ASIA-PACIFIC 
It is as if Afghanistan had come to the US state of Indiana. In the grounds of a former hospital for the mentally and the physically ill on the edge of the prairie, sandbags are piled high, soldiers stand guard and a dishevelled translator helps along a conversation between tribal leaders and US officials.
The dilapidated buildings have become a training centre run by the US military, which last week was used to simulate a nuclear attack on Indianapolis. But this week’s activity is much more central to US president Barack Obama’s concerns – preparing civilians for their imminent deployment to Afghanistan.
To facilitate that, expatriate Afghans have been brought to Camp Atterbury-Muscatatuck in Indiana – among them a former police chief, a former diplomat and a group of people found via an Afghan restaurant in Virginia.
Together, they play out roles with the US diplomats and bureaucrats, resisting plans to build a dam on tribal land, letting slide clues that medical aid is being corruptly siphoned off and demanding help the officials are often unable to give.
Cups of tea, traditional dress and portraits of Afghan president Hamid Karzai all help create the atmosphere – as do the US troops standing outside the meeting centres, who also set fake roadside mines and help to stage simulated mortar attacks against the delegation.
The five-day exercise, intended to reduce misunderstandings between the military and civilian, and the even more formidable culture gap between US officials and Afghans, is a result of a central part of Mr Obama’s strategy – a “civilian surge” to help the country address its political and economic woes.
The US president is not just considering how many more troops to send to Afghanistan; he is also ramping up non-military officials dispatched to the country – from just 320 in January to a planned total of 974 by year-end.
The people involved come from all parts of the US administration – not just the state department, but from USAID, the aid agency, the agriculture department, the Treasury and the Department of the Interior.
The total is set to rise. The US embassy in Kabul has already asked for a further 300. And any decision to expand US military presence in the country – an obvious focus is Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second city – would also lead to more civilians.
The drive is part of Mr Obama’s effort to move beyond former president George W. Bush’s approach towards Afghanistan – but it comes with risks.
“It is essential to assimilate a political dimension into the strategy,” says Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former US national security adviser. “We have to have a more effective civilian presence; but it’s another question whether we can protect them all and what will happen if they are overexposed.”
The 36 officials training at Camp Atterbury often have very personal reasons for their decision. One woman who has never travelled farther than Canada says her background at the agriculture department can help stop children dying of malnutrition.
Arnoux Abraham, a former marine who now works with the US Agency for International Development, says it is important to take on extremism in the country where the September 11 2001 attacks were planned. “You need people-to-people diplomacy, not people-to-gun diplomacy,” he adds.
Jack Lew, the deputy secretary of state overseeing the programme, talks of helping Afghanistan to improve services by placing each US official amid 10 or so Afghan equivalents to provide a “multiplier effect.”
But much broader problems remain. Civilian-military co-operation in Afghanistan has been complicated by the differing stances of Stanley McChrystal, the top US commander, and Karl Eikenberry, the US ambassador, on whether to send more troops. The US has made little progress towards its political goals of cracking down on corruption in the country and putting a partial amnesty for Taliban insurgents into place. And the US diplomats arrive in Afghanistan as commitment from elsewhere has begun to flag. Following a mortar attack on a UN guest house last month, some 600 personnel have been relocated.
