Beantownboy…in Afghanistan

In 2010, I was in a bad “place”. Had sold my business interests in Zambia (which was good), but was in court with a business partner in Kenya (which was not good). I was spending all my time managing lawyers—which is not a pleasant experience. Finally, one day, my dear wife said: “Why don’t you just do something completely different, find something else to work on. You can always manage the lawyers from wherever you are, and you won’t be spending all of your time on something that is just so negative and backward looking rather than forward thinking.” So, I took her advice to heart—though I’m not certain she was thrilled with the outcome; in fact, I know she wasn’t.

Small Business Development…in Afghanistan

In mid-2011, after six weeks of intensive training—cultural, socio-economic, political and security (ie, evasive driving techniques, loading / shooting / re-loading M6 submachine guns and smaller caliber weapons / etc.), I found myself on a plane bound for Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan.

I had agreed to a one-year contract, funded by the US foreign aid program, ostensibly to provide small business development and financial advisory assistance…in Afghanistan. After a couple of weeks of further training at the US Embassy in Kabul, I was posted to Ghazni Province—to the south of the capital. I was one of about 6-7 civilian “advisors” each of whom had a different mandate—eg, agricultural development, health, education, governance, etc. Mine was to work with small businesses in the process of developing and assist them in structuring their respective businesses and securing required financing.

I was posted to a Polish-led military base just outside Ghazni (the capital of Ghazni province) that was manned by about 2200 Polish soldiers (and several civilians) and a contingent of about 200 US military (led by Navy Special Forces) personnel. The latter’s role was to identify small infrastructure projects that might be supported by the US, AND, protect the lives of the MEPs (that would be us civilians—“Mission Essential Personnel”). I soon learned that THEY were the MEPs and most definitely not us!

(Note: You must understand that these very brave and extremely well-trained military personnel, for the most part, were the ages of my children! By far and away, my biggest fear during the entire time I was in Afghanistan was not for my own well-being; but, rather, that in trying to protect my sorry ass, one or more of them would be injured, or worse. Fortunately, neither happened, but I don’t know how I would have been able to live with myself if something had happened to any of them. Every time we went “off-base” we went in armored vehicles with four security personnel per “MEP”; and, we too were in full body armor.)

What they didn’t tell me was that in Ghazni, there was no electricity (sound like a recurring theme), no banks or financial institutions because the physical risks were simply too high, IEDs (improvised explosive devices) were constantly being exploded (and taking lives along the way), and people were shooting at each other—all the time! It was one of the most “kinetic” provinces in all of Afghanistan—Taliban infested!

Beantownboy the Governance Advisor

Needless to say, there wasn’t much I could do in the small business development space, so I began to work with the Ghazni Provincial Council, in particular, with the Chairman.

More on that later.