Screenshot from Air Force courtesy video.

Dustin Temple earned an Air Force Cross for his heroism while outnumbered and surrounded by Taliban fighters.

As SrA. Dustin H. Temple fired back at insurgents who had surrounded his unit in a remote area of Helmand province, Afghanistan, his team’s interpreter heard some terrifying chatter come in over enemy radio.

The enemy was moving in to take the Americans alive.

So definitive was the Taliban advantage during the Sept. 27-29, 2014, action, insurgents on the rooftops didn’t bother to take cover from the gunships, fighter aircraft, and attack helicopters that fired on them from above.

“They were braver than any insurgents we have ever fought,” SrA. Goodie J. Goodman said in a recent meeting with reporters. Across the battlefield from Temple during the fight, Goodman’s vantage point allowed him to see how grave the American position was.

“I’d never heard that before … about taking hostages,” Goodman’s battlefield companion, TSgt. Matthew J. Greiner, agreed. “I’d never heard talk so alarming.”

It was probably for the best that the detachment of American Army Special Forces and Afghan commandos, whom the three Air Force combat controllers were there to protect, couldn’t fully appreciate the peril of their situation.

The battle had begun more typically. In the early morning darkness on Sept. 28, the Americans and Afghan commandos moved into the small village in Kajaki district of northern Helmand province.

Already the combat controllers had called in several strikes from AH-64 Apache helicopters and A-10 Warthogs to kill six armed insurgents moving on their position. The enemy knew the Americans and Afghan forces were there.

From intelligence, the airmen also knew the village bazaar was a nexus of enemy activity. Weapons, equipment, and drugs all moved through Kajaki to various Taliban safe havens throughout Helmand.

If the Americans and Afghans could clear the bazaar, they would deal a critical blow to insurgent operations in the region.

Eight-to-one

The Special Forces established three defensive positions in the center, east, and west of the bazaar, while small teams, including the airmen, fanned out to search the market.

They came across a stockpile of ammunition and narcotics. They quickly destroyed these in place and made their way back to prepare defensive positions: Goodman and Greiner to the west and Temple to the center.

As daylight spread across the valley, the enemy began to step up its activity against the Americans and Afghan commandos, probing their positions and peppering them with small-arms fire.

The airmen punched holes through the thick mud walls of the buildings they were in to get a better look at the enemy while protecting their bodies from sniper fire.

Air Force maps of the battlefield, denoting coalition forces with little rectangles and insurgents with triangles, later demonstrated the overwhelming supremacy of the Taliban position. Triangles outnumber rectangles almost eight-to-one.

As the airmen pondered their situation, considering what manner of air strike would best counter their enemy’s intentions, they were dealt an even more devastating blow. Sgt. 1st Class Andrew T. Weathers, a Green Beret and Special Forces medic, had taken a sniper round to the head.

For the actions that followed, Temple would receive the Air Force Cross, the highest award the Air Force can give, presented for extraordinary heroism in battle. Only six Air Force Crosses have been awarded since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and it is the top award for gallantry in combat, short of the Medal of Honor.

Goodman and Greiner earned Silver Stars for gallantry in action against an enemy of the United States.

“Around 0800, we started getting a lot of traffic over the radios that the insurgents knew where our positions were,” Goodman related, recalling the battle. “They knew we went through the bazaar.”

Once that happened, the insurgents picked up the attack, firing machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

The Americans and Afghans returned fire to suppress the enemy. Goodman took up a position on a rooftop, lobbing round after round of 40 mm grenades.

At a little after 9 a.m., a chilling message came through the radio. Man down. Weathers had been felled by a sniper while firing from a rooftop.

“I immediately ran from my position to receive Weathers from the rooftop,” Temple recalled. The injured man was still breathing but unconscious.

“I helped lower him down to the ground and moved him to a safer location,” Temple said. “While teammates assisted in first aid, I called in a medevac over the satellite radio.”

According to his Air Force Cross citation, when the helicopter arrived 45 minutes later, Temple carried Weathers across more than 300 feet of open terrain under direct enemy fire to an improvised helicopter landing zone.

Despite Temple’s heroic efforts to save him, Weathers died at the US military’s Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany a few days later. He was the only American fatality of the battle.

“I [feel] a great deal of remorse for Sergeant Weathers. He was an awesome man,” Goodman said later.

