Jon,
I am still working on my reflections from a faraway armchair, but this passage caught my attention.
My own reading on the PRT theme was in the earlier years and a couple of encounters with those who had been involved later on. Alongside more reading on the role of the Political Officer along the Durand Line, in the British Imperial era.
Was Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) a far more acceptable label and concept for the Afghans and those who were in the audience back home? At the start of our intervention, which was overwhelmingly coercive, Afghanistan had some limited governance at provincial level and almost none at the national level. The PRT's role was really to act as political officers, with a tiny non-military component, a small protective detail, some good comms and a bag full of cash.
It was clear by 2005 and certainly by 2006 that the level of violence within Afghanistan meant neither the political or reconstruction role was working. I recall one PRT rarely left its own base and relied on non-Afghans for security.
The British PRT which moved from the north (Mazar-i-Sharif IIRC) to Helmand, growing in size with larger civil staff (DFID, FCO, SOCA etc), then was reported to embark on projects that stretched credulity - a children's playground, with a ferris wheel comes to mind - and distributing ammonium nitrate fertiliser, in the chemical composition to make IEDs! Shoddy became dangerous.
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