Agriculture accounts for 45 percent of Afghanistan's gross domestic product and is the main source of income for the Afghan economy. Over 80 percent of the Afghan population is involved in farming, herding, or both. However, decades of war, drought, and security challenges have devastated the country's agricultural sector, and the current level of U.S. government civilian support has been unable to keep pace with the tremendous need for assistance in this region. Revitalizing Afghanistan's agricultural sector is critical to building the government's capacity and to stabilizing the country.The symbol of the National Guard depicts the Concord Minuteman, one hand carrying a rifle and the other resting on a plow. It graphically depicts the fact that from the earliest days of America's history, farmers have played key roles in the militia. This proud lineage continues today as we perform operations in Afghanistan.In assessing the current situation in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, International Security Assistance Force Commander, says that "the fight is not a cyclical campaign driven by an insurgent 'fighting season.' Rather, it is ayear-round struggle, often conducted with little apparent violence to win the support of the people." A guiding principle is to "change the operational culture to connect with the people." The National Guard agribusiness development teams(ADTs) exemplify this premise and have proven their value.This handbook is a product of the National Guard Agribusiness Development Team Coordination Office with input from current and previously deployed ADTs. It contains information and lessons to assist ADTs preparing for deployment and those already deployed.

The gender-differentiated and more severe impacts of armed conflict upon women and girls are well recognised by the international community, as demonstrated by UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 on Women, Peace and Security and subsequent resolutions. Similarly, the development community has identified gender-differentiated impacts upon women and girls as a result of the effects of climate change. Current research and analysis has reached no consensus as to any causal relationship between climate change and armed conflict, but certain studies suggest an indirect linkage between climate change effects such as food insecurity and armed conflict. Little research has been conducted on the possible compounding effects that armed conflict and climate change might have on at-risk population groups such as women and girls. Armed Conflict, Women and Climate Change explores the intersection of these three areas and allows the reader to better understand how military organisations across the world need to be sensitive to these relationships to be most effective in civilian-centric operations in situations of humanitarian relief, peacekeeping and even armed conflict. This book examines strategy and military doctrine from NATO, the UK, US and Australia, and explores key issues such as displacement, food and energy insecurity, and male out-migration as well as current efforts to incorporate gender considerations in military activities and operations. This innovative book will be of great interest to students and scholars of international relations, international development, international security, sustainability, gender studies and law.

The Kunar Agribusiness Development Team (ADT) was created from volunteers from the 40th Infantry Division and Task Force Warrior of the California National Guard. ADTs are special units, which only exist in Afghanistan. The Kunar ADT supported Battle Space owners in the Kunar and Pech River valleys in north eastern Afghanistan. During the Kunar ADT's deployment between September 2009 and August 2010 they saw combat 19 times while working in remote villages. This book is the chronicle of the Kunar ADT's deployment and operations in support of counter insurgency (COIN) operations by working with farmers to stabilizing the economies of remote villages.

Agriculture accounts for 45% of Afghanistan's gross domestic product and is the main source of income for the Afghan economy. Over 80% of the Afghan population is involved in farming, herding, or both. However, decades of war, drought, and security challenges have devastated the country's agricultural sector, and the current level of U.S. government civilian support has been unable to keep pace with the tremendous need for assistance in this region. Revitalizing Afghanistan's agricultural sector is critical to building the government's capacity and to stabilizing the country. In 2007 the Secretary of the Army, Pete Geren; Director of the Army National Guard, Lieutenant General Clyde Vaughn; Missouri Farm Bureau President, Charles Kruse; and the Adjutant General of the Missouri National Guard, Major General King Sidwell developed an idea to deploy Soldiers with agricultural expertise and organic security capabilities to Afghanistan. They realized the development of Afghanistan's agriculture and agricultural products distribution capabilities was vital to long-term economic development and that governmental civilians (United States, Afghanistan, and other countries) and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) were not resourced for the massive amount of work necessary in these areas as well as for the security they required. Collectively, these leaders saw the farming expertise contained within the National Guard to be the solution farming skills to grow the Afghan agribusiness economy and Soldier skills vital to operating in a counterinsurgency environment. The 935th ADT, Missouri Army National Guard (MOARNG), had the distinct honor of being the first military ADT created and deployed by the United States. The 935th ADT was comprised of Soldiers from 16 different MOARNG units. The Soldiers who volunteered for this mission not only possessed a broad spectrum of military occupational skills but also were selected based upon their civilian-acquired farming skills and agribusiness knowledge. The ADT partnered with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, the affected Afghan provincial government, various Afghan colleges and universities, and other governmental and NGOs to maximize the use of resources, affect efficient coordination, and avoid conflict with other projects. The success of the 935th ADT was through identifying the farming deficiencies in its area of operations, obtaining funding and other resources, training and updating the agribusiness skills of the Afghan farmers and educators, and showing how to do these actions through hands-on training. The ADT's efforts included repair and maintenance of farm equipment; veterinarians to aid sick animals and provide techniques to enhance the quality and reproductive capabilities of livestock; repair and improvement of irrigation systems destroyed by decades of war; and instruction on various farming techniques for fertilizing, planting, marketing, storage, and distribution of crops. Projects and training undertaken by the ADT must be sustainable with local assets, as the ADT is only in the province for 10 to 11 months. Ideally, follow-on ADTs will deploy to back-fill the departing ADTs to continue the agribusiness training and improvements initiated by the redeploying ADTs. However, whether it is a follow-on ADT or an ADT deploying to an area for the first time, the ADTs must deploy with sufficient time available to affect the next growing season and subsequent harvest. The future of ADT service in Afghanistan is projected to diminish as civilian government agencies grow their capabilities to assist the Afghan agricultural economy reestablish itself. While this will take several years, ADTs will continue to serve U.S. and Afghan interests by helping farmers return the fertile Afghan countryside to the green and productive environment it was prior to the invasion of Soviet forces almost 40 years ago.

