Troops assess Afghans’ winter wish list

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Village elders in Spise gaze into the camera of a photographer accompanying U.S. troops and Afghan police on a trip to assess the needs of remote villages of Logar Province. The people of the village get few visitors.


Troops assess Afghans’ winter wish list
By Les Neuhaus , Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Monday, December 3, 2007

ABCHAKAN, Afghanistan — Combat in Afghanistan can be interpreted in different ways.

Not all fighting is done with bullets. Part of the effort is to bring development to such a poor nation.

Rolling into isolated mountain villages in convoys of heavily armored vehicles can turn a lot of heads, but villagers quickly learn that the military’s hard-looking posture is not so menacing.

“We have to get in to these places to see what’s going on,” said Staff Sgt. Chris Hart, 22, one of the leaders of the 508th Military Police, a headquarters unit of the 82nd

Airborne Division’s 4th Brigade, which is assigned to eastern Afghanistan’s Logar province.

Electricity, clean water, schools, health clinics and roads are at the top of every Afghan’s wish list, and with winter settling in, U.S. troops are doing what they can to assess which of the province’s villages are the neediest.


Rest of article at: http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=50695