Please help me help kids in Afghanistan

**Major Robert Dump** · 08-12-2010, 19:25

As stated in the beginning, I hardly deal with the boys anymore because they are out of control, and become abusive towards females at quite a young age. So anything you send will be given to girls. I strongly suggest using flat rate shipping, so size and weight is not an issue.

**drone** · 08-12-2010, 20:03

Will crayons survive the trip, or will they end up as modern art wax puddles? And what age group/size are we talking about here?

**Major Robert Dump** · 08-13-2010, 05:59

Drone: Crayons will survive the trip, and are quite popular.

Fragony: While I appreciate your concern, this issue has been thought on and debated and the boys will have to deal with it. I do not blanket ignore the boys, I make exceptions based on age, location and behavior. Not trying to be a jerk, but you are not seeing what I see.

I simply cannot deal with most of the boys. They beat the crap out of each other over the smallest item. Despite me having bags and bags of stuff, and telling htem there is plenty for everyone, 10% of the boys -- the biggest, fastest ones -- will end up with everything while the rest have nothing. If I give out 500 coloring books to a group of 100 boys, inevitably a few will be running around with armfuls of them, and all of the smaller boys will have nothing, who then turn on the girls for what they have. It is almost impossible to get kids to line up and come forward one at a time, and in the rare event it happens, the larger boys just lurk in the back and wait for a kid to leave the line.

We are talking a 10 to 1 ratio of boys to girls. me and my soldiers cannot manage a mob of boys to ensure that they are behaving. The girls, meanwhile, rarely fight, will form a line, will say thank you, and will listen to our advice on how to hide the stuff on in their clothes so the boys don't see it to take it, and the girls outright request we protect them from the boys

The boys are also the ones who will outright steal from us. Things off the trucks, things from our trailers, thhings from our pockets. Whats amazing is that a kid will still a duffel bag of toys from right in front of me, then hide the bag in his man-dress and get back into the mob and expect me to give him more. They will steal from other kids and stuff all the stuff in their pockets and ask for more. Sometimes I take pictures of the kids that I printed out from my previous visit -- the boys will even still those. They are not even pictures of themselves and they know it. The boys here behave like animals after about age 6. They will steal the magazine from your rifle when you are occupied, which is why the vast majority of soldiers in this country will not let boys anywhere near them. Even after you tell them to get out of your pockets, they will make a cute face, say something like "but I am poor" and then try to reach back into your pocket.

They will pretend to "help" you when really they are just waiting for a chance to steal, like the time I delivered 50 duffel bags of school supplies and radios to a girls school in Chamkani. As I carried the bags a few at a time up to the gate, a couple of boys volunteered to help me. Then they tried to make a run with 4 of the bags once they realized there were radios in them.

And don't get me started on the grown men. They are worse than the little boys. Sometimes, they mob me when they wee I have stuffed animals and clothes, and get all grabby and handsy worse than the boys. Maybe some of them have kids, and maybe some of them plan on turning around and selling the stuff in the market, as I see my "gifts" turn up in the bazaar all the time. And yes, it is my stuff, as the things I give away here are not exactly common.

Just the other day, I let some little girls onto one of the government compounds and would nopt let the boys in. I started giving away toys and food. The men who worked at that compound -- grownmen with jobs -- were all over me worse than the girls. At one point, they threw all the girls out, for no reason. I asked WTF because the girls were behaving, and my interp said that the men said the girls were being too loud. Well guess what? The men were being louder than the girls, and after the girls were gone they swarmed me and started telling me to hand over my stuff to them. They threw the little ghetto girls out so they could get my toys. I packed up, told them they should be ashamed of themselves, then left the compound to go outside and brave themob of 200 little boys. I found a local family who allowed me to use their qalat, and I only let girls and small boys in and continued to distribute my stuff.

What is shocking about that compound is that we have been there a dozen times, and I always -- ALWAYS -- take stuff for the men to give to their kids, usually books and pens and pencils. This time was no different. But this time, they wanted more, probably because it was Ramadan and they wanted more stuff to give their kids.

The way I see it, nothing I do will make things any worse for the girls. When I give them things, we ensure they make it back to their home to stash the goodies before coming back for more. This is a common practice in Afghanistan, kids run homewith their stash ASAP so other kids don't gank them.

Do I ignore all boys? No. I have some things that I use to distract boys. I have other things -- like coloring books -- that I have so many of I will pass them out to anyone and I don't care who gets them. I will deal with very small boys, and I will deal with boys who are polite (the rural mountain kids are well behaved) and I will deal with boys who defend their siblings and do crowd control. When I have something like jewelry and dresses that are obviously just for girls, sometimes there are brothers who will control the other boys to ensure the girls get what I am passing out. I reward those boys as well. But for the most part, boys are not the recipients of what I have with the exception of the coloring books. I always test the water with the coloring books. If they can't behave with those, I know damn well bad things will happen when the toys, radios and clothing comes out.

And. as I stated in the first post, I always try initially to manage the mob with both boys and girls, and it never never works. SO I inform the boys that they suck, and that because they act like savages that I will only deal with the ladies and the little boys.

I really don't know what else to say. Maybe a video would help you guys understand.