Around noon, the detachment was beginning to run low on ammunition. It fell to Temple to call in an emergency resupply, which came in by helicopter about an hour later through a cloud of small-arms fire.

Smacked In The Face

But when Temple, Greiner, and a few of the Afghan commandos ran out to receive the shipment, they were met with a surprise.

The ammunition was still packed in a forklift pallet, much too massive for an individual, or even a team of individuals, to lift.

Despite the size of the delivery, Temple and Sgt. Hollis Webb still tried to carry the pallet back to safety, but it immediately toppled to the ground.

With enemy fire landing all around them, they decided to run back to cover, regroup, and make another go for it later.

Temple didn’t understand what the miscommunication had been.

“It was a strange resupply,” he said. “Normally it comes in a bag, and it would be something you could carry, but this was a different type of aircraft bringing it in.”

While their much-needed ammunition lay in plain sight on contested ground, they established a plan to go in with more men, set up a suppressing fire line, and grab as much of it as they could.

On their second attempt, Temple, Greiner, two other Americans, and six Afghans were able to bring almost all of the ammunition back to the compound they were using for cover.

It wasn’t until they were back inside that they realized how risky their maneuver had been.

“The fire was pretty effective,” Temple admitted. “One of our friendlies said, ‘Hey, are you guys OK? You’re taking fire all around your feet!’ But no one received any injuries.”

The relief of being resupplied didn’t last long. Radio traffic indicated that insurgents were going to make another major push on the coalition troops, force a surrender, and try once again to take them alive.

“That’s when I had the aircraft overhead start doing a defensive scan around our forward positions looking for insurgents close to us,” Greiner said.

It turned out the insurgents were barely 100 feet away. For the purposes of an air strike, such a distance is danger-close and tantamount to being in the same location.

Nonetheless, Greiner called in the strike.

“I had a few-second conversation over the radio making sure it wasn’t our guys that were outside of the building, and we confirmed it. Then we went ahead and launched multiple Hellfires off the rail.”

The blasts were so big that coalition forces were “smacked in the face” with dust through fighting holes they had dug in the walls, according to Temple.

“We did everything we could to push them back from us—everything short of putting our birds at risk. We had to avoid making another ‘Black Hawk Down’ scene,” Goodman said, referencing the 2001 film based on real-life events in 1993, when an Army Rangers helicopter was shot down in Mogadishu, Somalia.

It worked. The combat controllers coordinated the air attacks and ammunition drops from their positions on the ground effectively enough to repel the enemy onslaught and win the battle.

He had joined the Guard for college, but wasn’t sure the direction he wanted to go in life post-deployment. Being out in the Iraqi countryside, however, it became clear to him: he wanted to return to rural Montana and become a farmer.

When he got back to the U.S., Mikulecky received a preferential veteran’s loan, agricultural training and financial advising through Northwest Farm Credit Services. He purchased land in Rudyard, Montana and grow it into a thriving wheat and grain farm.

“The hours from the service and the hours that you put into agriculture are very closely related,” Mikulecky said. “Yeah, it’s a lot of hurry-up-and-wait, but we’re self-starters, always trying to go the extra mile.”

For military veterans like Dan Mikulecky, turning swords into ploughshares – both literally and figuratively – is becoming an increasingly attractive option.

With the drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan and thousands leaving the military, America’s veterans are facing over 20 percent unemployment. With 45 percent of armed service members coming from rural America, the draw to agriculture is a natural solution, according to the USDA.

“We should hope for all veterans to be able to come back and assimilate in the way they can, but we also need a lot of new, young farmers,” Mikulecky said in an interview. “Someone has to grow the food.”

The average age of farmers in the U.S. is currently over 58 years old, according to 2012 Census data.

For America’s aging farmers and ranchers, worried over who will take the reins in the next generation, an infusion of veterans into American agriculture would be a welcome relief.

“Almost half of those that have served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have come from small, rural towns,” said Farmer Veteran Coalition founder and director Michael O’Gorman.

“We’ve become a disproportionately rural military, so we feel the health and prosperity of our rural communities is important to our military, and agriculture is an important and exciting avenue for those that are leaving the military,” O’Gorman said.

Since founding the Farmer Veteran Coalition in 2008 to guide veterans’ transition into agricultural careers, O’Gorman has seen the organization grow from 10 veterans to over 4,500 members, with over 200 joining each month.

