Last Thursday, I went along on with a team from Camp Phoenix on a Civilian Medical Assistance operation to a nearby village. We refer to these missions in typical military form as a CMA. These are different from Humanitarian Assistance visits - often referred to as HA drops - which we also do to hand out school supplies and clothing.

The mission of Combined Joint Task Force Phoenix is to train and mentor the Afghan National Security Forces - the Army and Police - so that they can provide the essential security for the country, support the rule of law and governance and ultimately establish conditions for Afghanistan to grow and prosper. We operate from bases that are all over the country, and Camp Phoenix is one of the most secure, with probably the best living conditions to be found here. On the other side of our concrete and sandbag walls are ordinary Afghans living in huts and houses, without running water and electricity, and usually their homes are overcrowded.

So ever since the first Task Force Phoenix (we are rotation VII), we have conducted outreach efforts to help the people in the region and also show the Afghan Army and police to do it, as well. In addition to handing out supplies, clothing and medicine, we have also been planning, supporting and funding local construction projects like schools, wells, clinics, roads, bridges and more. All around the country, U.S. commanders are working locally and using federal dollars to plan, support and construct projects that will help ordinary Afghans.

So how does this work? We start by meeting with and getting to know the local leaders, who are usually the elders in this tribal-based culture. We develop relationships, and when it is time for one team to go home, meetings are set up, the new neighbor in town is introduced and projects that are under way are reviewed and continued so that the people get the benefit and promises made are carried out.

Regular meetings are held. They are called shuras. Our staff officers invite the elders to our base, and they invite our team to their homes. They sit and talk and share chai (tea) and talk about needs - theirs and ours. The community leaders tell our team what their most pressing needs are. The team looks into them together with the elders and that leads to a proposal and a plan.

The review process for the funding is not lengthy. Under the Commanders Emergency Reconstruction Program, our commanders know they have so much funding available to use in a period of time. Sometimes additional funds are offered later.

The task force includes an engineering team and fiscal section. Contracts are drawn up with Afghan companies that compete for the projects. Our engineers and civil military affairs officers monitor the work. We have lists of projects under way up and down the road.

What do we get out of it? Afghans who live near our bases come to trust us and value our support. They also look out for us, let us know when strangers are in town. They tell us when enemies have set traps and turn in weapons caches so we can collect them. We also hire local Afghans to work on the base, too. They live in these communities.

Our trainees - the Afghan soldiers and police patrolman - learn from their U.S. mentors how we value civilians, families and children and how they can do practical things to help and build trust among their own people. In some communities, Afghans soldiers and policemen go into local schools to guide children away from drugs and violence and teach them life skills. Sound familiar?

One of the most profound needs is medical care. To quote my comrade, Lt. Col. Martin Scott, a nurse from Long Island assigned to our troop clinic on Camp Phoenix, "These people have nothing. Right now, the only medical care they get is from us." There are few hospitals in Afghanistan, and most communities only have clinics if they have been built by us or other charitable organizations.

Lt. Col. Scott, Capt. Judy Izard from Buffalo and others at the clinic go out regularly on medical assistance visits. They go to area orphanages with our logistics team to make assessments of the little clinics that are there. Scott told me they are usually just empty rooms with nothing on the shelves. One of his goals is to create a basic inventory of medical supplies for them and get them supplied so they have something.

In preparation for last week's CMA, Scott explained he went to the shuras, too, and asked the elders what were the common medical problems for men, women and children. Based on that, he and his team planned for the medications to bring and assembled handout bags for men, women and children with things like vitamins, cereal and powdered milk, eye drops for the men who worked outdoors all day and personal hygiene kits for the women.

He explained that almost every day, children show up at the Camp Phoenix Entry Control Gate, sometimes having been carried by a parent or a sibling and sometimes in a wheelbarrow. Our base clinic can only provide care to civilians if it is a life-and-death situation, a threat to a limb or eyesight. Every day, they treat children for something, and often adults, too.

"They trust us," he told me. "You should see when we go out. They see our truck, and they know we have doctors and they come from everywhere because they want to be seen."

Lt. Col. Fanning is submitting photos to accompany this blog in a gallery, "Pictures from the Front." To view the most recent photos, which accompany this blog entry, click here. To view the entire gallery, click here.