PAKTYA PROVINCE, Afghanistan —The seats of an old tour bus normally used to transport soldiers were stacked high with boxes of towels, cooking utensils, toys and clothes, and headed to a warehouse on Forward Operating Base Thunder, Feb. 9.
With barely enough room to seat a small crew of help, the bus sputtered towards a storage facility, where U.S. Army 1st Lt. Trenton Hayes and U.S. Army Sgt. Kyle Boddy, from the 320th Psychological Operations Company, who claim Oregon as their home state, would meet with Afghan National Army officers to offload a portion of humanitarian aid items sent from the United States.
“I was surprised by the amount of responses I got when I basically wrote one letter to my friends and put one post on Facebook,” Hayes said of the charity mission that started late last year. “This thing was like dominoes falling. Before I knew it, I had boxes coming in from all over the country from people I don’t even know.”
Hayes had mentioned the harsh living conditions of the Afghans during the winter in a letter to friends and family back in Oregon. The first letter went out in early December, 2012. By mid-January, Hayes had nearly two-tons of boxes full of clothes, stuffed toys and other items.
“My family and friends can be generous,” Hayes said. “I think partly because my letters painted a vivid picture of how sad it can be over here.”
Psychological Operations teams around Afghanistan help out with similar missions, usually in conjunction with ANA religious and cultural affairs teams. Items like towels, cooking utensils and food storage containers are already pre-packaged in large boxes specifically meant for civil affairs and humanitarian aid missions. This operation was different.
“I knew we would be giving away relationship building items, but I didn’t know we would be doing it in the form of a clothing drive or donation act,” Boddy said of this mission in comparison to his 2009 Iraq deployment HA assignments. “I didn’t think it would be a winter coat drive versus giving them soccer balls.”
“Our friends and coalition forces are working alongside the religious and cultural affairs and talking to the local tribes and villagers,” said Col. Farooq Edrak (who is recognized by the name Farooq) religious and cultural affairs officer for the Afghan National Army, 203rd Thunder Corps. “God willing, we will try to distribute this stuff to the needy people of the outlying districts.”
Various items will be distributed to villages throughout Regional Command East by ANA soldiers over the next few weeks and months depending on where the ANA and RC-East determines the greatest need.
“We try to find out how many poor people are in the village and then try to distribute the types of goods the families need,” Farooq said. “In general, we try to distribute the aid to people who need it the most.”
Humanitarian aid missions are also meant to help build trust of the ANA among the civilian population as many provinces are undergoing transition of power from U.S. to Afghan control.
“It should be clear to the people that not only are the U.S. and coalition armies fighting forces, but (they are) also setting good examples by helping humanitarian aid get to the people,” Farooq said.
“For some of these families, a donated jacket means less money spent on hospital bills for a sick child,” Hayes said.
The supplies were offloaded into a dusty warehouse on the ANA base. U.S. and ANA soldiers, including Farooq, were on site to oversee the mission and help move boxes.
“From the bottom of my heart, I would like to thank everyone, from my dear countrymen to our coalition friends who did not forget our people during these hard winter days,” Farooq said.
“They’ve done their part and now I’m obligated to go the rest of the way,” Hayes said of his involvement in the charity. “I’ve almost handed off the rest of the stuff to Col. Farooq. At this point, the ANA is going to take it the rest of the way.”