Even so, these February meetings could not – and did not – fail. Agreements were struck, canals were cleaned, and, albeit with some complaint, water would flow as scheduled. That was then.

Not anymore. Recent destruction has taken two forms. First, many of the canals were bombed beyond utility by Soviet forces intent on denying civilian support for the Afghan resistance. Second, the delicate networks of political ties, some of them likewise centuries old, were blasted apart by death, bribery, or dislocation. Result: Even in “peaceful” areas, water has been scarcer than ever.

Enter a Chiclet. One of these small teams working near Herat – hard by the Iranian border and far from Bagram safety – has supervised 266 kilometers of irrigation canal reconstruction. Five thousand workers have been paid $1.50 per day.

If that pay seems poor, consider the recent past. A mere 14 months ago I visited some of these men and their families in a makeshift camp on a barren plain outside Taliban-controlled Herat. All had been forced from their lands by lack of water: not only a three-year drought but also collapsed hydraulics. They were destitute, Taliban authorities were predatory, and 120-degree summer heat was immanent. None of them – and certainly not I – could ever have thought that the next spring would bring American soldiers to Afghanistan and water to the ancient canals.” God will provide,” one of them assured me – against all odds – last year. Quite so … in the form of American soldiers.

Other Chiclet projects have involved schools, medical clinics, road repairs, even airports. Remember Mazar-e-Sharif, the northern city whose capture from the Taliban paved the way towards Kabul? It remains a Coalition bastion, but erratic electricity renders its airport liable to warlord pressure. Can-do Sgt. Joe Rayburn (489th Civil Affairs Battalion) has managed to purchase of a local generator, to procure local transport, and to arrange for local protection. He takes nothing for granted in Mazar’s landscape of warlord machinations. “After six months the airport will assume full responsibility … but we wanted to give them a good start, and not just drop it in their laps.” Patronizing? Ask ordinary Afghans. They’d like Joe to stay six years.

Opposition comes not from Afghans but rather, amazingly, from some in the international humanitarian community. Again the mind drifts back: This time to last October when American bombs – and food supplies – began to fall. I’d worked with several humanitarian organizations over the years and now regretted their response to this dual U.S. involvement. Nothing good, they argued, could ever come of war. It was confusing and cynical, they argued, to drop both ordinance and nutrition. One necessarily excluded the other. No one force should do both.

Such concern is understandable. Humanitarians don’t want to be mistaken for soldiers, don’t want to be included in a military line of fire. They speak, virtuously but vaguely, of “respect for humanitarian space.” I look forward, when time once again permits, to some small role in humanitarian-sponsored recovery.

Meanwhile it feels good to know that one small part of Enduring Freedom is making the day-to-day lives of Afghans more endurable.

Dr. Whitney Azoy, a cultural anthropologist and former U.S. diplomat in Kabul, has worked for 30 years with Afghanistan and the Muslim world. His column will be printed as circumstances permit.