The Farmer Veteran Coalition provides small grants, livestock and used tractors for veterans, and also helps them navigate the world of finance through coordination with the USDA, and Farm Credit, which is a national network of lending institutions – including Northwest Farm Credit Services – tailored to agricultural and rural America.

The skills and ethos of military service directly translate into agriculture, according to O’Gorman.

“There’s a lot of the same sense of determinedness, the same sense of hard work, taking on a mission, standing up when you’re knocked down, and [being] really purpose-driven,” O’Gorman said.

The barriers to entry into farm life, however, may be daunting to many veterans. Obtaining land, seeds, equipment and training in cultivating crops or raising livestock present enormous challenges to those considering a career in agriculture.

Air Force Brig. Gen. Kory Cornum, who owns a 690-acre farm outside of Paris, Kentucky advises vets to start small and expand over time.

“It can look like a big hill when you’re young, but if you want to do it, you can make it happen,” Cornum said.

According to Rep. Michael Conaway, R-Tex., Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, taking advantage of the assistance and guidance provided by the Farmer Veteran Coalition and Farm Credit helps veterans survive the tough early years and “build the capital to allow them to then expand their businesses.”

“We’ve asked them to do things way too often, too many repetitive deployments,” Conaway said. “So we owe them our gratitude, and one of the ways we can help their post-military service lives is to get them into agriculture.”

Conaway made the remarks at a Capitol Hill reception last week honoring farmer veterans. The event showcased agricultural products grown by veterans with the Homegrown By Heroes label.

The Homegrown By Heroes label identifies products sold in grocery stores and farmers’ markets which are grown and raised by U.S. veterans. Since its 2014 national launch by the Farmer Veteran Coalition and Farm Credit, it has expanded to 165 farmers and ranchers in 43 states and brought in over $15 million in sales for veterans.

Calvin Riggleman, a Marine Corps veteran with two deployments to Iraq and now owner of Bigg Riggs Farm in Augusta, West Virginia, was the first veteran in the Mountain State to use the Homegrown By Heroes label and sells his produce at farmers’ markets around Washington, D.C.

“I think it makes a big difference,” Riggleman said. “People walk up to my stands and they know I’m a veteran without me having to say anything.”

For Dan Mikulecky, becoming a farmer has offered a stable career doing what he loves.

“Farming is something that we’ll only need to do a better job at as the population of the world increases,” Mikulecky said. “It’s an industry that never runs out of demand.”

His wife Adria Mikulecky agreed, adding that their success was due to the support they received through organizations like the USDA, the Farmer Veteran Coalition and Northwest Farm Credit Services.

“That’s what veterans need when they come home and try to transition: a lot of support.”

The force of the bullet that grazed his scalp four years ago knocked him out cold as he was leaving the gift shop he worked at on Forward Operating Base Falcon in Baghdad, Iraq. His attackers left him for dead – one less collaborator with the Americans. When he came to, Hassoon knew he had to flee the country.

“I didn’t have a choice,” said Hassoon, who is the sole provider for his mother, sister and two younger brothers. “I couldn’t stay in Iraq because they’d kill me, and my family needed the money.”

In June 2011, after the attack, Hassoon was able to find asylum at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, where he lived and worked doing laundry for Americans.

He applied for a Special Immigrant Visa, a U.S. government program designed to fast-track Iraqis for repatriation to the U.S. beyond regular refugee quotas allotted to the region. These are Iraqis who had worked for Americans in the country and whose lives were endangered because of this.

The program has brought 13,000 Iraqis like Hassoon to the U.S. since it was initiated in 2008, according to the Department of State. Of these, over three thousand – or 23 percent – have gone to Texas, more than any other state.

The SIV program was slated to end in 2013, but when it became clear that thousands of qualified Iraqis remained, it was extended under the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014.

The NDAA made a special allotment to bring 2,500 additional Iraqis to the U.S. To date, approximately 1,500 SIVs have been issued, and less than currently 1,000 remain.

Hassoon waited for over a year, and was finally notified in July 2012 that his SIV had been approved. Within a week, the American government had put him on an airplane and flew him alone to Fort Worth, Texas.
“I arrived here with nothing, spoke really bad English, and didn’t know where to begin,” Hassoon said.

via chartsbin.com

Like Hassoon, Samah Azeez and her family arrived in the U.S. from Iraq with only their immediate luggage.

Her father died in 2006, when she was 17 years old, leaving her mother to provide for Azeez, her four sisters and two young brothers in the heart of the sectarian violence tearing Baghdad apart at the time.

