December in the mountains of southern Afghanistan greeted me and my men with strong and seemingly endless gusts of wind. The frigid temperatures were equally unforgiving. Our living quarters were constructed out of cardboard boxes and plastic sheeting, which didn’t create much of an escape. The highlight of my day, despite the obvious threat, was leading patrols as a squad leader. The physical activity kept me comfortably warm and allowed me to distance my mind from our frosty reality.
Despite daily patrols, it took me a few months to build rapport with the residents of Kunjak in Helmand Province. During the first month of my deployment in 2010, barely any villagers talked to me. This is when my interpreter, who we called H.B., suggested I start inviting the elders to our base for a meeting, or shura. He assured me this would build a mutual trust.
Soon, my Sunday mornings consisted of two to three hours of conversing with dozens of village elders. At 9 a.m., my interpreter and I would greet them as they climbed the steep and sandy hill to my remote outpost. To present a less hostile environment, I chose to meet them without my body armor or weapon.
We sat outside, suffering in the wind together. My interpreter would make chai, but I always brewed a pot of Starbucks coffee and offered some to my guests. Some liked it, some didn’t. I would like to think my generosity was appreciated.
The shuras were full of requests for new wells and mosques. But if there are two things Afghanistan has a plethora of, it’s those two things. I chose to propose something different, which thrilled them all.
We would build a school.
The Taliban had prevented them from being able to send their kids to school for years. With one suggestion, I had won over the villagers.
As the sun rose the following day, despite not having a school yet, I had over a dozen children waiting outside my base. Many had traveled from afar to attend what they thought was the first day of class. The last thing I wanted to do was send the children away. We invited them on the base, and H.B. taught them the Pashtu alphabet on our dry-erase board. It was on that Monday morning I realized I had to do something fast.
Our supplies were stored in a small tent at the back of our outpost, but I made the decision to move the tent to the base of our hill to serve as the school. By positioning it there, we could maintain its security, protecting it from Taliban attacks.
At 8:45 every morning, my Marines patrolled the school and used our metal detectors to sweep for improvised explosive devices. The safety of the children had to be paramount or our efforts would be for nothing. As the days passed, a growing number of children ranging in the age from 4 to 10 arrived for school. Within weeks we were teaching more than 40 boys and girls. During our time in Afghanistan, not a single child was injured at our school, and for the last four months of my deployment, the school was a giant success.
The Afghan National Police officers attached to my outpost did not participate much in the security of the school. In fact, many of them disapproved of it because it catered to girls as well as boys. I fear that as the American military presence draws down in Afghanistan, initiatives like our school will be abandoned by the Afghan government or destroyed by the Taliban. While the district mayor of Musa Qala knew of our efforts at the school, we received little to no local government support. Requests for a teacher, supplies and a permanent structure were either ignored or forgotten.
Stories like the one of our school tend to never make the limelight. Far too often the news is only about the horrors of war, or mistakes made by NATO troops, rather than their successes. It is easy to focus on the negative, especially as the United States plans to withdraw most of its forces by the end of 2014.
As I left Afghanistan in the spring of 2011, dozens of Afghans were attending our shuras, and they were full of varying requests. They no longer asked for wells and mosques. Now they wanted a community center and a larger school. I left before I could make those dreams come true for them. But I hoped the Marines who relieved me would be able to fulfill them.
I came home and listened and watched the news a lot. I kept hoping I would see or hear something good from Afghanistan. To no avail; the stories were depressing. After spending seven months in Afghanistan, I now knew good things were happening, but they just weren’t being shown.
I hope that my school wasn’t short-lived, and I would like to think that it is still operating safely. Whether it is or not, I still fondly remember our efforts. They led to one of the silent successes that have happened and, I believe, will continue to happen in Afghanistan.
Thomas James Brennan is a military affairs reporter with the Daily News in Jacksonville, N.C. Before being medically retired this fall, he was a sergeant in the Marine Corps stationed at Camp Lejeune, N.C. He served in Iraq and Afghanistan with the First Battalion, Eighth Marines, and is a member of the Military Order of the Purple Heart. Follow him on Twitter at @thomasjbrennan.
