Report from Afghanistan: Trying to convert Afghan villagers
By Doug Grindle Community Reporter
Editor's note: For six weeks, our Marlborough Community Reporter Doug Grindle is again embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. While there, he plans to send us articles whenever he can to provide our readers with glimpses of what is going on in the region.

PHOTO/DOUG GRINDLE A view of Camp Keating in Nuristan Province, Afghanistan. The camp lies near four villages, two rivers and a single dirt track barely large enough to let a Humvee pass and too small for trucks.

Many thanks to Doug and other journalists like him who put themselves in harm's way so that those of us safe at home can be well-informed.

The following is his first contribution from Afghanistan. Camp Keating, Afghanistan - On a small army base tucked up in the mountains of northeastern Afghanistan, about 50 elders have gathered from the surrounding handful of villages.

The men were summoned for a "shura" - a tribal or regional gathering, by the regional sub-governor of the Afghan central government. He is in charge of this district, named Kamdesh.

American soldiers of Bravo Troop 1-91 Cavalry squadron on patrol near Camp Keating, Nuristan province, Afghanistan PHOTO/DOUG GRINDLE

Kamdesh is a contested district. Almost every day in this district some sort of attack on coalition forces takes place.

Recently, on a single day, a convoy of Humvees driving to the camp clashed with three insurgents (all the insurgents were killed); two insurgents were engaged as they tried to rocket the camp from a hillside (both were killed); and two insurgents trying to recover the bodies of the two insurgents killed on the hill died under mortar fire from the camp. This is what is meant by a contested district.

The shura is held under the roof of the open-sided dining hall on the base. The subgovernor, named Ayatollah, wants the villagers to side with the government.

"The insurgents want to destroy your villages," he told the assembled elders.

He explains that the coalition wants to build reconstruction projects in the villages. More than a million dollars has already been spent in the area on road improvements, schools and mini-hydro-electric plants. The Afghan government and the U.S. military hire local contractors to do the work. But the sub-governor tells them that without security, the construction cannot take place.

"There's a company in Bari Kot [a nearby city] that wants to come here for reconstruction but the insurgents won't allow them to," Ayatollah said. "As elders you should make the insurgents let the engineers come and reconstruct your villages."

The elders listen with little change of expression. This is the third time in six weeks many of them have heard this speech.

The elders are in a bind. Many of the insurgents enjoy local support. The men doing the fighting are often locals, paid by foreigners to attack the Afghan and American soldiers here. By the local code of conduct, turning against one's relatives is a major break with tradition.

An elder from one of the Kamdesh villages gets up to support the sub-governor.

"Most of the insurgents are not foreigners," he tells the men. "They are your nephews or sons. And they will get worse without guidance."

The elders have limited power. They cannot usually banish the insurgents from their villages, especially if they are locally-born. But they can demand they stop attacking the coalition. They can lead others in their village to decide to not support the insurgents. When foreigners come down off the mountains, which often reach 10,000 feet in this area, and seek shelter in the village, they can tell the security forces. And they can make it socially unacceptable in their village to take money from foreigners to fire on the Americans or the Afghan Army. The elders' power comes not from the gun but from persuasion.

Eventually Cpt. Joey Hutto, the commander of Bulldog Troop, 1-91 Cavalry, and the commander of the base, stands up and appeals to the elders.

"I want you to promise me not to recognize the insurgents from now on," he said.

The formal part of the meeting ends with a lunch of rice, flat bread and meat. The men happily set to eating the free meal, served by Afghan National Army soldiers who also live on the base.

Nuristan is one of the most northerly provinces, and Camp Keating is located at the farthest reaches of Nuristan that the Americans have gone. The sub-governor lives in the district.

Hundreds of insurgents, both foreign and domestic, live and move through this area.

A police deputy com- mander was recently arrested outside the gates of the base for collaborating with the enemy. The sub-governor has never been attacked, which is suspicious, soldiers say. His set-piece speech does not necessarily produce results, despite its repetition.

But 50 attendees at a shura is considered a healthy number. Without their backing and the backing of the villagers, historically hostile to the central government, soldiers say this war against the insurgency, already long, will be even longer.