When the Jaysh al-Mehdi began threatening them – her father had been a project engineer for the new Iraqi government – her mother fled with them to Syria and applied for refugee status to the U.S.

After a year and a half of living in what Azeez modestly described as “economically tough” conditions, their visas were approved and the U.S. flew them to Chicago.

Separate from the SIV program, the U.S. government maintains a region-based quota system to admit refugees such as Azeez and her family to America.

121,321 Iraqi refugees have fled Iraq to the United States since 2007, according to the State Department. Almost half of these – 45 percent – have been relocated to California, Michigan and Texas. California alone has received over 20 percent, or 25,391 refugees.

Despite her siblings’ impeccable academic and professional qualifications, they found even minimum wage employment difficult to come by. American universities would not recognize their academic credentials, and prospective employers were too wary.

“It was a shock: you expected something different, completely opposite,” Azeez said. “The U.S. is supposed to be the land of opportunity, but the only kind of jobs we could get were cleaning offices.”

For many Iraqi refugees, coming to the U.S. has meant a new struggle to survive: poverty, lack of employment and language barriers prove for many to be almost insurmountable barriers.

According to a 2010 Georgetown University Law Center study, these Iraqi refugees are “not faring well” in the U.S.

“Most are not securing sustainable employment, and many are not able to support themselves or their families on the public assistance they are receiving. Some have become homeless,” according to the report.

Furthermore, Iraqi refugees arrive in the U.S. already deeply indebted to the government.

Under the terms of the inter-agency United States Refugee Admissions Program, which administers resettling of refugees, new arrivals must repay the U.S. government for the cost of their airfare to the U.S. This interest-free loan is recouped from garnished wages once a refugee finds employment.

In the case of large families, this can run several thousand dollars.

USRAP contracts with non-profit organizations across the country to provide initial resettlement services to newly arrived refugees, including apartment rentals, English-language classes and job training.

Through USRAP, the State Department provides resettlement agencies up to $1,800 per person each month for up to 90 days for basic housing, food and essential services.

For Hassoon, this aid was critical. It allowed him a stable beginning in the U.S., and the chance to develop his basic-level English.

“The government gave me $1,700 and got me an apartment,” Hassoon said. “The first year was really, really hard; I don’t know how I would have made it without it.”

Once this public support begins to fade, however, it becomes increasingly likely that Iraqi refugees will slip through the cracks, making support to this vulnerable population difficult.

“It’s often the case that, as refugees seek to integrate in their community, they relocate to a secondary residence to be closer to fellow refugees and ease linguistic difficulties,” said Jamie Diatta, a Department of Homeland Security Special Assistant who deals with refugee issues.

“This ‘second-tier’ migration makes keeping local refugee statistics difficult within metropolitan areas,” Diatta said.

Azeez considers herself lucky to be thousands of miles away from the current strife in Iraq.

Hardly had the U.S. withdrawn combat units from Iraq, the battle against the Islamic State tore through the fabric of the country, perhaps irrevocably.

According to the UNHCR, there were 88,991 registered Iraqi refugees in the region as of February 2014. The actual number is actually much higher: there is no internationally agreed-upon number of Iraqi refugees or Internally Displaced Persons, as it is impossible to accurately count them.

The Iraqi government’s Ministry of Migration and Displacement estimates an additional 440,000 Iraqis have fled their homes since January 2014 due to the conflict with the Islamic State.

Upon her family’s arrival, the scarcity of decent jobs for her and her siblings meant they constantly struggled to make ends meet.

“The first year here was the hardest because we didn’t speak any English,” Azeez said. “We learned English in school in Iraq, but it wasn’t enough.”

Although she missed several years of schooling in Iraq and Syria, Azeez was able to enroll in a year-long English program at Truman Community College in Chicago. She worked diligently to learn her adopted language, even while laboring in minimum-wage jobs.

With her improved language skills, she was able to find a well-paying job translating Arabic for school children in Hyde Park, and was soon able to help improve her family’s finances.

“It took two to three years for things to get better,” Azeez said. “It was a completely new life.”

Now in his third year in the U.S., Hassoon is also beginning to feel like he’s finally made it.

Starting out as a dishwasher in a local restaurant, he’s worked his way up service industry jobs to become a mall security guard, a position which pays well and offers decent hours.

