This vignette is from my deployments as a military engineer in Uruzgan Province, Afghanistan. I was an engineer with Australia’s Reconstruction Task Force (RTF) 1 in 2006 and returned to the same job in 2008 with RTF 4. Engaging with the local population helped me sense and in a small (but never complete) way understand the environment, situation, and people at the tactical level. Doing the same job and in the same location but over different spaces in time, gave me firsthand insight into the before and after snapshot of Tarin Kowt over two years of a military mission.
Here’s the story:
I remember patrolling through the streets of Tarin Kowt in 2008 with a fellow military engineer who was seeing Tarin Kowt for the first time. I had previously been deployed in 2006 so I was seeing Tarin Kowt for the second time. My colleague quietly stated to me that he didn’t realise “Tarin Kowt was going to be this bad”. I replied that I didn’t realise “Tarin Kowt was going to be this good”. Why was there a contrast of thought… why were two Tarin Kowts being seen?
Firstly, let me explain and compare what I saw of Tarin Kowt in 2006 to Tarin Kowt in 2008. Photographs do not provide the complete story but may help visualise the descriptions below.
Tarin Kowt 2006
An excerpt of my thoughts on Tarin Kowt from 2006:
“The first patrols into Tarin Kowt were reconnaissance missions to enable us to engage with the local population and assess the reconstruction work. My first impressions of Tarin Kowt were stark. The bazaar, the local word for marketplace, was deserted; it appeared that some goods were being sold behind closed doors but none openly. The Taliban owned the area either side of the Tarin Kowt to Kandahar Road so limited supplies were entering the town. The buildings in the bazaar and government precinct were littered with bullet holes with most buildings falling apart as time and neglect took their toll on the mud-earth constructions. The town was still and on the outskirts of town, white flags representing the Taliban’s presence flew in the silence.
In certain areas of Tarin Kowt, if the children were not pelting rocks in our direction, they would be counting our numbers on patrol before scurrying away behind a compound wall with their report. At an abandoned security check point in Tarin Kowt, there was still blood-stains from an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) attack that had killed one local and injured others including children. The Taliban were operating close to the FOB as symbolised by a man we dubbed as the ‘Rocket Man’ who for the first three months would fire 107s into our Forward Operating Base (FOB). There was a strict black-out policy in the FOB so that the Rocket Man’s aim would be challenged in the dark.
The state of Tarin Kowt was further exemplified by what was not there. There was limited power and therefore no lights at night. There were approximately 20 cars in town. There were no means for the local population to communicate with the outside world; there were only two known satellite phones in the town for the government. There were no mobile phone towers and therefore no mobile phones. The flag of Afghanistan and symbols representing the Afghan Government presence were rarely seen. There were few locals wearing uniform so limited presence of Afghan National Police or the Afghan National Army. They mostly remained behind the protection of their compound walls. I rarely saw women outside their compounds. In fact, in my entire seven months during RTF 1 I saw a total of five women walking on the street in daylight, all escorted by male relatives.
While the physical state and smells of the town struck me, it was the nuances in the eyes of the locals that told the underlying story. The locals looked scared and would not talk to us openly. During the initial patrols, they told us to leave their town, we were just going to cause more trouble for them. It felt like nothing was moving in Tarin Kowt, no construction could be seen, an almost empty bazaar, people were not gathering in the town and there was nervousness in the air. People were in survival mode – do whatever you needed to survive and then repeat if you were still alive the next morning.”
That was my first impression of Tarin Kowt in 2006. A seven month deployment then unfolded, then I had eleven months back in Australia before returning to Afghanistan in 2008.
Tarin Kowt 2008
Here are my thoughts from my first patrol in Tarin Kowt in 2008:
“Eleven months transpired from when I left Afghanistan in 2007 and my return with RTF 4 in 2008. I did my first patrol a few days after arriving at the FOB and the changes hit me immediately. In 2006, Tarin Kowt had been two kilometres from the FOB, the two areas had been separate entities. In 2008, there was no longer a separation. There were over 300 new residential compounds in a section of Tarin Kowt called Kareze Khayro and the compounds were right alongside the FOB. The 20 cars had turned into hundreds and there were trucks or what are called jingle trucks, laden with goods for distribution. This immediately indicated to me that the Tarin Kowt to Kandahar Road was at least intermittently open and trade was occurring.
As we drove down the main street in Tarin Kowt, I noticed new construction, and it was not coalition or NGO construction, it was residential and commercial infrastructure being built out of the local’s own money. Some buildings were still being made of earth but not all of them. The locals were using bricks and reinforced concrete – an indication that the locals were making money and that the construction skill-sets the RTF had been teaching was working. In 2006, I saw no residential construction projects. The locals were not building anything back in 2006 because they did not know if they would be alive the next day let alone live long enough to see the fruits of their efforts. The locals in 2008 were now building for a future and this meant that they believed one existed. The local people were busy and pushy as they negotiated the streets of Tarin Kowt, they didn’t care much for our presence.
We continued to move down the main street in Tarin Kowt and I saw six females walking by themselves – no men escorting them and two of them were only wearing a headscarf rather than the full burka. Out of everything that I saw that day, seeing those women was what surprised me the most. I saw more women walking the streets in broad daylight on that first patrol than in my entire time during RTF 1.