This volume presents a selection of papers from the 13th International Conference on Military Geosciences (ICMG), held 24-28 June 2019 in Padua, Italy. It covers a wide range of subjects within the confines of military geoscience written by scientists with a variety of different backgrounds from many countries throughout the world. Many of the papers focus on subjects related to Italy and World War I, but additional subject areas include international perspectives in the military geosciences, international security, geospatial intelligence and remote sensing, subterranean and underground warfare, analyses of historical battlefields and fortifications, and military archaeology. The book will be of interest to academics (e.g., military historians, military archaeologists, military geographers and geologists), applied geoscientists (e.g., engineering geologists and geologists working in other areas of applied geology), professional geoscientists, and those with a general interest in military geoscience and history.

This is a collection of new essays opening introspective space for further exploration into constructions of “We the People…” during the mid-to-late nineteenth century. It does so by interrogating intersections of pro-enslavement and anti-enslavement expressions of cultural nationalism, investigating assorted expressions of partisanship within dramatic literature and live performance (broadly defined), and by probing effects of armed conflict on notions of “nation,” “theatre,” “performance,” and other markers of communal identity. Enacting Nationhood is distinctive in that the essays collected here call into question many widely-held assumptions about the intricate theatrical past of the period under review. This said, the essays in this collection are certainly not to be taken as a comprehensive set of viewpoints. Rather, they are to be understood as an accompanying voice in a continuing discussion regarding an ever-shifting aesthetic contract between cultural nationalism and dramatic literature and live performance (broadly defined) from 1855–1899.

Warfare in the 21st century is far different than warfare throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Conventional warfare was about kinetic force and bending an adversary by might and strength. Skills valued were those related to mastery of weapons and placing ordnance on target. Courage and valor were defined by conflict, militaries were distinct from the population, and occupation was an enduring stage of war. Contemporary warfare, besides continuing to be an exercise in military strength, is composed of missions that depend on skills to forge interpersonal relationships and build sustainable partnerships with a host of actors that once had no voice or role in conflict’s duration or conclusion. Today, final victory does not conclude directly from conflict, in fact victory may be subsumed into the larger and more consuming equation of international stability. Twenty-first century warfare is about counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism through an array of strategies that foster collusion and collaboration not acquiescence.Cross-cultural competence (3C) is a suite of competencies and enablers that have been identified as critical to instill in expeditionary military and civilian personnel in the Department of Defense (DoD). Defined as a set of knowledge, skills, abilities and attitudes (KSAAs), 3C promotes effective interaction across cultural divides through exchanging ideas and meaning across cultures, facilitating effective cross-cultural interactions to develop and sustain relationships and providing a means to discern meaning from foreign and culturally different behavior. 3C permeates DoD policy, doctrine, strategy and operations and is now being institutionalized in DoD military and civilian education and training. Cross-Cultural Competence for a Twenty-First-Century Military: Culture, the Flipside of COIN is a volume edited by two acknowledged experts on 3C in military learning, policy and research and explores the value and necessity of 3C to developing 21st Century warfighters. This volume features chapters by the editors and a host of multidisciplinary experts that probes all aspects of 3C, from concept to application. The message carried throughout Cross-Cultural Competence for a 21st Century Military is that contemporary and future security endeavors will be successful because winning wars ultimately rest on developing and sustaining cross-cultural relationships as much as it does on weapons and force.