Hassoon is now regularly able to wire money back to his mother in Iraq, and is helping his brother negotiate the lengthy visa process to hopefully join him.

“This is the U.S.,” Hassoon said. “You have to take it day by day; it’s the only way.”

For both Hassoon and Azeez, the last several years have consisted of constant change and an on-going struggle to improve themselves and the well-being of their families.

Azeez has returned to school, and is now a senior studying biology at Roosevelt University in Chicago. She’s preparing to take the MCAT, and intends to go to medical school. Her dream: to become an orthopedic surgeon.

“This is my passion,” she said. “I really want to make this happen.”

Hassoon is talking with U.S. Army recruiters, and wants to join the Army.

Although he couldn’t understand most of what the American soldiers were saying when he was at FOB Falcon in Baghdad, he loved working with them. More than anything, he wants to join their ranks.

“America’s done so much for me,” Hasson said. “I just want to do something for them back.”

Ritchie and Borley meet for the first time

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In the early morning of Oct. 12, 1944, Navy pilot Ensign Clarence Borley had just shot down his fifth Japanese aircraft over the island of Formosa — present-day Taiwan — when anti-aircraft fire forced him to ditch his F6F Hellcat into the Pacific. Clinging onto his life raft for five days, he was blown by a typhoon 75 miles out to sea before a submarine picked him up.

Eight thousand miles away and nearly 70 years later, Borley and 76 other surviving flying aces were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal — Congress’ highest civilian award — on Wednesday by leaders of the House and Senate in a packed Emancipation Hall on Capitol Hill.

“It’s not just what they did, but how they did it,” said Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio. “It’s a reminder that nothing worth fighting for ever came easy.”

There have been more than 60,000 fighter pilots in American history, yet only 1,447 have earned the distinction of “ace,” meaning a fighter pilot whose skill and valor resulted in the destruction of five or more enemy aircraft.

Yet their numbers are dwindling. On average two of these elite veterans die each month.

The youngest of them, Air Force Brig. Gen. Richard Steven Ritchie, served in Vietnam and is now 72. He is expected to be the last such ace.

In an era of stand-off air-to-air weaponry, the days of grueling dogfights that were the hallmark of 20^th Century aviation warfare are at a close.

From open-cockpit biplanes in World War I to powerful jets over Southeast Asia, these battles were fought by men barely old enough to vote.

“Here are some things you might not expect to hear [from young 20-year-olds]: I cheated death, tore through Hitler’s Luftwaffe like tissue paper, received a Silver Star, a Distinguished Service Cross, two Flying Crosses, and a Purple Heart for good measure,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kent., said.

The ceremony at the Capitol was convened by Seattle’s Museum of Flight, home to the American Fighter Aces Association.

The museum brought together more than 20 volunteer pilots and a fleet of small and mid-size jets to fly more than three dozen of the surviving aces and their families to Washington, D.C.

“All these men had an outsized impact on the air war that they fought in,” AFAA president and fellow ace Air Force Lt. Gen. (ret.) Charles Cleveland said.

“They are people who saved lives and shortened wars; they will never be forgotten.”

Published in conjunction with

WASHINGTON – Facing scathing criticism, Transportation Security Administration officials were a no-show at a House hearing on Wednesday.

During a three-hour hearing by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Homeland Security Inspector General John Roth took the TSA to task over systemic shortcomings in providing American aviation security throughout the agency’s almost 14-year history.

Despite government funding of more than $7 billion a year, “we remain deeply concerned about [TSA’s] ability to execute its important mission,” Roth said in a report prepared for the hearing.

The IG identified a series of deficiencies in TSA programs and operations through more than 114 audits and investigations since 2005, according to the report.

Among the findings:

• Covert tests which smuggled simulated explosives and weapons found significant security vulnerabilities.
• Billions of dollars spent on technology acquisitions “revealed no resulting improvement” in security.
• Personnel repeatedly failed to follow security protocols.
• Weaknesses in TSA equipment “have a real and negative impact on transportation security.”

“This report is an indictment of the failure of the TSA,” said chairman of the Subcommittee on Transportation Rep. John Mica, R-Fla. “Not just in one area, but in almost every one of their functions.”

The hearing also provided further critique of America’s aviation security.

Jennifer Grover, acting director of the Government Accountability Office’s Homeland Security and Justice section, noted TSA shortcomings in addressing screening errors, imaging technology, passenger risk assessment and expedited screening processes.