This has actually been a point of contetion between my commander and I because he prefers me to just hand the bags over to adults, since it keeps mobs from occurring and it "puts an afghan face" on the act, something that is integral to COIN. Well, first off, if we hand them over to adults, the adults will just take all the stuff to their kids or sell it at the bazaar. We have already caught several teachers who were taking school supplis home instead of giving them to the students. And second, I will do COIN, put-an-afghan-face blah blah only with stuff that the army provides me. If I spend $500 of girls kicker sandals, you are damnskippy that I will be passing those out to who "I want when I want, and not giving to some adult male who may or may not get them to the intended target. I will burn eveything I bought before I hand it over to an Afghan man.

And as far as this comment goes: You are a soldier of the USA army, only there for the girls?
Thats a bit of overgeneralization. Never mind the retaining walls we just built, the cool storage units we just built, and farming tools we just trained 400 male farmers to use and the poultry and livestock education we just gave to half the villagers, and nevermind the people we employed in the process of doing all the previous. If they don't like me only giving things to the little girls, then they can deal with it everytime they use their cool storage unit and their crop doesn't flood.

**Fragony** · 08-13-2010, 13:44

Interesting stuff, what a harsh deal for women and the younger boys. Friend of mine describes the boys as the little monsters you do, but he found the grown men to be very polite.

**Major Robert Dump** · 08-13-2010, 14:57

Many of the grown men are polite, but sometimes even the most polite ones turn aggressive when they see I have toys. Even the ANA and ANP. I have had ANA officers steal a bag of bead necklaces from me when I was not looking. In the rare events that I give bags of stuff for ANA or ANP to pass out to local kids, I have to diligently track the materials, find out who they allegedly gave the stuff to, then check with the alleged recipients to make sure it didn't end up at the ANA guys home. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.

Rest assured the stuff I give to Afghans to distribute themselves is only stuff the army provides.

We are down to about 7-14 days before I will not likely receive the stuff in time to pass out myself. I was hoping for more responses. Perhaps I will have to post some pictures of beautiful babies.

**Fragony** · 08-13-2010, 15:28

Post some pics anyway I'd love too see them. Going to send you some stuff monday, some Teddybears candy that sort of thing. Gonna scourge my grandma's attic tomorrow, hope the lego is still there. Also should be a world receiver and a microscope.

**ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88** · 08-13-2010, 15:34

Originally Posted by Major Robert Dump

Many of the grown men are polite, but sometimes even the most polite ones turn aggressive when they see I have toys. Even the ANA and ANP. I have had ANA officers steal a bag of bead necklaces from me when I was not looking. In the rare events that I give bags of stuff for ANA or ANP to pass out to local kids, I have to diligently track the materials, find out who they allegedly gave the stuff to, then check with the alleged recipients to make sure it didn't end up at the ANA guys home. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.

Rest assured the stuff I give to Afghans to distribute themselves is only stuff the army provides.

We are down to about 7-14 days before I will not likely receive the stuff in time to pass out myself. I was hoping for more responses. Perhaps I will have to post some pictures of beautiful babies.

Once my teddy bears arrive in my possession from ebay, I'll send them to you asap!

**Hosakawa Tito** · 08-13-2010, 18:02

Originally Posted by Major Robert Dump

Many of the grown men are polite, but sometimes even the most polite ones turn aggressive when they see I have toys. Even the ANA and ANP. I have had ANA officers steal a bag of bead necklaces from me when I was not looking. In the rare events that I give bags of stuff for ANA or ANP to pass out to local kids, I have to diligently track the materials, find out who they allegedly gave the stuff to, then check with the alleged recipients to make sure it didn't end up at the ANA guys home. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.

Rest assured the stuff I give to Afghans to distribute themselves is only stuff the army provides.

We are down to about 7-14 days before I will not likely receive the stuff in time to pass out myself. I was hoping for more responses. Perhaps I will have to post some pictures of beautiful babies.

I just mailed out 3 flate-rate boxes. One with 10 dozen Jingle Bell Necklaces & 300 Deluxe Pencils *with smilie faces,daisies, hearts etc..*. The other two boxes contain 16 girls sweatshirts *medium size* that I picked up this morning from WalMart with money the Andres wired me. That comment you made in the FrontRoom "Happy Ramadan" thread about some of those girls wearing burlap really stuck in my craw.

My mother used to have a craft-shop business. She's retired now, but still has a building full of stuff. She wants to donate some of it to your cause. I'm taking her to the storage building tomorrow morning to fill some more boxes. I don't know really know what's there, beanie babies, beads, yarns, ribbons,etc...? I'll pick out some appropriate stuff.

**Major Robert Dump** · 08-13-2010, 18:59

Very awesome.

It's funny, today we briefed for an upcoming mission in building X in village Y for a big finale of an ongoing project. Later, under the pretense that I needed to coordinate some atmospherics and contact the appropriate afghan media, I asked the boss if building X was the same one we went to back in June for another event, and he interrupted me and said "Don't worry, it's just down the street from the district center, all those kids that follow your truck around town will find you there in no time."

I guess they see right through me

**Fragony** · 08-13-2010, 00:01

Originally Posted by Major Robert Dump

As stated in the beginning, I hardly deal with the boys anymore because they are out of control, and become abusive towards females at quite a young age. So anything you send will be given to girls. I strongly suggest using flat rate shipping, so size and weight is not an issue.

Might want to do 50/50, don't know if it's so smart to be so openly pro-girl in boy-land, locals could see it as a breach of their culture. You are a soldier of the USA army, only there for the girls? Being neutral is better I think.