At first glance, the bewhiskered foreigners look like all the other relief workers in western Afghanistan.

They negotiate animatedly with Afghans over lunch - mountains of rice and chicken drenched in mysterious red sauce. Like scruffy backpackers, wearing worn boots, jeans, and bundled in a variety of scarves, they stand in line for tickets on Afghanistan's national airline, Ariana.

And they talk the talk in Herat, of humanitarian projects like rebuilding schools, providing clothes and generators for the local hospital, and refitting former gunmen with jobs clearing silt from irrigation canals.

But on close inspection, these men with American accents have large radio antennae sticking out of their backpacks, pistols sometimes poking from beneath their sweatshirts, and a serious uniformed Afghan security detail hovering about them.

There are few secrets about the mission of these US Special Operations soldiers, however - and that is how they want it. That is because these troops are the vanguard of a novel Pentagon mission aimed at smoothing Afghanistan's transition from war to peace.

Their presence is a sign of how much the US military has learned from rocky attempts at keeping the peace in Somalia and the Balkans in the 1990s. It also reflects how the Pentagon - dusting off a concept first spelled out after the cold war - is embracing a more holistic view of what is necessary to declare victory in modern war.

"This is a new template, the first time we have put up an organization like this," says Maj. Mike Warmack, a member of the Coalition Joint Civil-Military Operations Task Force (CJCMOTF). "It shows the US military is committed to doing whatever we can to return Afghanistan to normal, then to pass it over to the professionals."

Far from their Kabul headquarters, 10 or so specially trained four-person teams - often working closely with local warlords - are spread across Afghanistan, hunting for projects that can have an immediate impact, that other agencies can't do.

"We are really a short-term tool - we're trying to fill the gaps," says Maj. Kim Field, who began working on this project at Central Command in Tampa, Florida. Just two weeks after US bombing began on Oct. 7, she says, the overall US commander, Gen. Tommy Franks, began asking about humanitarian requirements when the bombs stopped falling.

"It's a recognition that when you think of security, you have to think of sustainable security - and that is not just coming in with weapons and bombs," Major Field says, speaking in a Kabul command center plastered with maps and humming with computers and radio traffic.

Some 23 schools have been targeted for refurbishment, including the 1,000-pupil Zendeh Jan girls' school west of Herat. A project to clear a 12-mile irrigation canal, also in Zendeh Jan, has kept 500 former soldiers and other workers busy and supplied with cash and food for weeks. That project is likely to be expanded to 19 more canals for 5,000 workers.

While the "force protection" mantra remains in effect at every remote location, these small units have unparalleled, hands-on contact with ordinary Afghans. But winning the peace is not easy.

"We get a lot of suspicion from relief agencies, who ask why the military is doing this work, so results have been mixed," Field says. The Americans host interagency meetings weekly to avoid duplication of efforts.

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