G.I.'s in Afghanistan on Hunt, but Now for Hearts and Minds

[kskiska]

DWAMANDA, Afghanistan — Standing in a bleak, dust-covered village 15 miles from Pakistan, Lt. Reid Finn, a 24-year-old Louisiana native known as Huck, supervised as his men unloaded a half dozen wooden boxes with American flags on them.

Wearing helmet and flak jacket and toting an M-4 assault rifle, the 6-foot-3, 200-pound lieutenant and former West Point football star represented his family's third generation at war. But on this afternoon, his mission was not combat. It was the distribution of blankets, shirts and sewing kits to destitute Afghan villagers.

For the previous hour, American Army medics had doled out free antibiotics, asthma medication and antacids. Lieutenant Finn sipped tea with Muhammad Sani, a wizened village elder, and offered to pay for a new school or well.

"The more they help us find the bad guys," Lieutenant Finn explained, "the more good stuff they get."

As the effort to find Osama bin Laden and uproot the Taliban intensifies, the United States military is shifting tactics. A mission once limited to sweeps, raids and searches has in recent months yielded to an exercise in nation building. The hope is that a better relationship with Afghan locals and a stronger Afghan state will produce better intelligence and a speedier American departure. But the tension between building schools one day and rounding up suspects at gunpoint the next makes the prospects for success far from clear.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/30/international/asia/30ARMY.html?hp