The US paratroopers sat down with Afghan elders and police to a shared lunch meant to foster relations. But even before the roast lamb had been mopped up, the US paratroopers made an unnerving discovery: a cache of RPGs, mortars and a land mine.
Soldiers, suspicious that the weapons could belong to militants, raced to remove them from the police storage facility. The pleasant mood fostered over a meal was shattered. Even as Lieutenant Colonel Brian Mennes ordered his 82nd Airborne paratroopers to calm down, he acknowledged the general sense of alarm.
Mennes and other US leaders sat down for the meal knowing well that some of the men in long dark beards and black turbans were enemies playing nice. But in order to get a foothold in the area, the US military had to talk with the Taliban.
"When you roll in here with 800 heavily-armed men, it can cause a lot of anxiety. Until you [talk with them] they're real standoffish," said Mennes, who leads the 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
US and NATO soldiers are increasingly holstering their weapons and attending traditional Afghan lunches and tribal meetings known as shuras, an embrace of local customs in a country where talking over tea is a national pastime.
The goal is to gather intelligence, advertise the aid and development that NATO and the Afghan government can bring, and talk transitory Taliban fighters into disarming.
The counter-insurgency strategy is based on weeding out what NATO calls Tier 2 Taliban -- poor farmers or jobless villagers that the hardcore, ideological Tier 1 Taliban conscript.
"We don't actually want to kill the Tier 2 people. We want them to be a part of the country," said Squadron Leader David Marsh, a spokesman for the NATO-led force.
"We think if people trust us they will share intelligence with us that will help them in the long run," Mennes said. "The economy has to grow. Security has to grow. If I come in and kill everyone it does nothing."
But the US-Afghan lunch demonstrated how tricky such sit-down meetings can be.
This village in particular will prove a tough task because troops are staying here only a couple weeks. Their primary mission is to watch over a key route the Taliban is using to ferry fighters and equipment into Helmand, where mostly British forces are carrying out NATO's latest mission, Operation Achilles.
Town elders tell the US military in unison that they want clean water and electricity.
"We will do whatever we can to help you but we want our stomachs to be full," one elder said.
A representative from the US Agency for International Development is on hand to talk about possible projects, including wells and even a road. Troops hold a medical outreach program.
But Mennes knows to make no promises, because US troops will pull out once Operation Achilles is over.
RSS