My Mission: Provincial Reconstruction Team Sergeant

In writing about our actual mission, I always feel like I need to err on the side of caution, for fear of revealing any sensitive information. So, here, to explain to you all what it is I'll be doing for the next year, I've compiled a few unclassified, open-source links that can say it for me.

I'll be working in Afghanistan as part of a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT). The US Agency for International Development (USAID) has a great description posted here. My team will be relieving a unit currently working North of Kabul. They've got got a website up, which you can see here. The Naval Post Graduate School's got a great research program in Culture and Conflict studies. They've done great analyses of the provinces where my team and I will be working, which you can see here and here.

Finally, for the extremely curious among you, the Army has actually produced two documents that define the scope of our work. The Army Center for Lessons Learned Provincial Reconstruction Team Playbook is a typical Army publication- long on the acronyms, short on the usable advice. But it's what we got. In contrast, the Army Counterinsurgency Field Manual is a page turner. Really. I'm not kidding. I actually bought a hard copy at Barnes and Noble. You wanna know what the damn shame is? The guy who was instrumental in writing it, John Nagl, has since left the Army. Hooah.