Afghan politics - one chicken dinner at a time

Local know-how is a requirement to successfully balance the needs of the villages while navigating among the local contractors and spreading wealth. But it's an uncommon trait among US military officers in Iraq and Afghanistan, whose tours are often too short - and whose mandates are too uncertain - to gain such a detailed knowledge of an area.

Sugrue's first big project taught another important lesson. Engineers had chosen the worst 14 sections of the 20-mile road from Naray to Kamdesh village for improvement. To do the job, Sugrue tapped a well-established contractor from Jalalabad - some 70 miles away.

A three-part series Part 1 - 10/02/06 US troops tackle aid projects - and skepticism Part 2 - 10/03/06 Afghan politics - one chicken dinner at a time Part 3 - 10/04/06 Spinning pop tunes to beat the Taliban

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But when it became clear to locals from the Naray region that the road project was proceeding with an outside firm, they began to have second thoughts about initially cold-shouldering the effort. One group of out-of-town road workers was beaten up. While the project is nearly complete, Sugrue says "I have a guy with no vested interest in a doing a good job with the road; he's just trying to get away with his life."

Contracts are now made in conjunction with village leaders "to make sure the right people do the work, and have a stake in it." The trade-off is that, while there is a community approval for the work, there are local limits to technical expertise. Sugrue and his colleagues are now plotting the best way to do another road project that goes through 10 villages, and has become more of a political problem than an engineering one.

Of the 15 or so US-funded projects in Kamdesh so far, half of the biggest ones are now being handed over to the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT), which are purpose-built US military units that are being deployed across eastern Afghanistan in areas controlled by US forces. Each PRT includes two civilian engineers and civil affairs officers to handle big-ticket projects like roads and bridges.

Small, high-visibility projects will still be run by individual squadrons, at least here with the 3-71 Cav., so that US patrols have a reason to keep visiting villages to assess progress and make their presence felt.

"We are improving our methods, though there are still shortfalls," says Sugrue. Elders understand the long-term importance of such projects for the community, he says, though many villagers are illiterate and see the projects solely as a "job for three months swinging a hammer."

But there are larger issues at stake for some. At the same lunch, Mir Mohamed Khan, an elder from nearby Nangal village - where Army money will help to complete a previous drinking water project started by a European-funded agency called Afghan Aid - breaks off a piece of grilled chicken and wraps it in bread.

He says that recent US shelling from this base at insurgents who had attacked with rockets overshot the target. "They fired from the first village, and you almost hit the third village," says Mr. Khan. "If you come to our village, everyone will let you know where they fired from."

Outside, Khan pointed to the configuration of hills, where he said shepherds had seen insurgents in action. They had been trained by Pakistani intelligence, he claimed, and in religious schools."

"They call it a religious way, but it is not a religious way," says Khan. "They are enemies of both of us....The enemies are trying to stop reconstruction, but they will never do it."

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• Read Part 1 and Part 3.