Settling damage claims a sure but slow way to edge out shadow governments

GHAZNI PROVINCE, AFGHANISTAN

05.12.2012

Story by Sgt. Mike MacLeod 

1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division Public Affairs

FORWARD OPERATING BASE ARIAN, Afghanistan – “Shoulder to shoulder” is how coalition forces term their stance with Afghan army and police partners. “Step by step” might be their cadence.

“Change is slow,” said Staff Sgt. Martin Sierra, a non-commissioned officer with the 403rd Civil Affairs Battalion, out of Mattydale, N.Y., speaking of reducing Taliban shadow governance in rural Afghanistan and growing the reliance on GIRoA, or Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

Sierra had just participated in the settlement of a legal claim that villagers in Ghazni province had filed for the repair of damage to their buried waterline by a U.S. military vehicle.

“When we break something, kill a goat, mess up a bike, something like that, they are entitled to file a legal claim,” said Sierra. “Usually the platoon leader or commander gives them a card that explains how to file a claim. That’s exactly what they did. Then we employ engineers to give us an estimate of the repair cost,” he said.

The villagers were paid $450, about the average annual salary for the area, and while Sierra believes the claimants had hoped coalition forces would pay for an entirely new system, they still left satisfied.

Sierra sees the transaction as a small victory, but one short of its full potential.

“What I would have liked to have seen is to be able to keep engaging those folks,” he said. “They say, ‘Nobody helps us.’ But have they gone to seek any help? Usually no because the Taliban won’t allow them to leave their village to speak to GIROA or coalition forces.

“If they are seen with us, the Taliban will come back at night and beat them up, threaten and even kill them. They live in fear. Anything they do, they have to sneak out, and the more they do it, the higher the risk.”

To arrange the meeting in question, Sierra had to ask children in the village to tell the claimants the time and place of the settlement because the adults were too afraid to be seen with American soldiers in public.

In fact, many villages are hard for civil affairs practitioners to access how they might help because village elders, afraid of retribution, will say that everything is fine even when major problems exist, he said.

The goal is to get GIRoA into the villages by first building up district centers into functional government centers where they might compete and eventually replace services provided by the Taliban’s shadow governments.

Fear of what the Taliban might do is probably much greater than what they can and will do, thanks to their propaganda campaign, he said.

“I can’t tell you how important it is for the [Afghan National Army representatives] to take the lead on everything,” said Sierra, who that day, worked with Maj. Niyazi, a company commander with the 203rd Corps.

The Afghan soldiers act as cultural advisers and are better able to advise and protect the welfare of their fellow countrymen, he said.
Sierra is based at Forward Operating Base Arian, where he works with the ANA’s 6th Kandak, 203rd Corps, and the U.S. Army’s 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division.

• Date Taken: 05.12.2012
• Date Posted: 05.14.2012 16:10
• Story ID: 88414
• Location: GHAZNI PROVINCE, AF