Hazara Nation

March,27,2008
by Mladen Rudman
Daily News

Choctaw grad is a U.S. Foreign Service officer working in Bamyan Province

New Zealanders and Americans are helping Afghans in impoverished Bamyan Province move toward safer, more comfortable lives.

David J. Jea, a 1994 Choctawhatchee High School graduate and now a U.S. State Department Foreign Service officer, is part of a New Zealand Defense Force Provincial Reconstruction Team providing everything from warm clothing to graded roads to villagers in the Hindu Kush province.

The effort is part of a countrywide push by the International Security Assistance Force to rebuild or develop Afghanistan’s infrastructure, while it trains Afghan soldiers and police to fight insurgents.

Working in Bamyan, where winters bring road-clogging snow and summers bring dust and wind, means Jea facilitates projects and serves as a messenger to the American embassy in Kabul.

“Every day is different,” he said in a recent telephone interview from Bamyan City. “Every day has its own frustrations and its own rewards.”
Implementing the Security Assistance Force’s efforts to disarm illegal groups can be frustrating.

Helping stock a girl’s high school with books or a village in Yakawlang district improve its water well are rewards.

Jea also is helping Bamyan preserve its natural heritage. For example, there’s an effort to develop land around Bamyan’s deep, blue Band-i-Amir Lake into a national park.

Bamyan is mostly populated by the Hazara ethnic group. Its people are predominantly Shiites in a country where Sunnis are the religious majority. Hazaras were persecuted and even murdered by the Taliban when they were in power.
The New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction Team is in Bamyan to prevent similar problems and expedite construction or reconstruction of schools, medical clinics and other facilities.

Jea, 31, has measured the attitude of the Hazara toward the “Kiwi” — the nickname for New Zealanders — and Yank Provincial Reconstruction Team, which operates from a headquarters in Bamyan City and three forward bases.

“Bamyan is very safe. We haven’t had a major security issue here,” Jea said. “I can see there’s a lot of gratitude and a lot of urgency.”

He said the Hazara often get frustrated because they believe their mountainous province, although stable militarily, has been ignored by the Afghan government and international donors. Villagers also wonder what will happen when the Security Assistance Force withdraws.

For those reasons, Jea keeps the big picture in mind.

“We have to be sure that the central government can keep Afghanistan functioning after the bricks and mortar have been laid,” he said.

Jea, whose parents live in Fort Walton Beach, helped prepare himself for the assignment by tapping the experience of Okaloosa County Judge and retired Army Reserve Brig. Gen. Patt Maney. Maney served as a senior advisor to the American ambassador to Afghanistan for about 17 months in 2004 and 2005.

His Afghanistan tour was cut short when he was wounded by a roadside bomb. He earned a Purple Heart.

Maney noted that Jea is the senior U.S. diplomat in Bamyan, a province with an estimated population of 500,000.

The judge said the role of Provincial Reconstruction Team is essential to success in Afghanistan. He added that Jea must walk a fine line between helping villagers help themselves and making them dependent on foreign aide.

“I think David should get credit for being willing to step out (to assist) in the manner of those Foreign Service officers who served in Vietnam,” said Maney. “There are not a lot of creature comforts or a heavy security presence (in Bamyan). … It really is a beautiful place, but it’s also a place that has virtually nothing. He really is working in an austere environment.”