We kept moving and entered the bazaar. What I knew to be a fairly desolate bazaar, riddled with bullet holes now resembled a bustling market place. The bazaar in 2006 was approximately 50 meters long and goods were sold behind closed doors. The bazaar now stretched for about 200m with petrol stations, construction products, children’s toys, commercial goods and traditional fruit and vegetable stalls. The bullet holes had been patched up or buildings entirely replaced. People were freely selling their goods under newly constructed awnings.
The bazaar was alive and there were people and cars everywhere. I found this fascinating, but having so many people and vehicles to deal with was not so fascinating for the Platoon Commander in charge of security that day. Most people had mobile phones, the phone towers having been constructed in 2007. Children moved freely. Girls walked in huddles wearing blue and white uniform dresses to attend school. There was no rock throwing and somebody, I daresay it was an Australian, had taught the children in Tarin Kowt how to do the Wiggle’s signature finger-wagging move.
In Tarin Kowt there was also a government presence. The Afghan National Police had check-points, the Afghan Army had a base and both were seen driving and patrolling the streets. Afghan flags were flying from government and residential compounds. While these government security forces were present, their effectiveness was dubious. The local government was building roads that were not sponsored by the RTF or other agencies. The government officials had planned and funded the roads themselves, which showed that the capacity building with the local government engineers was working. The local government was also funding the road without external help and this meant that there were at least some relatively non-corrupt government departments now functioning.
In 2008, the RTF was operating for long periods of time outside the wire on substantial reconstruction works. The villages outside Tarin Kowt that I thought would take 10 years to have a government presence, now had government officials actively present although their effectiveness was again dubious. I also saw government engineers working outside of Tarin Kowt on flood mitigation and road projects. They had initiated these projects themselves. In 2006, the provincial government was not effective and if government officials had dared to work outside of Tarin Kowt, the Taliban would have executed them.”
Around the same time these thoughts were buzzing through my mind on patrol, my friend stated to me that he didn’t realise “Tarin Kowt was going to be this bad”. I was certainly seeing a different version of Tarin Kowt to my fellow military engineer. To me, Tarin Kowt in 2006 was horrific by Australian standards. It was a dark shade of horrible by 2008.
Soldiers seeing the town for the first time in 2008 described Tarin Kowt politely as a rubbish dump; other words not appropriate to publish were more commonly used. They saw electrical wiring hap-hazardly strung about town, roads constructed from sub-standard concrete blocks, streets with an unimaginable stench, poorly disciplined Afghan police, concrete containers overflowed with rubbish and clogged drains. What I saw in 2008 was lights where there had previously been none, people working for the government without fear from Taliban reprisals, local construction products being made, roads being built, and a semi-functioning government having built concrete garbage containers and drainage systems.
Here’s what I learnt from this contrast of thought:
Adaptive Action – Learning to Learn
The Adaptation Cycle talks about ‘learning how to learn’ but what does that actually mean for a junior commander? Here’s my take: moving unconscious thoughts about the operating environment to conscious thoughts is part of ‘learning how to learn’. Sharing these thoughts (up, down and laterally) and explaining ‘why you think this’ helps the team problem frame the complex environment. If I was to deploy again, I would ask myself these three questions as part of my individual thinking:
- How do I see the battle space?
- Why do I see it this way?
- What can I learn from this?
I would capture this thinking, share it and discuss it with others. I would ask myself these three questions over the course of the deployment and then capture what has changed in my answers. Capturing this change and asking ‘why do I see the battle space differently now’, I believe is part of ‘learning how to learn’ as an individual. Just as we hand over TTPs for an operating environment, how and why I changed my thinking over a deployment would become part of my handover.
How to Think – Critical Thinking
We all look at the operating environment through a particular lens of thinking (e.g. a JTAC and a Sapper will see common and also different things in an operating space to each other), and we each have our own mental limitations and bias. Critical thinking is important to help mitigate bias and also help see ‘more of the problem’ during the continuous problem-framing. Edward de Bono describes why improving to think is important:
“A two finger typist with hundreds of hours of practice is still a two finger typist. A few hours learning touch typing would have made a huge difference. It is the same with thinking.” Edward De Bono – Guardian Article 25 January 1997
What’s the point? Just because you think all the time doesn’t necessarily make you good at it. If deployed on the ground as a junior commander, those few powerpoint lessons you received during initial officer training on critical thinking are not enough. Just as we discuss and improve TTPs over a deployment, consider discussing and improving your thinking.
Adaptive Action – Learning to see what is important
The way you perceive the environment is important. Perception can bring in bias to your CMAP/IMAP which ultimately can affect your decisions. Let’s use the example of the two Tarin Kowts to demonstrate the difference in the ‘so what, therefore’ analysis during CMAP/IMAP:
What was seen: women walking in the street in Tarin Kowt.
- Me. So what: Women are now able to walk the streets by themselves, without a male family member escorting them. Therefore: women’s independence has improved.
- My mate. So what: women are wearing full burkas. Therefore: women in Uruzgan Province live in repression.
You can see the nuance in our individual thoughts. This is not to say my ‘so what, therefore’ was right either.
As a junior commander, you will have a front row seat to sense the operating environment – your thinking is important to your own plan and also to those who are planning from the distance of a headquarters.
As another line of thought: what did this actually mean for our mission? Were women linked to subsequent action either military, host-nation or OGA? Were observations about women’s independence linked to security MOE? This again links back to the Adaptation Cycle of ‘learning to see what is important’. I would add ‘learn to see what is important for your mission and others’. Don’t discard information just because it isn’t directly related to your mission – who else needs to know this?
None of this is encouragement for paralysis by analysis but striving to improve your adaptive action and critical thinking is worth considering.