Last in country radio conversation

Rex with his MRAP on a mission in Afghanistan.

From Liisa, SMSgt Temple’s wife: Rex is on his way home; he’s made it to Ali Asaleem, Kuwait. Before leaving his camp in Afghanistan Rex did one last “in country” interview with WUSF Radio’s Bobbie O’Brien about his deployment year, which aired last night in Tampa during NPR’s “All Things Considered” and again this morning during “Morning Edition.” You can hear the chat by clicking on this link

4-15 MLT Rex Heads Home

or if you’d like to read the entire transcript, it’s available here.

Female ANA General

From Liisa, SMSgt Temple’s wife: Rex is on his way home and may not be able to write today. So he asked me to post this video about one of only two Afghan women who have the rank of General in the Afghan National Army.

Radio chat for this week

From Liisa, SMSgt Temple’s wife: Rex has departed his camp and is on his long journey home. Before he left he had a chance to chat with WUSF Radio’s Bobbie O’Brien. They talked about Rex’s recent visit with two female Afghan National Army officers. You can download that chat by click on this link  4-12 MLT women ANA or if you would like to read the entire transcript, you can see it here.

This week’s radio interview

Reporter & Producer Bobbie O'Brien

Here is a link to this week’s chat with WUSF reporter Bobbie O’Brien. We talked about the latest school supplies delivery mission, the preparations for it and how the children reacted. To hear the story, click here.

Anchor, producer and editor Joshua Stewart

Also congratulations are in order for Bobbie and her editor Joshua Stewart; the pair has won a regional Edward R. Murrow Award for their work on this radio series. Now their entry moves into the national finals. If you would like to listen to the winning entry from WUSF, click here.

WUSF Radio interview for March 30

This week’s conversation with WUSF’s Bobbie O’Brien covered our mission to a girls school to drop off donated school supplies and President Obama’s visit to Afghanistan. The story aired Monday during NPR’s “All Things Considered” and will run again this morning in the Tampa Bay area during “Morning Edition.” Or you can click on a link to the audio and the transcript here.

This week’s radio chat

Here is this week’s radio interview with WUSF’s Bobbie O’Brien; we talked about a literacy program and a new library our team is providing to the Afghan National Army soldiers to help fight the estimated 80% illiteracy rate among the new recruits. This piece aired yesterday during the station’s afternoon fundraising drive and it will air again this morning around 7:30 am during National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition.” Click here to download: 3-16 MLT libraries-literacy-signs

Or if you want to read the transcript, it’s located here.

The Mutilated Face

HERAT, AFGHANISTAN - Nazgul, 35, a self-immolation victim sits on her hospital bed covered by her headscarf at the Herat Regional hospital November 17, 2006 in Herat, Afghanistan. The medical staff at the Herat hospital says that they have registered around 700 self-immolations cases so far this year. Hospital officials say they lack proper salaries for the nurses and doctors and suffer from a lack of medical supplies. A new burn center for the crowded hospital that was suppose to be finished in 2005 is still under construction. Afghan women are in a subordinate position in the society, where conservative Islamic laws and traditions dictate what a woman is allowed to do in a male dominated world. Forced marriages, domestic violence, poverty and lack of access to education are said to be some of the main reasons for the suicides. (Photo by Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

From Liisa, SMSgt Temple’s wife: Rex is still out on his mission and I’m using the space to publish some very graphic reminders of why education is so vital especially for women and young girls in Afghanistan. Many of you may have seen a report on ABC News this week about a young Afghan woman whose husband cut off her nose and ears. She was nursed back to health by U.S. military personnel and if you can stomach the gruesome images, the video story from ABC News is a thought provoking piece – you can see it here.

This story was first reported in the Western press last December by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon for The Daily Beast Blog. Here is a short excerpt:

“U.S. Air Force Major Dr. Jeff Lewis still remembers the stifling August afternoon when Nadia reached his surgical team near southern Afghanistan’s Tarin Kowt, a town long known as a Taliban stronghold.

