TOM BENNETT — The Daily Astorian Dean Perez shares dinner at the Afghan Army base in Jalalabad. Perez regularly joins his Afghan counterparts for tea and meals.
Dean Perez gets Afghan National Army prepared for protecting its own country
The Daily Astorian reporter Tom Bennett usually covers Clatsop County government and the newspaper’s “history” beat, which includes all aspects of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial commemoration. But he is observing some modern history first-hand this month. He is in Afghanistan reporting on the role of the U.S. military.
“I got one of my jobs done – it’s been a good day,” Dean Perez said.
Success is measured differently in a place like Afghanistan, where even the simplest task can be a challenge.
For Astoria’s Perez, navigating the maze of foreign language and customs and military bureaucracy has been his job for almost nine months.
The personnel manager for Clatsop County and Oregon National Guard major is one of the 12,000 U.S. military stationed in the war-torn central Asian nation. Their job is to defeat the lingering insurgency and put the country on the road to recovery after decades of brutal warfare.
It’s a job Perez and most of his fellow trainers take pride in. The Americans are welcomed by most of the local population, and the new army they’re helping train will, if it succeeds, keep Afghanistan from again becoming a terrorist haven.
The highway from Kabul to Jalalabad winds through a narrow gorge. The badly deteriorated road is being repaved by Chinese-led teams. TOM BENNETT — The Daily Astorian
“There’s a lot of good stuff that’s actually happening here. If we weren’t here, there be a lot of Afghans dying every day,” he said. “You talk to the Afghans, and most of them will tell you they want the coalition here. They know the minute we go away, the killing starts again.”
The mission includes some seemingly mundane tasks. The job Perez was happy to complete last Monday? Making sure payday went smoothly for about 80 members of the Afghan National Army (ANA) headquarters staff in Jalalabad.
It was only one of several tasks on Perez’ to-do list that day, but it was critical, he said.
Perez has been grooming his Afghan counterpart to take over the administrative tasks now handled by the American trainers, and a successful payday would mark another small step to independence for the fledgling fighting force.
TOM BENNETT — The Daily Astorian Afghan soldiers collect their monthly salaries. Dean Perez, who is in charge of payday for the local unit, sits back and lets his counterpart, seen at right, handle the task, part of the effort to get the Afghan National Army to take on more responsibilities.
Perez is an embedded training team (ETT) member under Task Force Phoenix, the National Guard-led mission to build up a 70,000-man national army for Afghanistan.
He’s one of thousands of National Guard members, “weekend warriors,” filling important roles in the U.S. military’s missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Perez, who joined the task force last August, was recently promoted to executive officer for his brigade and transferred to Jalalabad, near the Pakistan border, where the Afghan government has stationed a new ANA garrison to provide more security in the unsettled border region.
His new home is a former Soviet army compound that’s a mishmash of tents, plywood barracks and dilapidated Russian buildings, with look-out posts and sandbagged bunkers lying in strategic locations around the compound. Old weapons and equipment left behind by the Soviets and local militias lie scattered around. All the U.S. personnel – National Guard, Marines and Special Forces - wear their weapons at all times, even mealtimes.
TOM BENNETT — The Daily Astorian Boxes of MREs (meals ready to eat) are stacked outside the building housing Perez and other trainers in Jalalabad. The U.S. base is located inside a former Russian military compound.
Perez’ primary task is to teach the Afghan officers, who are used to throwing their men into battle with little preparation, how to handle all the planning elements required for a successful military operation, and to take care of all the administrative chores necessary to run an army smoothly.
It’s a job that requires endless patience. In his eight months, Perez has developed a close bond with most of his Afghan charges, but he still grinds his teeth over their frequent requests for more food, supplies and money, and their failure to take over more responsibility for the running of their units.
“Sometimes you train them and you wonder, ‘did they listen?’” he said.
But he knows yelling or ordering the Afghans around won’t work. Another American trainer who just recently arrived in Afghanistan is already suffering severe stress because his forceful approach is having little success with the ANA troops and officers.
“The ANA is wearing him down,” Perez said.
Not only the army claims his time. On the same day he’s sweating the upcoming payday operation, Perez and some of his fellow trainers are invited to tea with a local militia leader. Sharing tea is an important ritual in Afghan culture, and turning down an invitation is considered rude.
It took an hour out of his already busy day, but such contacts go a long way to boosting the credibility of the American forces with the local population, he said. But today it’s payday that occupies his attention.
When he first joined the Afghans eight months ago, the process was usually chaotic, with the men arguing with the paymaster and each other over their monthly salaries, which total about $80 a month.
On Monday the operation went smoothly – each soldier entered the pay room one at a time, saluted smartly to the captain, received their pay (and some chocolates courtesy of Perez) and left. Fellow Oregon National Guard Major Rob Frazer helped count the money, but otherwise it was Perez’ Afghan counterpart, Major Rahmanidin, who was in charge for one of the first times.
Perez praised him for the way things ran, a special accomplishment since the pay for the army’s officers was recently cut. On the way back to the American compound, where more meetings and paperwork waited, another crisis arose – the new quarters for one of the ANA captains was infested with scorpions, he was told.
Perez checked out the room and offered some advice, but it was another example of the Afghans turning to the Americans for help instead of fixing the problem themselves.
“You grow thick-skinned. Given four tasks a day, realistically you’re only going to be able to do one or two,” he said. “That’s why your buddies are so important – you need to build each other up.”
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