Behind Afghan Walls

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Afghan officials have often complained about the U.S. practice of entering homes uninvited, saying it deeply alienates people in a culture that highly values privacy. Family compounds, like this one in the village of Nasarkhel in western Paktika Province, are typically surrounded by high mud walls.


Behind Afghan Walls
By Michael Gisick, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Tuesday, January 6, 2009

PAKTIKA PROVINCE, Afghanistan - The village called Nasarkhel, as with the other settlements that dot the barren plains here, rises up from the desert like an earthen fortress surrounded by walls of sun-baked mud. Inside, each family’s compound lies in its own set of walls.

That an Afghan values the privacy of his home is at least implied by its design.

Indeed, one of the common complaints lodged by Afghan leaders against U.S. military operations here is that barging into people’s homes is intolerable for a culture that so jealously guards its privacy. Which presents something of a problem, as American troops step up their efforts to confront a Taliban insurgency that draws its strength from rural villages.

American units can’t simply stop patrolling in the villages, but they’re trying to find a middle way.

When Company C, an infantry unit from the 101st Airborne Division based a few miles from Nasarkhel, arrived to clear the village one day in late December, they brought a coterie.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=59805