KUNAR PROVINCE, Afghanistan – The Iowa National Guard’s 734th Agribusiness Team completed 18 small-scale cash-for-work canal cleaning projects serving an equal number of villages May 4.

The projects employed several hundred men for more than two weeks in April. Each project cost less than $2,000, but village elders said each project in their area had a significant impact.

“This was excellent,” said Mohammed Rahim, an elder from Thesha, a village south of Asadabad, the provincial capital. “We got our canal cleaned, and young men got paid for their work.”

Mahngal Khan, another elder from Thesha, agreed.

“This has been a very good project for the community,” Khan said. “I hope the ADT will do more of these kinds of projects, and I thank the ADT for doing this one.”

The ADT underwrote the projects after elders representing 18 villages approached the provincial government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and asked for help cleaning their canals, which are vital for water supplies and irrigation of agricultural land. Provincial GIRoA officials then discussed the matter with members of the ADT, according to U.S. Army Capt. Pat Birgy of Mount Pleasant, Mich., the ADT’s finance officer.

“These projects represented a good way to directly link the provincial government with these villages,” Birgy said. “Unfortunately, the provincial government doesn’t have sufficient resources to fund these kinds of development projects, but when it makes sense, as it did in this case, we can help out.”

The ADT, Birgy added, administered the canal cleaning projects through the provincial National Solidarity Program, which coordinates with Community Development Councils made up of village elders at the local level. Mir Zaman Momand manages the NSP in Kunar province, and he expressed gratitude for the ADT’s support of the canal cleaning projects.

“This is a great work for the people,” Momand said. “They appreciate it, and I personally appreciate it.”

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