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Providing Security in Afghanistan

On her 2007-2008 tour of duty in Iraq, National Guardswoman Shannon Doty saw a little girl with the developmental disorder spina bifida. “My brother had a child born with it,” Doty said, and the baby received excellent health care. “But that girl couldn’t because of where she was born.”

A 2002 gradaute of Gibraltar High School, Doty went on patrols with an infantry unit from Maryland during that first tour. The unit needed women to talk with Iraqi women.

“It was interesting for me to be in that part of the world and see how they lived, to see little girls six years old who never expect to be anything but a wife and a mother,” Doty said.

Thinking of the child with spina bifida and the little girls with limited futures, as well as other challenges she faced, “one of the hardest things for me in Iraq was my inability to do more,” she said.

Despite that inability, Doty still likes the “really great potential” for making a difference. She learned from a sergeant major that she had served with in Iraq that Wisconsin was assembling an agri-business team to go to Afghanistan as part of a counter-insurgency plan; he encouraged her to volunteer.

“I applied for the mission,” Doty said, “and was selected to be part of the female engagement team that provides security for the female members of the U.S. agri-business team.”

To participate in the mission Doty is taking a hiatus from her studies at the William Mitchell College of Law in Minneapolis. She felt fortunate that the opportunity presented itself while she had the freedom to seize it, before she had settled comfortably into a law career. She will complete her final semester after she returns from Afghanistan and plans to become a public defender.

“I know people who are going on the mission and feel good about who I am going with. It seemed a good idea at the time, and I couldn’t think of a good reason not to go,” Doty said.

Wisconsin’s 82nd Agri-business Development Team will maintain and continue work begun by the Illinois National Guard. The agri-business specialists began their training last July at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin.

Doty, who is one of seven women that make up the 58-person team, will receive specific training for the mission during February at Camp Atterbury in Indiana and will leave at the end of the month for a tour of duty in Afghanistan that extends until March of 2013.

The agri-business team will include experts in forestry, animal husbandry, water, soil, pest management and other related areas. They will provide instruction to Afghani farmers intended to improve the quality of their lives, and at the same time build their trust for Americans.

One goal is to support legitimate crop production as an alternative to the opium trade in the country. Another is to encourage agricultural projects for women farmers.

The idea of providing opportunities for women is not a hard one for Doty to get behind, as she has experienced the constraints that gender can place on roles.

“The Army does not have female specialists in combat arms,” she said, “but pulls them from other jobs.” When she enlisted in the National Guard, Doty began in the signal corps but is now a combat medic.

But as she pointed out, women and men receive the same basic training. While female soldiers are not sent directly into combat, they sometimes find themselves in military confrontations and must be prepared.

“I weigh 130 pounds,” Doty said, “and I carry between 80 and 90 pounds of gear. I already do everything that men do.”

She expects that within 10 years, women will be fully accepted as combat soldiers, just as gay men have been. In her experience she has found it’s “a degree of having to prove yourself,” demonstrating that you “will not compromise team safety.” In some respects, “it’s the same for new guys in a unit,” she added.

When Doty looks ahead to her work in Afghanistan she realizes “It has the potential of being dangerous,” but at the same time “for me, a lot of fun!”

“Maybe we won’t completely change people’s lives” she said, “but there is the potential to help in some way, to make a broad impact.”

While Doty feels the United States made a mistake by going into Iraq, she nonetheless believes “we had a moral obligation to stabilize the country before we left.” And she “would like to see Afghanistan take over the role of security, of running their own country. I would like to see us pull out, as with Iraq.

“I joke that it would be interesting,” she continued, “if I could some day go to Iraq on vacation, to visit Baghdad and see places there and say, ‘I remember.’”