Did we make people realize its not right to do the kind of things they were doing which was grafting, taking money and being a corrupt society, taking money from people just to move throughout their town. One of the ways we did that was trying to be sure we took people and spent time with the Police Officers themselves. We probably spent way too much too much emphasis on contractors early on and the problem with that was we would send our Contractor Force out, they may have been the only people out there doing the training, and what would happen when the threat increase took place, the contractors would remain on the safety of the compound. This could go on for days or weeks. The frustration came from the afghans because they relied on that training on a daily basis. So the person that was with them training them may not be there now for days or weeks at a time. So we kind of changed that around and said we need to take our armed personnel and put them out there and spend time with the
Theres many different ways of doing things. So we would be out there telling the afghans, this is how you conduct police operations, this is how we do police training, this is how you hold your weapon and engage the enemy, and then several weeks later another force would come in and not that it was necessarily wrong, but it was different. So from the afghan perspective, incredibly frustrating to understand where they are going and what they need to be doing and what is right and what is wrong. So in closing if someone were to ask me from 2010 to where were at now, is there hope i would say, yes, there is. As we stand down our combat forces and shift to an advisory and a training role i think were going to be able to take our lessons lerbed learned and ensure that we can continue to build on what weve done. There were some Great Success stories. One of the things we worked on a lot was trying to bring women into the policing, something that was unheard of only a few years ago. Nina talk
Was trying to be sure we took people and spent time with the Police Officers themselves. We probably spent way too much too much emphasis on contractors early on and the problem with that was we would send our Contractor Force out, they may have been the only people out there doing the training, and what would happen when the threat increase took place, the contractors would remain on the safety of the compound. This could go on for days or weeks. The frustration came from the afghans because they relied on that training on a daily basis. So the person that was with them training them may not be there now for days or weeks at a time. So we kind of changed that around and said we need to take our armed personnel and put them out there and spend time with these folks day in and day out, not only built trust between us and the afghans but it gave them the ability to prg on a daily basis. So the other frustration was the coalition effort. There was a lot of people with great intentions wil
America they would close down the block. This where my family has always had its stall. We got to make a living. What else can we do . We dont have any medical training which kind of okay, you are fire fighters, i figured you had some. That was my naivete at the moment, i think i was a little overwhelmed myself. Thats still my ongoing project as far as that goes, how can we raise some funds and i actually have a bunch of paramedics that would go over there in a heartbeat on their time if we could find a way to fund it to teach them the medicine. The reality is they dont have a Health Care System now. Its slowly coming back but it was wiped out. They had the tertiary care facility in the region. They were the closest thing to a trauma center. They were the closest thing to intensive care. When we were there, the nearest surgery was 400 kilometers away and they dont have helicopters, not so much. Theres a few owned by the military. So it was a long ride. As a matter of fact, we thought a
Enforcement are owned by the governor which, as established, comes from the turkish government. Fire fighters and things like public works are owned by the municipality. Let me tell you about budget discrepancies. The Fire Department, i got to tell you, when i went and i met with the fire chief, that one left a mark. Their Fire Department was red tagged but they didnt have a place because it was so cold to house their engines because you cant leave diesel engines out in the cold, just doesnt work too well, so they still had to use the facility but they housed the personnel in two tents out in front. Their headquarters is one tent and their dorm is another tent and they welcomed us in there, didnt even think twice. And in the story of what it was like there, for a community of nearly 700,000 people, their complete complement of Fire Fighters that were on duty, their professional staff, was just over 40. They had 4 pieces of apparatus. The newest of which was over 10 years old. They kept