Courtesy Photo | Afghan air corps 1st Lt. Mohammad Naim receives a training certificate from Staff Sgt....... read more read more
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By 2nd Lt. Monika Comeaux
173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team
NANGARHAR PROVINCE, Afghanistan - Six troops from the Afghan air corps graduated from a 10-day long Afghan Information Dissemination Operations Training class Jan. 30 at Forward Operating Base Fenty, Afghanistan.
The class was run by U.S. military personnel and intended to teach participants how to effectively interact with the populace and how to effectively disseminate information, said Staff Sgt. Zachary Kramer, a Mobile Training Team member originally from Denver, Colorado.
The classes covered the basics of human behavior, interaction with the media and how to identify a target audience, just to mention a few subjects. The curriculum was a marketing class, military style.
Kramer also educated his students on the Military decision making process and troop leading procedures. Participants learned about how to prepare situation reports for the Afghan and coalition forces. Most importantly, they learned about how to keep each other safe when they are out on a mission as a team.
Afghan Air Corps Brig. Gen. Jahangeer was among the students, and since he was the highest ranking person in attendance at the small graduation ceremony, with the help of a translator he gave a speech on behalf of the Afghan air corps participants.
"I am proud of you and appreciate your work," he said addressing Kramer. "Even though I am a general, I was your student and I learned a lot of new things from you."
Afghan 1st Lt. Mohamad Naim also had the opportunity to participate in the class. Although he speaks some English, he said he felt more comfortable talking with the help of a translator as he said that he learned a lot in the past ten days. He said he was stunned at some of what he heard in class.
"My teacher taught me a lot. It was amazing for me to hear that if one of my fellow soldiers is killed, maybe I shouldn't just go and kill an enemy fighter but maybe I should meet that enemy and talk to them and convince them that killing my fellow soldier was a bad thing," Naim said. "He [Kramer] taught us that we should try to turn our enemies into friends and we should try to work with them."
Kramer explained the classes that posed the greatest challenge for him were on MDMP and TLPs. He said he basically had to teach his translator the classes before teaching the students, so he could effectively translate and explain things for the students. At times he had to use smaller words and more simplistic explanations to get his point across because of the language barriers. All in all Kramer was really satisfied with his students.
The students received handouts of most of the slides they had reviewed in class, all translated to Pashtu. This way they have some reference material as they return to their units.
"All of these are perishable skills, and they go away with time if not used," warned Kramer as he addressed his students one last time.
Kramer said he already has future classes lined up at different locations in Afghanistan. He said he really hopes that the training will 'stick around' and maybe information dissemination operations will become a military occupational specialty or an additional skills identifier across the Afghan military and that there will be additional funds for this training and with that, maybe an entire schoolhouse could be established.
| Date Taken: | 02.01.2008 |
| Date Posted: | 02.01.2008 16:39 |
| Story ID: | 15984 |
| Location: | NANGARHAR PROVINCE, AF |
| Web Views: | 129 |
| Downloads: | 115 |
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