Western Afghanistan Herat is home to the Italian and Spanish forces

With over 42 countries currently serving in Afghanistan, I was excited to visit RC West in Herat which is home to majority of the Italian and Spanish military forces. It was almost as if I had stepped off the plane in Naples, Italy as I was welcomed by the Italian Air Force, not to mention the VIP seat I had from Kabul to Herat...sat in the cockpit with the Italian pilots:) From the coffee breaks to the wonderful, authentic Italian meals, the only missing items were a glass of red wine, fine music and the ocean waves rolling in. Now the base is segregated by country: Spaniards on one side and the Italians on the other...but they do work together during the week. As I stepped over to the Spanish side of the base, there were mysteriously large metal containers that looked very similar to the containers used to brew beer. A brewery in Afghanistan? Could it be? Hopeful wishing but they ended up being used for water storage...or so they say. Other items of note included the wonderful tour I had of the city of Herat. I believe that Herat is more beautiful than Kabul b/c there are more trees, less smog in the air and the women dress in colorful burkas and scarves. During the tour of city, which included to Italian journalists, we visited a new Pediatric Hospital, the Herat Governor's office, a woman's detention center (more details to follow on this) and a holy mosque to speak to a religious mullah. The hospital was simply amazing, rooms large enough to give patients some privacy, equipment and medicene that can treat 100s of children at a time and a staff of caring Afghan and Intl Doctors, nurses and assistants. I'll expand on the women's detention center in a future blog.
By the end of this visit to Herat Province, I realized how challenging our mission is to support the Afghans. Challenges to include differing languages among the NATO nations, differing viewpoints on how each country views their military/civilian support to Afghanistan - many european countries tell their national publics that their soldiers are conducting "Peacekeeping" operations while others say, "Reconstruction and Development." Other challenges we face are the decentralized nature of our joint/global military and civilian presence in Afghanistan. Synchronization is vital to ensuring we are not duplicating efforts and to increase our ability to create a sustainable socio-economic environment for the current and future people of Afghanistan. Yet, we often see each country's defense department placing additional regulations on their nation's forces, thereby limiting their ability to fully support the counterinsurgency objectives of the commander of all forces in Afghanisan.
I'll expand on this in greater detail soon..take care all