KANDAHAR PROVINCE, Afghanistan – Leaders from the Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team and The U.S. State Department’s Regional Platform-South visited the Spin Boldak District to meet with U.S. military and civilian officials at a meeting on Forward Operating Base Spin Boldak, June 26.
The Kandahar PRT visits districts throughout the province to learn what governance, security and infrastructure development issues face local battlespace owners.
“This is my opportunity to come down and hear from the people in Spin Boldak to better understand their situation,” said U.S. Navy Cmdr. Mike Murnane, the incoming PRT commander from Syracuse, N.Y. “I can then advocate for the district at the provincial level.”
The Spin Boldak District, located southeast of Kandahar City and bordering Pakistan has a population of approximately 250,000 people with scarce water resources and very limited access to electricity.
“When you think of Spin Boldak, you think of the Weesh border crossing which is important to both the International Security Assistance Force and the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan,” said U.S. Army Col. Jim Edwards from Fort Hood, Texas, the commander of Combined Task Force Lightning which contains the Spin Boldak District. “If [products] don’t come through Torkham Gate, [they] comes through here. It is where a fair amount of customs duties come into the country.”
Fifteen-hundred commercial trucks per week come through the border crossing at Weesh. It is a vital crossroads for landlocked Afghanistan to get goods to Pakistan, India and the rest of the world. The border crossing is about to undergo a $21 million expansion project that is scheduled to begin next month. The expansion, in part, will increase the size of the customs area where commercial traffic can be properly queued and automation can be better utilized to ensure customs duties are properly levied.
CTF Lightning lies along the border of Pakistan and is a hub for the Afghan Border Police. The taskforce partners with the ABP as well as other Afghan National Security Forces in an area of responsibility the size of Connecticut.
Partnering with ANSF and the Albanian special forces unit, the taskforce has significantly disrupted the insurgents’ ability to move weapons and drugs throughout the district.
“We have succeeded in reducing the throughput of illicit goods,” said Edwards. “They just can’t take a truckload of [homemade explosives] up the highway. It is a lot harder for them now.”
Spin Boldak District is the home of the Achekzai and Noorzai tribes with a long history of tensions over the allocation of scare resources in this desert region. There is also a large population of about 100,000 internally displaced persons.
“There are a lot of tribal dynamics in Spin Boldak,” said Gregory Lawless of Buffalo, N.Y., the chief of the district support team from the U.S. State Department. “That’s how governance works in this area.”
A new tribal council began in the district last fall that included representation for members of other tribes for the first time. It was quite a major development to include these internally displaced persons into this tribal council, said Lawless.
“Counter-terror is common ground among the competing factions,” said Lawless. “They all want to convict the bad guys and send them away.”
“Motivation [between tribes] is not ideology at all, it’s economic,” said Edwards.
One economic problem is the high rate of unemployment in the district, sometimes hovering at 50 percent. The majority of jobs in the area are in the trade and transportation sectors.
“Obviously, jobs are important,” said Ken Overman, a field program officer with the U.S. Agency for International Development from Long Beach, Calif. “[Our] goal is to create business incubators [like training programs] and a chamber of commerce.”
The two together would help connect laborers with marketable skills to legitimate employers needing skilled workers.
“The government won’t solve all the problems,” said Andrew Haviland, the senior civilian representative for Regional Platform-South and U.S. State Department Foreign Service officer from Oakton, Va. “We have to look at ways to help the private sector.”
| Date Taken: | 06.26.2011 |
| Date Posted: | 06.28.2011 09:47 |
| Story ID: | 72893 |
| Location: | SPIN BOLDAK, AF |
| Web Views: | 728 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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