Although a lot of attention has been paid to passenger screening and security, “little progress has been made securing the far larger portion of the airport where passengers do not have access,” said Rafi Ron, president of transportation security consulting firm New Age Security Solutions.

Absent from the hearing was rebuttal from the TSA itself.

“We’ve had an exceptionally difficult time getting information from the TSA on some very basic matters,” said House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah.

According to Chaffetz, TSA Acting Administrator Melvin Carraway was invited to speak at the hearing, but Homeland Security “felt it was demeaning to have the acting administrator sit on the same panel as a non-governmental witness.”

“That’s absurd,” Chaffetz said. “That’s offensive.”

According to DHS spokesman S.Y. Lee, however, TSA Acting Deputy Administrator Mark Hatfield, Jr. was prepared to testify, but “Chairman Chaffetz declined to allow him to do so.”

“The Department of Homeland Security is respectful of Congress’ oversight responsibilities and is committed to transparency and accountability,” Lee said.

Following a classified Senate briefing Tuesday, Democrats and Republicans were shocked to learn the small scale of data being gathered by the U.S. government, Corker told reporters Wednesday morning.

“It’s almost malpractice,” the Republican Tennessee senator said. “It’s the best word I can use to describe the amount of data that’s actually being collected in the metadata program.”

Corker predicted a dramatic bipartisan reversal will occur over the next few days as lawmakers consider the extent of government surveillance of U.S. citizens under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Following the leaks by whistleblower Edward Snowden, Corker said, a “Libertarian bent” has been pushing Americans to limit the NSA’s program, which collects call data of hundreds of millions of people.

“I think you’re going to see people on both sides of the aisle now pushing in a different direction, wondering why not more data is part of the database to protect our citizens,” Corker said.

Corker’s comments come just before a House vote Wednesday afternoon on a bipartisan bill to scale back the NSA’s powers under FISA, and ahead of the expiration of the Patriot Act in June.

Backed by the Obama administration, the bill follows last week’s New York federal appeals court ruling the NSA program illegal.

According to Corker, however, the Senate briefing Tuesday shed light on how little the NSA is actually doing, putting Americans at grave risk to terrorist threats at home and abroad.

“I’m incredibly disappointed that we’ve allowed a program that’s supposed to be so important to our national security to be so ineptly carried out,” Corker said at the breakfast held by the Christian Science Monitor.

“I don’t think anyone in the room had any idea how miniature, non-encompassing and lacking in commitment the program is in the first place.”

Citing classification concerns, Corker was unwilling to disclose specific details of the shortcomings in the NSA surveillance program, but blamed the spy agency directly for its lack of transparency.

“I think where [the NSA’s]been additionally irresponsible is the lack of desire to explain just what the program is,” Corker said.

“Instead, there’s all these myths about what the metadata program is; lots of myths.”

Airmen Temple, Greiner and Goodman receive top awards from the Air Force for 2014 combat in Afghanistan on May 6, 2015 in Fayetteville, North Carolina. (Matthew L. Schehl/MEDILL NSJI)

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — As SrA. Dustin Temple fired back at the insurgents that had surrounded his unit in a remote area of Helmand Province, Afghanistan, some terrifying chatter came in over enemy radio.

Insurgents were moving in to take American Special Forces troops alive.

So definitive was the Taliban advantage during the battle that raged from Sept. 27-29, 2014, that insurgents on the rooftops didn’t bother to take cover from the gunships, jet fighters, and attack helicopters that fired on them from above.

Nonetheless, Temple, along with TSgt. Matthew Greiner and SrA. Goodie Goodman, coordinated air attacks and ammunition drops from their positions on the ground effective enough to repel the enemy onslaught and win the battle.

The three airmen, all combat controllers assigned to the 21st Special Tactics Squadron here, were honored for their valor Wednesday at a ceremony at Pope Army Air Field, Fort Bragg, in front of their families, commanding officers, and hundreds of airmen and soldiers.

Temple was awarded the Air Force Cross, the second highest honor for valor in combat, behind only the Medal of Honor. He is only the seventh recipient of the Air Force’s highest honor since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Greiner and Goodman each were given the Silver Star, which is among the military’s most prestigious awards.

“I just feel honor,” Temple said after the ceremony. “When they said I was getting the Cross, I couldn’t believe it. I was just doing my job.”

