Marines Focus On Building New Afghan Nation

MARJAH, Afghanistan — Capt. Stan Lee patrols his corner of Helmand Province with a loaded rifle like every other Marine. But he has never had to use it. Here in one of the most combative areas of southern Afghanistan, Lee has another weapon — U.S. dollars.

Lee, a member of Camp Pendleton’s 3rd Civil Affairs Group, is one of about 80 Marines spread across Helmand Province who specialize in small-scale governance and economic development projects. As U.S. forces hone their counterinsurgency strategy, such nation-building “stability operations” have taken an increasingly important role.

Lee’s team of civil affairs Marines at Camp Hansen, the main base of operations for infantrymen from the 2nd Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment, focus on quick impact projects — cutting weeds that clog the canals and parch the fields, digging wells, and renovating schools.

They also have helped improve security, rebuild a business district and provide some urgently needed medical care to injured Afghans.

By the time they leave, Lee’s team will have spent about $300,000 on projects in the battalion’s area of operations, not including a $3 million civic center that they hope to break ground on within the next six months that will include government offices, a high school and vocational center, soccer field and medical clinic.

“We attempt to take the enemy off the battlefield by employing them, educating them,” Lee said.

U.S. Marines launched a major offensive in February to wrest Marjah from the Taliban, who prize its central location as a logistics hub and its network of U.S.-built canals that water poppy fields that fund their operations.

The area of northern Marjah near the Kems bazaar was a ghost town during the initial showdown. The Marines created a string of checkpoints down the main road passing Camp Hansen. Now, thanks to the returning residents and some investment from the Marine civil affairs kitty, the bazaar is back in business.

A merchant selling cans of chickpeas and other dry goods shook Lee’s hand during a recent visit and invited him for tea. Lee removed his helmet, so he wouldn’t “look like a storm trooper,” as he put it, and nibbled a pineapple candy the shopkeeper fed him.

“Right now there is good security,” said the shopkeeper, Sher Zeman.

Another merchant who stopped to chat, Haji Yar Mohammad, preened over the handsome pistachio paint on the sturdy concrete mosque the Marines renovated behind the shop stalls. “We’re going to rebuild this gas station. It will be really beautiful next to the mosque,” Mohammad said.

The United States has spent more than $50 billion so far on Afghan reconstruction, but the country remains at the bottom of the charts on international scales of development.

“All the meetings in the world, all that stuff is great, but what has to be shown to build confidence in the (Afghan) government process is results,” said Col. Paul Lebidine, of San Diego, commanding officer of the 3rd Civil Affairs Group.

“They need to see employment. They need to see that their school is being rebuilt, that their mosque is refurbished.” And they need to see their Afghan leaders make it happen, not just Marines, he added. That partnership is “what makes counterinsurgency such a challenge.”

NATO commanders have remarked in recent weeks on fledgling signs of a turnaround in Marjah, including the opening of a high school and the closure of insurgent explosives factories.

But firefights still erupt during every patrol in some areas of the district. And some military reconstruction projects have been sabotaged or rejected — such as the newly renovated “Yellow School,” a bright lemon-colored compound whose courtyard remains empty of school children.

According to a survey of 552 men in Helmand and Kandahar provinces conducted in June by the International Council on Security and Development, a policy think tank, 55 percent of respondents said they believe NATO and the Afghan government are winning the war. In Marjah, 99 percent were opposed to the ongoing military operations.

About half, or 55 percent of interviewees, believe that the international community is in Afghanistan for its own benefit, but 72 percent said they prefer that their children grow up under an elected government rather than the Taliban.

Amid these contradictions, what will it take to win the war? “The American public has this thing with, ‘are we winning? are we losing?’ It was the same in Iraq, people were up in arms saying ‘why aren’t we winning?’ ” Lee said.

Counterinsurgency is not as clear-cut as raising the flag over Iwo Jima, Lee said. “It’s not so tangible in this situation. We are fighting an insurgency built up on interpersonal relationships. It’s a lot like an inner-city gang in America. It’s thuggery.

“There is one or two degrees of separation between the insurgents and the local population. Everyone here probably knows who they are.”

Maj. Dallas Shaw, a former Oceanside resident who serves as the operations officer for the 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines, said, “It’s a live-fire election.”

To win, “we are talking and fighting in every area,” he said, as operations to clear, hold and build proceed simultaneously.

“We have to demonstrate good governance and security. The Taliban — the good thing for us is they were in charge at one point and they did a pretty shoddy job of it.”

During office hours at Camp Hansen’s Civil-Military Operations Center, the Marines process claims from 10 to 20 Afghan “customers” each day. Most of the men sitting in the windowless plywood room adorned with a large Afghan flag are carrying notes written by Marines who witnessed battlefield damage, such as fields of cotton torched during a firefight.

“This is an extremely poor country, and we represent an extremely wealthy nation. Because of that disparity you’re going to have people who want money. It’s our job to determine who wants it, versus who needs it and has a real claim,” Lee said.

One man in the crowd one recent morning came to apply for the job of sanitation contractor of Kems Bazaar. Commerce was reviving, but the stretch of shops was littered with large drifts of plastic bottles, banana peels and other detritus.

“You don’t need a lot of workers, you just need them there all the time. You could probably do the job with pinza, five” Lee said, holding up five fingers as the interpretor translated.

Abdul Samad was thinking big. If the Marines built trash bins the shopkeepers could toss their trash inside. Then his men would haul the rubbish away.

“My dream is to have trash cans all over the bazaar!” Lee said, but first thing’s first. He offered to pay each worker five dollars daily for a week to clean the bazaar. As supervisor, Samad would get $7 a day.

Samad stroked his beard and gesticulated, bargaining for more. But Lee was firm. “Right now it’s a mess out there and I want you to clean it up. Second phase is the long term. You could be my long-term guy,” Lee said.

Access to medical care is another asset the Marines wield on the battlefield. Lee’s civil affairs team couldn’t work any miracles for the dead little girl villagers brought them once after a motorcycle accident.

But they were able, during one typical day at the center, to patch up a man who said he had been rifle-butted on the head by an Afghan policeman at a traffic checkpoint.

Another man who appeared at the base that day gushed blood from seven different lacerations. He said he had been attacked by knife-wielding Taliban on his way to a party.

Two members of the civil affairs team, hospital corpsman James Bellar and Lance Cpl. Jorge Martinez, carried the man on a stretcher to the battalion aid station, where it took seven members of the medical staff almost three hours to clean and suture his wounds.

Blood that ran from his head had dried in black rivulets across his face, mixing with his beard and the dust of his feet. Navy Lt. Michael Rosedale, the battalion surgeon who grew up in Bonita, gently shampooed the man’s head, carefully avoiding his wounds, and wrapped his head in a surgical towel.

Their patient, who said his name was Abdull Qaium, age 35, was of fighting age. Whether his explanation for the gruesome filleting was true or not did not concern the Americans who treated him that afternoon.

“We have an ethical and moral responsibility to provide care when we have the ability to, when they are in extremis. If that accrues to winning the favor of the populace, that would be a secondary benefit as well,” Rosedale said.

After a firefight, the wounded sometimes approach the base with gunshot wounds. Some are certainly Taliban, said Master Gunnery Sgt. Steven Anderson. “Hopefully we just changed his mind.”