Col. Patrick D. Frank, Brigade Commander, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division. Photo: drum.army.mil
(02/09/12) Fort Drum's 3rd Brigade Combat Team is beginning to come home after a year-long deployment in Afghanistan. The brigade, about 3,500 soldiers, was sent to an area just west of Kandahar City in southern Afghanistan, where few troops had been before.
They were deployed as part of President Obama's troop surge in the country. As the mission winds down, brigade commander Colonel Patrick Frank says his unit did a good job in a difficult setting. He spoke from Afghanistan with reporter Joanna Richards.
(CORRECTION: We originally reported that these troops were the first US soldiers in that region. Many comments on our story have challenged that assertion. We've contacted our sources at Ft. Drum for clarification and are still waiting for a reply. To the best of our understanding now, Col. Frank's unit was the first brigade level force to deploy there.)
The area was the birthplace of the
Taliban, and the home territory of Mullah Omar, the Taliban's
spiritual leader. It's rural and known for growing marijuana and
poppies for narcotics. It had been largely lawless, with poor
infrastructure and little connection to the Afghan government.
"So we came in and they
assigned us immediately to the Zhari and Maiwand districts. The Zahri
district is Mullah Omar's home district, and we came in here to very
high levels of violence last spring and throughout the summer. So it
was a very tough fight during that period of time, and we've now
moved into of course the winter months, where we've seen levels of
violence be dramatically reduced from what we were facing."
The fighting has been tough. The unit
conducted 60 air assaults in nine months, and it lost 36 of its
soldiers.
"The leadership from
the Taliban is from this area, so they have attempted to get back
into this area throughout the fall and early winter months, to
reestablish themselves on the terrain that they had held all the way
until this year."
The infantrymen built roads, set up
clinics, strengthened local government and worked to reduce infant
mortality. Col. Frank says north country civilians sent many school
supplies, and hospitals sent medical supplies. The soldiers also
opened schools.
"On the first day of
school this year, the sixth of September, we opened 14 schools, where
last year only two schools were open. We now have 1,200 students in
our two districts. Two-hundred and fifty of those students are girls."
But Frank acknowledges there’s still
Taliban in the region. Which brings him to the closing piece of the
mission.
"We are now developing,
with our Afghan partners, a program called the Afghan Local Police,
or ALP. These are essentially local guards, so it's men from their
communities providing security. They're probably the best ones to
provide that security. But these are men who can very easily
recognize the Taliban when they're on their streets, when they're in
their neighborhoods, and provide that first line of defense for
Afghan communities."
Frank says the Afghan Local Police not
only boost security, but they recruit from the same pool of young men
that the Taliban pulls from:
"So encouraging young
men, 18, 19, 20 years old, to join the Afghan Local Police will
prevent them from joining the Taliban. We think that that is very
important over the next several months."
The first group of 3rd
Brigade soldiers arrived back at Fort Drum last week. In the coming
weeks, the rest of the brigade will follow. The unit will be replaced
by the 4th Brigade of the 82nd Airborne
Division.
For North Country Public Radio, I'm Joanna Richards, in Watertown.
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