The combat controllers saved the lives of the soldiers in the Army Special Forces unit to which they were attached, as well as the 24 Afghan commandos fighting with them, according to their medal citations.

The mission was to infiltrate a well-known enemy staging point and disrupt operations. By the time the battle was over, coalition forces had killed more than 60 insurgents, seized 250 pounds of narcotics, and destroyed major stockpiles of weapons and ammunition.

Vice Adm. Sean Pybus, deputy commander of US Special Operations Command, and Air Force Special Operations Command boss Lt. Gen. Bradley Heithold spoke at the ceremony, praising the recipients and thanking their families.

Heithold stirred the crowd by noting the “joy that we all feel from our children’s successes.”

Pybus stressed the “personal relationship” that develops between air controllers, whose primary job is to call in airstrikes, and the troops that rely on them to operate on the ground.

“There are so few of them in number that you become very close to them,” he said.

Army Capt. Evan Lacenski, then commander of ODA 7221 of the 7th Special Forces Group, credited the airmen with the success of their mission over the 48-hour long battle.

“Thirteen members of ODA 7221 owe their lives to you, and will never forget what you did,” Lacenski said during the hour-long awards presentation.

He later drew a laugh from the crowd, telling of the countless emails he wrote to commanding officers extolling the airmen’s conduct.

The battle in Helmand Province, which took place in the Kajaki District, the ?site of a strategically valuable dam, was not without casualties.

Sgt. 1st Class Andrew Weathers died of a gunshot wound to the head from sniper fire.

Women of Hutal village discuss building a women’s center with the Maiwand District Governor – courtesy of Cythia Hogle

WASHINGTON — In a rural village southwest of Kandahar, a local police force operates out of a posh modern facility surrounded by mud-brick buildings.

Three years ago it was built as a cooperative US-Afghan venture to be a focal point for the advancement of women in the community.

The Malalai Anaa Center for Women and School for Girls in Hutal village was the face of success for American policy in Afghanistan: a collaborative effort by the US military, the US Agency for International Development, NGOs and local leaders and laborers. It would provide vocational training, a girls’ school and a water source for the women of Maiwand District. It would be a prime example of the advances women have been able to make in Afghanistan since coalition forces moved in.

Except, now it’s gone.

As soon as US forces turned over the area to the Afghan National Security Forces in 2013, local police closed the center, ran the women out and commandeered the building for their own headquarters.

“We could have predicted it,” recalled Cynthia Hogle, a cultural adviser with the US Army’s Human Terrain System who coordinated the project.

“We didn’t have any plan for sustainability and relied on the [Afghan] government, who made empty promises” to continue supporting the center, she told Medill News by phone.

Advancing Afghan women’s rights has been a key US policy objective since 2001, when Congress passed the Afghan Women and Children Relief Act. Under the previous rule of the Taliban, women were banned from schools, work, health care and all manner of public life.

Significant gains have been made over the last 13 years. But some experts are worried that without sustainable support, those inroads will reverse as soon as US forces leave the country.

According to USAID, the agency primarily responsible for implementing US gender policy in Afghanistan, girls today comprise more than one-third of all school children. More than 40,000 women are enrolled in post-secondary education, and women now maintain an active and visible role in economic and political life, including holding 25 percent of the seats in the Afghan parliament.

Yet increasingly, those advocating for women’s rights in Afghanistan are subjected to violence and intimidation as well as government indifference, according to an Amnesty International report from April.

Throughout Afghanistan, the “common thread … is that the pattern of abuse against women human rights defenders is matched by the government’s systematic failure to provide an environment that protects them or to bring the perpetrators of abuses to justice,” the report claims.

Ill-conceived economic and political support from the international community makes the problem worse, AI says. Investment tends to be limited, focusing on short-term projects developed with little input from those who would benefit.

The US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the agency set up by Congress to oversee approximately $104 billion invested in the country for redevelopment, is also concerned. Last month, SIGAR released an inquiry letter into the joint US-Afghan Promoting Gender Equity in National Priority Programs (PROMOTE).

USAID’s flagship program for women’s empowerment in Afghanistan — and its largest in the world — plans to spend $416 million targeting 75,000 Afghan women ages 18 to 30 to become future political, business and civil society leaders.

But in the letter, SIGAR Inspector General John Sopko worried that “some very basic programmatic issues remain unresolved and that the Afghan women engaged in the program may be left without any tangible benefit upon completion.”

