Mission-minded

KOH-E-MUNJON, Afghanistan – As the rotors slowed on the Afghan National Army helicopter late last month, U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. J. Olaf Holm stepped out into a high-mountain meadow, removed his helmet and looked around.

More than 100 people, mostly men and boys, had been waiting all day for the U.S. and Afghan aircrew to arrive with emergency aid for refugees who had fled Taliban attacks on their village in the Hindu Kush mountains.

The wind was howling, the sun was hot and the oxygen was a little thin at 10,000 feet altitude. But Holm, 44, of Spokane, was grinning as he took it all in.

“Asalaam aleikum,” he said, offering the traditional Muslim greeting that means “Peace be with you,” and shaking hands with each village elder.

Then he shrugged off his body armor and said, “Let’s get this stuff unloaded.”

Holm, with the help of others in the U.S. and Afghan military, had spent more than a month planning the humanitarian mission. After 26 years in the Air Force, his goal was to do something meaningful to mark the last flight of his second one-year tour with the 438 Air Expeditionary Advisory Group in Afghanistan.

In Spokane, Holm is deputy commander of Fairchild Air Force Base’s survival school.

As people scrambled to help, Mohammad Zakir, Koh-e-Munjon’s village chief, pointed out a group of 10 men, saying they “represent the refugee families. They are very glad to see you, sir.”

Holm looked at the men, then bowed his head, overcome with emotion. He removed his sunglasses in the glaring light and took a few steps away.

“Sorry,” he said a moment later. “I was just told before we left that there wasn’t really anyone here who needed help, that they had food and that this mission wasn’t necessary.”

That’s not true, Zakir assured him. “These people are poor. They have lost everything. They are starving.”

The two Russian Mi-17 transport helicopters that landed on the bluffs beside the River Taghab that day carried more than 7,000 pounds of relief supplies. The aid was provided by the Bozeman-based Central Asia Institute, which just finished building a primary school in the area.

“We are desperate to get food and vital shelter to about 200 Nuristani refugees” in Koh-e-Munjon, CAI director Greg Mortenson wrote to Holm in an e-mail. Their Barg-e-Matal district was retaken by the Afghan National Army in early June, “however, the refugees who fled the area are terrified to return, as there are Taliban lurking near Kafir Pass, ready to kill them if they return home. We are unable to get any help for them from (the United Nations) or the Afghan government.” The United Nations typically does not help refugees who stay within the borders of their own country.

Mortenson’s e-mail resonated with Holm, who had been following developments in Barg-e-Matal, he said last week. “I had requested several times to lead a support/assault mission into the district, but there was resistance due to the high threats to our types of helicopters. We never launched and the Taliban took over.”

Holm and Mortenson had connected with the help of Holm’s high school friend Rick Montgomery, founder of Global Roots.

“The Badakhshan Mission,” as it came to be called, included Holm and another U.S. pilot, two of the Afghan pilots they were training and a seven-man support crew. Organizing it required approval from the top brass of the Afghan military and U.S. forces there.

CAI staff ordered and delivered the supplies – 12 tents, bags of flour, sugar, rice and ghee (clarified butter), shovels, saws, picks and axes, hammers and nails, trowels, bags of cement, wheelbarrows, plumb lines, flashlights and batteries – to the NATO air base in Kabul.

Holm then lined up a C-27 transport airplane to carry people and materials from Kabul to an airport closer to Koh-e-Munjon.

In the meantime, another stop had been added to the mission, which called for delivery of two generators and two air compressors to a CAI school in nearby Ishkashim.

The net result was a two-day mission on June 24 and 25 that included the Koh-e-Munjon and Ishkashim stops, a delivery of textbooks to another school on the Tajikistan border and several emergency medical airlifts.

In addition to satisfying Holm’s desire to help the people of Afghanistan, the mission had another benefit, as U.S. military reporter David Quillen noted on a military blog a few days later. It served to show “that the Afghan Air Force, and through it, the Afghan government, has the ability to reach and provide assistance into all regions of Afghanistan.”

Or, as Holm put it, “We want to show it can be done.”

Before leaving Ishkashim, Holm took a few moments to thank everyone involved.

“Thank you for letting me be a part of this. I will always have you in my heart.”

Holm returned home to his two children and wife, Johna, in early July and resumed work at Fairchild.