The young woman, whose name has been changed to protect her security, had been brought to the coalition’s Forward Operating Base Ripley by her father, who hoped the base’s medical clinic could help his teenage daughter, who he said was around 17 or 18 years old.

She was missing most of her nose and both ears.”

“I have never seen anyone do something like this before to another person,” said U.S. Air Force Major Dr. Jeff Lewis.

(read more here)

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But the woman at the center of these two reports is clearly not alone. Much earlier in 2007, Abudlhadi Hairan filed this article for GroundReport .

Husband cut off wife’s ears, nose on Eid day

Qalat: A man named Mumtaz in southern Zabul province of Afghanistan first shaved wife, Nazia’s head and then cut off her ears, and nose and damaged her teeth on the first day of Eid ul Adha, an Islamic ritual of sacrifice.

Hospital sources in Qalat, center of Zabul, told this scribe by phone that Nazia, 17, was admitted on Wednesday (First day of Eid) evening and now she was in a critical condition due to the severe beating she has borne. (more text + photos here)

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Chelsie Vandeveer dropping off donations at WUSF Studios on March 12, 2010.

If you read through these amazing stories of women helping women, you will be inspired. And here is the latest woman who is a true source of inspiration for me. Her name is Chelsie Vandaveer and she dropped off all these school supplies yesterday at WUSF Radio and TV for Rex’s school supplies drive for Afghan children. Chelsie and her husband along with her coworkers Gracie Sharp, Sari Kondis, Dot Miner, Katie Plein, Mark Seibel, Allen Shuey, and Paco and Allison Amram at Environmental Consulting & Technology in Tampa collected all these hundreds of donated items since last September after Chelsie heard about the drive in one of Bobbie O’Brien’s My Last Tour news reports.

This week’s radio chat

From Liisa, SMSgt Temple’s wife: Rex is out on a mission and asked me to post this chat he had with WUSF Radio’s Bobbie O’Brien earlier this week – it was a time consuming production as they lost Internet service in the middle of it and had to conduct the rest of it on the phone …. the wait for the phone was 1.5 hours. Thanks to Bobbie for being patient and waiting for Rex. You can download the audio here 3-10 MLT winding down

If you want to read the entire transcript, click on the link below:

My Last Tour: Winding Down

Need More Ink Cartridges

Yesterday I spent the day inside the Joint Tactical Command Post and was unable to mentor or do much of anything.  It was deathly quiet and I used this opportunity to finish reading Doug Stanton’s book, “Horse Soldiers.”  This book details the riveting account of a small group of Special Forces soldiers who secretly entered Afghanistan following 9/11.  To travel around the countryside, they painstakingly rode horses through some perilous mountains.  Seldom will you ever find testimonials about the “Quiet Professionals”, but this one was very revealing.  For me, it filled in some of the historical void about the competing Afghan warlords and provided more insight to the atrocities committed by the Taliban even as they retreated.  It also gave a detailed account about CIA agent Mike Spann’s tragic death and more about US Muslim terrorist John Walker Lindh’s capture at the Qala-i-Janghi Fortress.  Due to some of the adult language used in the book, I don’t recommend this to young readers.

The dreaded ink cartridges.

This morning I played Santa Claus and delivered more printer ink cartridges to my ANA counterparts.  Our Task Force wants information, reports, etc., but my ANA counterparts have no ink cartridges or paper to produce these reports.  I really sense their aggravation with the ANA supply system.  Even when they fill out the paperwork correctly and get the ANA General’s signature and approval, they still can’t get the supplies they need.  As mentors, we have tried to intervene by working with other mentors to no avail.  The supply depots have the items sitting in the shelf, but getting the right approvals and paperwork has become so cumbersome, many of the ANA have just given up.  Even at our morning meetings, the ANA General advises his commanders to ask their mentors for items and assistance.  Paper is so thinly rationed; each office gets a dozen sheets.  This explains why they write on the back of paper and I never see paper being thrown away.   This made me recall a conversation I had with an ANA logistician at my former camp.  He said the Minister of Defense personnel told them to get whatever they can from the US mentors.  It’s almost like they don’t want to spend the MOD money to support their soldiers, other than fuel, food, firewood, etc.   Yet our government gives them millions of dollars for this purpose.  I have been here 10 months battling and trying to understand this supply system, but now I am feeling my counterpart’s frustrations.  Surely after eight years, there has to be a better solution.

