South Carolina Statehouse Blog

The following is the first part of a 2-part story on Representative James E Smith’s military service in Afghanistan.

Representative James Smith served in the Army for 12 months in Afghanistan. One story in particular sticks out in Representative James Smith’s mind. During a foot patrol in Qolat, he saw young girls walking to school. One was carrying a book; an English book. She pointed to the picture on the book and said “Bird. Egg.” It was clearly a touching moment in James Smith’s tour, as he recalls “It reminded me of my college Alma Mater ‘Education humanizes character and does not allow it to be cruel.’ It made me think about the US presence; we are breeding peace, humanity and education. This never would happen under the Taliban.”

Representative James E Smith and I recently discussed the very intriguing and venerable story of his military service in Afghanistan. James Smith represents District 72 (Richland County), serves on the Judiciary Committee in the South Carolina House of Representatives and is an attorney. After training for several months in the South Carolina National Guard, Rep Smith served in Afghanistan from May 2007 to May 2008.

At the rank of Captain, James Smith began as a member of the 218th Infantry Brigade and then was assigned to a 12-man Police Mentor Team(PMT) named Swamp Fox, where he had the job title of “S2,” an Intelligence Officer. He later fulfilled a second assignment as Team Chief of PMT Viper, a 9-man team, as S3, an Operations Officer.

Rep Smith’s first assignment with PMT Swamp Fox was in southern Afghanistan in Qolat, in the Zabul Province. His second assignment was with Viper was in Shari-Safa. Remarkably, Rep Smith’s police mentor teams were the first of their kind in Afghanistan. The policing operation literally began when they got there, and it was part of the 205th corps, part of Joint Task Force Phoenix. This all was led by General Livingston, who was also commander of South Carolina’s own 218th Infantry Brigade. A total of 27 nations were involved in Joint Task Force Phoenix.

Police Mentoring is an essential element of achieving stability and rule of law in Afghanistan. The Police Mentor teams, which are described by Rep Smith as carrying out one of the more important and successful operations in Afghanistan, worked closely with the Afghan police and army on a daily basis. As Sherriff Leon Lott puts it, the effort is “community-based policing,” in which the soldiers and police patrol together routinely investigating attacks and building relationships with locals. The tasks also included training and mentoring Afghan police daily; Rep Smith explained that the mentor teams would “live, eat and travel” all of the time, and everywhere with the police.

James Smith’s team worked together with police to investigate attacks. He said the Taliban would regularly attack innocent, unarmed truck drivers, as they were thought to be helping the coalition. Moreover, they would investigate the incidents, find out where the attacks were coming from, who the attackers were and where they were moving to. At night mainly, the soldiers and police would go and occasionally capture people and engage in questioning to gather human intelligence in order to try to find those involved and bring them to justice.

This was, of course, dangerous and daunting work. Rep Smith recalls that the Afghan Police were very effective and had the will to do what needed to be done, often risking their lives for their country.

The Zabul Province is a very poor area in which one main highway runs through the middle in the city of Qolat. Rep Smith explained “not much has changed in thousands of years in the way they live there,” aside from that one paved road. Furthermore, Rep Smith explained that community relations, building relationships and friendships with locals, was of utmost importance. Consequently, the daily operations Rep Smith engaged in varied somewhat. For example, if the community needed a well built, they would contract necessary resources to build it. Mingling with the locals was routine and Rep Smith recalls many interesting and momentous instances of such, like the story of the young girls walking to school and many more.

Often, the soldiers and police mingled with villagers, and in many remote areas, Taliban were prevalent. The Taliban would tell villagers tales of coalition soldiers and how dreadful they are. They told children that the American soldiers were monsters who eat people. “People would visibly shake and cry when approached by us, because they literally thought we were going to eat them,” Rep Smith recalls. He said that because of a lot of propaganda against the troops, soldiers would bring “the international language of chocolate” to the children. Furthermore, he tried to effectively communicate to the children that he is not just a soldier with a gun, but also a husband and a father with a kid just like him/her. Rep Smith says that they would usually leave with a good impression.

Mostly though, the soldiers and police were welcomed by villagers. Rep Smith explained that many Afghanis remember the war with Russia, a nine-year conflict in which the Soviet Union supported a Marxist movement in Afghanistan against Mujahedeen resistance. The eventual defeat and withdraw of the Russian troops by early 1989 is seen as one integral part of the Soviet Union’s demise. The Afghanis saw themselves as a partner with the United States in eventually defeating the Soviet Union and ending the Cold War, but to them, “it was anything but cold,” Rep Smith acutely states.

Rep James Smith says “The Afghanis want very much what we have; a sense of peace and security in which to raise their families.” In summary of the many tasks he engaged in, Rep Smith says “Most of it was building friendships and relationships based upon a common desire to see peace, security and a rule of law established.”

James Smith created a photo-journal documenting his time in Afghanistan. To see it, Click Here.

To read the second part of this 2-part series, click here.