Author Events Meet the Author: Daniel R. Green on The Valley’s Edge: A Year with the Pashtuns in the Heartland of the Taliban
author daniel green wrote the valley’s edge after serving
two tours in
Afghanistan. His first tour was in Uruzgan Province from 2005 to 2006 as a State Department political advisor to a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT). He returned in 2009 with the US military, working in the US Embassy in Kabul for a year. On 14 December 2011,
Green came to Marines’ Memorial to talk about his experi- ences as documented in his book. He related the story of how the US tried to build a stable, democratic country in Afghani- stan during his first tour when he was a member of a PRT. The PRT’s mission was to bring law, order, democracy, education, infrastructure and security to Uruzgan Province while con- straining the corruption and tribal dynamics in combatting the Taliban. Uruzgan lies between the Hindu Kush mountains and the desert. Green said that complicating its efforts, the PRT members had little understanding of the Afghan culture, few resources and unrealistic expectations. This led to the Taliban’s resurgence in the area.
When he returned in 2009 to work in our embassy in Kabul, he observed many improvements made since he had last served in the country. However, the problems he had experienced in Uruzgan continued despite the transition from the Bush administration to the Obama administration. He also found a very bloated State Department bureaucracy with no focus. He left Afghanistan bitter.
When asked if he was pessimistic or optimistic about our efforts in Afghanistan, he said that so long as the US effort is weighed down by poor staffing, inter-agency arguments and changing visions for the end-state, he is not optimistic. Daniel R. Green is a Soref Fellow at the Washington Insti- tute for Near East Policy and is pursuing a PhD in political science at George Washington University. For his work in
Afghanistan in 2005–2006, he received the US Department of State’s Superior Honor Award, the US Army’s Superior Civil- ian Honor Award, and a personal letter of commendation from then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace. He has also received the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s Exceptional Public Service Award and in 2007 served with the US military in Fallujah, Iraq. He lives in Washington, D.C.
“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.” —Mark Twain
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Crossroads Spring 2012 15
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