Bonnie, the camp puppy, is actually a boy.

I also had another surprise when I returned to camp.  The camp puppies were playing and Runt Runt rolled Bonnie over on her back.  Upon closer examination, Bonnie is not a girl but a boy!  Since we are not allowed to touch the puppies, I never saw underneath Bonnie and took the word of the gate guard that the puppies were both females.  I think he is rather embarrassed now at this revelation …. lol.  So until he comes up with another name, I will still call him Bonnie.  His dislocated leg seems to be improving too and he is able to walk around much easier now.

Local news:

KABUL – A US general in charge of negotiating with the Afghan Taliban has estimated that there are nearly 36,000 insurgents in Afghanistan. “There are probably 900 in the leadership, counting very junior to very senior, and there are between 25,000 and 36,000 people who would call themselves fighters,” The Times quoted Major-General Richard Barrons, as saying. “Some are ideological full-time jihadis, some are linked to the insurgency for localized reasons, local grievances; some because it’s a way to make a living; some because they like to fight; some because their communities are hedging their bets between the Government and the insurgency,” he added. Pointing out those finding jobs for insurgents was the key to ending the Afghanistan war, General Barrons said that the Karzai Government had done little to earn the trust of its people, while the Taliban had in some cases provided better basic governance. “People have found the local representatives predatory, corrupt and incapable of improving their lives,” he said. Instead of simply fighting the Taliban, General Barrons runs a NATO “reintegration cell” trying to understand what motivates the militants to fight and using that information to help Afghan officials to tempt them to swap sides. The incentives for peace is expected to cost about 1 billion dollars over the next five years, and it includes jobs, money, training and sustainable development. Despite 17 billion dollars spent on aid since 2001, Afghanistan remains one of the poorest countries on earth, with 850 children under 5 dying every day, according to Save the Children. Literacy and unemployment run at roughly 30 per cent. (ANI)

LONDON – Nearly 70 per cent of Afghan police recruits drop out during training, the top US army officer in charge of shaping the new Afghan security forces said. Lieutenant General William Caldwell said the 67-per cent “attrition rate” among police recruits was “far too high” and revamping the way the police works to avoid burn-out was one of his main priorities. The high drop-out rate meant that in order to grow the Afghan police and army from their current level of about 200,000 to 300,000, far more than 100,000 recruits would be required because many would fall by the wayside. Caldwell, the Commander of the Nato Training Mission and Combined Security Transition Command in Afghanistan, told an audience in London that building a new police force was the biggest challenge his team faced. The task involved with the police was “significantly greater” than for the Afghan army, he told the Royal United Services Institute defense think-tank. Many Afghans are deeply distrustful of the police which they accuse of being driven by corruption, but Caldwell blamed the fact that until recently just 30 percent of recruits received any training at all. “How can you expect people to do a job you have never trained them to do?” he asked. He said he hoped the introduction of new working methods for police recruits to allow them more leave after what was now “extremely intensive” training would prevent so many dropping out. He admitted that when he saw the unforgiving training and working schedule the police had faced before his appointment, he was not surprised so many were failing to complete the course. “If you did to my army what we are doing to them, you would break it too,” he said. But Caldwell said he was encouraged by a surge in the number of recruits.

This week’s radio interview

Here is this week’s conversation with WUSF Radio’s reporter Bobbie O’Brien, which aired yesterday during “All Things Considered” and will air again today during “Morning Edition“; the conversation focused on more corruption with the ANA and the lack of consequences for it. 3-2 MLT Bad Water Flows

If you want to read the transcript of the entire radio presentation, click on this link

My Last Tour: An Old Dari Proverb