PRT-Khowst partners with Task Force Spartan

  • Published
  • By John Pennell
  • JBER PAO
JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska --  Provincial reconstruction teams have become a mainstay of the U.S. effort in Afghanistan, where the units - composed of teams of specialized civilians and military members from across the armed services - bring unique, non-combat skills together to help local governments to continue building a stable economic platform.

PRT-Khowst is a partnered unit serving with the 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division's Task Force Spartan. The team is deployed to Forward Operating Base Salerno, near the city of Khowst in eastern Afghanistan.

Navy Cmdr. Bradley Brewer, the PRT commander, and Navy Reserve Cmdr. Elizabeth Greenwood, the deputy commander, took part in a telephone interview with reporters Jan. 27, discussing their mission in Afghanistan.

"The Provincial Reconstruction Team is a joint interagency organization made up of ... Army and Navy personnel, both active and reserve, as well as a contingent from the Massachusetts National Guard," Brewer said. "We also have a contingent of U.S. government civilians (from) the U.S. Agency for International Development as well as the Department of State and we also work with the U.S. Department of Agriculture as well.
"Our mission is to partner with the local and provincial government officials in Khowst Province," he explained. "We work with them to help develop their government capacity; help connect them to their populations. We work with them to develop their economic development strategy and also we help them to establish stability conditions on the ground here in Khowst Province."

Greenwood said the PRT is happy to be working with Task Force Spartan.
"As a non-organic unit we didn't have the opportunity to train with them, so we're just getting a chance to meet them and begin working together, and we're really looking forward to that relationship," she said.

Brewer said PRTs were originally "infrastructure heavy" in their focus.

"As they've evolved over time, and as our unit came into being, the focus has really come off of that and a lot of those projects - brick-and-mortar type things - and has moved into 'on budget' which is where the government of Afghanistan is now spending a lot of their money through their budgeting processes through their own engineering," he explained. "What we've done is we've worked with the partnerships of mentoring those officials, mentoring the line directors who have access to those budgets, whether it's economy, education, roads or rehabilitation ... and really work with them on those kinds of things.
"We have a few projects, a few roads and some other things, that we're finishing up in some of the locations, but what we're really focusing on right now is that mentorship piece," Brewer said.

Greenwood said female engagement teams are another aspect of the PRTs which have evolved over time.

"Most people are familiar with what we would consider the 'tactical' female engagement teams, and the brigade has those. They actually work with the battle space owners," she explained. "They go out on the patrols and engage with local women in the villages as the battle space owners are working through the various villages.

"What we do at the PRT level, is we work with the women who are in government," Greenwood continued. "We have a director of women's affairs here that we work with and there are three female members of the provincial council. So we spend a lot of time working with them the same way as we would with the male line directors.

"For example, I have sat on several occasions with the director of women's affairs and worked with her on her budgeting process - how she runs her operations and maintenance budget," she said. "We're hoping in the future her department will be one of the ones that get a development budget as well so she'll have some discretionary funding on projects that she feels will help the women in the area.

"We also work to try to find ways to bring small cottage industry to women in the area," Greenwood continued. "USAID has had several programs for small-business training for women that have come down into the area and we've had some turnout for, which we were very pleased with, and we've been working on a tailoring training course.
"Culturally here, most women don't feel comfortable leaving their homes to work, so we're trying to help them find ways that they can bring a little extra money into their household," she explained. "Working a tailoring business out of their house is a feasible way to do that, and the local agriculture development team has been working with them on poultry projects where they can raise chickens and sell the eggs from their house as well."

Greenwood, who in civilian life is mayor of Tulley, N.Y., said there are similarities between her role in local government and the PRT's job in Afghanistan.

"Even in an environment like Afghanistan, people basically want the same things," she explained. "They want to have a safe, secure life. They want a livelihood for their families, they want to be able to send their children to school and they want the very basic services from their government. They want to be able to drive on roads that are passable; they want to be able to settle their disputes through the local court system - all the basic things we would expect at home.

"Whereas I will certainly say we do not have an insurgency in Tulley, N.Y., other than that, many of the problems we see here are very similar to the types of problems that government officials in our own country deal with on a daily basis," Greenwood said.