Donald Sampler, USAID’s assistant administrator for Afghanistan and Pakistan, acknowledged that the “context in which PROMOTE is being implemented is not an easy one,” but believes the program will be successful.

Sustainability will be achieved “by prioritizing local ownership of activities and employing Afghan organizations to undertake PROMOTE activities,” Sampler says.

Sopko, however, was unconvinced.

“SIGAR continues to have concerns about how USAID will implement the PROMOTE program, assess its outcomes, ensure its sustainability, and conduct oversight, concerns which are shared by other senior US and Afghan officials,” he said in an interview, adding that SIGAR will continue to monitor the program.

Even Afghanistan’s new first lady, Rula Ghani, was skeptical about the program in a speech last November.

“The immediate effect in Kabul [of PROMOTE] has been a flurry of NGOs, newly created or reconfigured with the view of attracting some of the windfalls of that budget,” Ghani said.

“I do hope that we are not going to fall again into the game of contracting and sub-contracting and the routine of workshops and training sessions generating a lot of certificates on paper and little else.”

Between 2011 and 2013, USAID spent almost $850 million on 17 women’s empowerment programs in Afghanistan, but were unable to demonstrate this money directly helped Afghan women, according to a December 2014 SIGAR audit.

Despite general improvements in the status of Afghan women, according to the report, there is “no comprehensive assessment available to confirm that these gains were the direct result of specific US efforts.”

The women of Hutal village might agree. The Malalai Anaa Center — named for a local heroine who led Pashtun tribesmen to successfully revolt against the British in 1880 — might soon be just a memory.

“Without the support of their government or the men in their community, all the work and progress will come to a halt and the hopes of the women will be dashed,” Hogle said.

“There are just too many challenges for them to overcome without some source of continuing support.”

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BALTIMORE — As the third night of Baltimore’s curfew set in on Thursday, the Maryland National Guard stood watch over an empty City Hall. Their real action, however, took place 31 miles away at the Joint Operations Command in Adelphi, Maryland.

There, Joint Task Force Maryland had gone online to guide all National Guard operations in the state.

At 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday, the makeshift operations center was activated in a converted gymnasium at the Maryland National Guard Center to coordinate the approximately 2,000 soldiers streaming into the city from across Maryland, explained Capt. Patrick Elliot, who oversees day operations at the JOC.

In an interview Thursday evening, Elliot described JTF Maryland’s role in responding to the civil unrest in Baltimore.

“Anytime civilian assets are unable to address a problem, they call us in,” Elliot said. “Our job is to respond to and direct all Army assets in the state of Maryland.”

On Monday evening, the Maryland National Guard received Gov. Larry Hogan’s call to assist city and state police in responding to the violent protests that engulfed Baltimore after the death of Freddie Gray.

“We rehearse this every year, if not every couple months, on top of all the other Army [training] requirements” Elliott said. “I think it shows in the quick response that we were able to put on the ground to support the governor.”

The JOC, staffed by the 58th Troop Command, receives missions from the Maryland State Police through liaison officers to provide resources the police lack, logistical or transportation support and requests for extra forces to bolster security throughout Baltimore.

“In this type of sustained operations, there’s a lot that happens behind the scenes in order to support the troops that are out there,” Elliot said.

The mission has thus far proved successful, according to Elliot. The JOC has been able to provide continuous guidance on how to respond to conflict, how and when to use force, and what are appropriate escalation and de-escalation tactics.

“As a troop on the ground, it’s good to know that at the end of the day, you’re helping to protect the community,” Elliot said.

“The soldiers know that they’re protecting lives and property in Baltimore.”

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A police helicopter circles protesters as the 10 p.m. curfew approaches.

A young boy tunes out the clamor of the protesters.

Baltimore police hold the line as civic activists clear the ground before them.

A local resident urges protesters to obey the 10 p.m. curfew from the roof of a Metro stop.

Local activists form a human chain to drive protesters and media away from the police.

10:15 pm: A lone protester stares down the police as tear gas is fired to clear the intersection.

A protester is detained after fireworks were lobbed at police.

10:25 p.m.: Police backed by an armored vehicle push forward into the intersection.

Baltimore policeman scans the intersection with teargas launcher at the ready.

Police fire pepper balls at protesters who approach the line.

10:40 p.m.: Police continue firing tear gas into the intersection to disperse remaining protesters.

10:50 p.m.: Police oversee the successfully cleared intersection.