Nebraska Guard welcomed home

Jul 22, 2011 Music Info

Photo Showcase: Nebraska Guard homecoming * * * * *

LINCOLN The most battle-hardened unit in recent Nebraska history began to return to the state Sunday morning, piling off of buses and preparing to restart civilian lives even as the soldiers wondered if their latest mission a historic one would help forge a lasting peace in Afghanistan.

The first 90 soldiers in the Nebraska National Guard’s 1-134th Calvary Squadron arrived at Lincoln East High School, where they bounded off two buses to hug their spouses and children before a jubilant homecoming ceremony held in the school gym. The rest of the squadron’s 300 soldiers will return to various spots in the state Monday and Tuesday.

The Nebraskans return after nine months near Kabul, where they mentored an Afghan police force infamous for corruption and aided an Afghan army struggling to combat the Taliban and related insurgents.

The returning Nebraska guardsmen know that the Kabul-area police and soldiers have made serious progress during those nine months, progress that now allows Afghan security forces to mount complex missions with no outside help.

But the returning guardsmen also know that a giant question mark punctuates the deployment’s end.In a move that surprised many, American military leaders didn’t replace the Nebraska squadron with another deployment of mentors for the Kabul-area security forces.This means that, for the first time in the decade-long war, Kabul’s police chief and the thousands of officers underneath him are truly on their own.It’s a very uncertain future over there for them, said Lt. Col. Tom Rynders, who commanded the cavalry in Afghanistan. We’re hopeful, but there is some worry.But our thought is we’ve done as much as we can. Now it’s up to them.The idea that the Kabul-area police could stand by themselves was all but unthinkable last November when the Nebraska unit reached the area.The Afghan National Police are well-known in Afghanistan for all the wrong reasons. Afghans often regard them with hostility, believing that they bully regular citizens but shrink from fights with insurgents.American politicians and military leaders have long been wary as well, in part because the Afghan police are known for taking bribes and looking the other way as Taliban-allied groups move weapons and drugs through the country.Even Lt. Gen. Mohammad Salangi, chief of the Kabul police, didn’t think his force was ready to stand by itself. In an interview with the World-Herald in March, he said that his police force would need at least five more years maybe a decade of American mentorship before it could effectively operate on its own.The Nebraskans encountered bad police, Rynders thinks, but they also found many police who were brave and itching to take the fight to the insurgents.The Nebraskans pushed the Kabul police to abandon their practice of manning checkpoints, instead urging them to wade into their neighborhoods and fight crime as they found it.The Nebraskans helped the police organize better chains of command, so an order would get quickly relayed from a police chief to a regular officer.And, as the deployment reached its final months, the Nebraskans and Afghans together attacked insurgent strongholds in villages south of Kabul, chasing away enemy fighters and seizing dozens of weapons caches in the process.We really think we turned that area around, Rynders said.The Nebraska Guard cavalry is no stranger to a serious fight.Many of the guardsmen who returned to Lincoln on Sunday spent 17 months fighting in the most dangerous spot the Sunni Triangle during 2005 and 2006, the most dangerous years of the Iraq War.Then they deployed again, this time to Afghanistan, last year.That Iraqi deployment helped the unit immensely in Afghanistan, said Capt. Jeremiah Afuh. And this time we were actually able to see measurable growth, Afuh said. It really helped, because we could see that what we were doing was making a difference.But nothing prepared many of the Nebraska National Guardsmen for the news that they would be the Kabul police force’s final mentors, a move prompted in part by the beginning of the American drawdown in Afghanistan.After weeks of uncertainty, Rynders went to a meeting with the Army general in charge of all coalition forces in the area.The general asked for his advice: Should the Nebraskans be replaced?Rynders told him no; he thought the Afghans were ready to fight on their own. The general agreed. The Nebraskans then spent the last several weeks of their deployment giving the Afghan police commanders the news. Some were shocked. Some were angry, saying the loss of American mentors would allow the insurgents to step up terrorist attacks in the area.And some, like Salangi, the Kabul police chief, accepted the news in stride, realizing that the police force had come far enough to go it alone, Rynders said.Yeah, we’re worried, as many mentor or coach would be, because we’re turning them loose, Rynders said. But we felt like it’s time to take off the training wheels and see how they could perform.At Sunday’s homecoming ceremony, politicians and military leaders said the Nebraska squadron performed admirably.Roger Lempke, the retired adjutant general of the Nebraska Guard and now Sen. Mike Johanns’ military adviser, said that the cavalry has faced more combat than any Nebraska guard unit since World War II.Lempke congratulated them for having passed the baton in Afghanistan. Your replacements are Afghans, he said. That’s how it’s supposed to be.The soldiers and their spouses, parents and children are now hoping that their Nebraska lives can return to normal.Many of these guard families have endured multiple combat deployments since the start of the wars, tours of duty that have kept families apart for two or three years since 2001.They celebrated the homecoming Sunday with hugs, handshakes and several standing ovations during the ceremony. It feels good to be back home, Afuh said.

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