WINDHAM — The war in Afghanistan is not your typical war. And it's not going to be won overnight.
"It's not going to happen in four years — maybe 40 years," said Lt. Col. Larry Rea, 47, a Windham father and New Hampshire National Guard soldier who spent a year working as an engineer in the war-torn country before returning home in August.
Winning this war needs to be defined differently than conventional winning, he said.
"It isn't a four quarter game we are trying to win or lose," Rea said. "That's why it's so complex. That is the conflicting mission."
Still, as President Obama weighs whether to send more troops into Afghanistan, Rea said he remains a strong supporter of the war and would return if so ordered.
Most of Rea's time in Afghanistan was spent in the wild west of the country in Herat, at Camp Stone, in forward operating bases, and in walled remote villages.
He said the Afghanis are fiercely local, largely illiterate and under the thumb of the local strongman, whether a drug lord, war lord or Taliban leader.
And then there's the war.
It's a series of small battles ignited by local strongmen in response to threats to their power and the poppy economy, Rea said. He likens the battles to fights against organized crime families. Ideology isn't part of the equation — survival is.
People in villages depend on poppy cultivation for their living, and they do what drug and war lords tell them to do.
"The fight is about day-to-day business," Rea said.
He wonders if most Americans have a good sense of this and the conflicting missions American soldiers face there.
On the one hand, U.S. soldiers, who are spread thin, are there to chase and disrupt those elements that would harm the United States. On the other hand, the soldiers, slowed by tangled bureaucracy, are there to help rebuild the country.
Those two missions — fighting and helping — can conflict. Rebuilding is sometimes resisted.
Rea came under attack numerous times in remote villages seeking local workers for building projects such as police stations or barracks, inspecting new buildings or to repair a well.
All told, his team undertook 400 projects, fielding requests, designing structures, finding builders in villages and inspecting construction.
Often, the only contractor who bid or was available for a project was the contractor the local war lord or drug lord allowed to do the work, Rea said. Anyone else who expressed interest would likely be killed, he said.
Once, in a village with Italian soldiers, looking at abandoned buildings that village elders wanted torn down, Rea and the soldiers were attacked by rocket-propelled grenades.
Sound vanished. Rea felt like a sheet of plywood hit him and he fell to the ground. His head went fuzzy, eyes watered, and hearing deafened before a Chinook helicopter landed and rescued the troops.
They held their fire when fleeing — small arms or machine gun fire could have killed children or villagers.
Another time, in June, Rea was in the Morghab Valley at an 18th century castle with several other New Hampshire soldiers inspecting a police station well that wouldn't pump.
At 7 a.m., the soldiers heard gun fire snap at them from all directions, pounding sandbags and raising clumps of dirt. They fought for seven hours.
Villagers gladly accept help from Americans, but it does not have a lasting influence on their hearts and minds, Rea suspects.
Without knowledge of the larger world nor prospects for a secure future, they cling to day-to-day survival, he said.
And that survival is tied to the local power structure.
"It's the 16th century with cars and cell phones," Rea said. There's no electricity, roads or infrastructure in these remote villages.
Despite the difficulties, Rea said America has been winning the conflict by preventing a large-scale terror attack on its own soil.
But continued winning will take a long time rebuilding the country and an ongoing battle against those who take up arms against Americans.
In a dispatch home to friends and family in July, Rea considered one of the questions that soldiers joke about — "Can this place be helped?"
His answer? Time will tell.
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