KAPISA, Afghanistan — Winter keeps Kapisa from planting crops, but the Afghan National Army’s Recruiting Command makes this eastern province fruitful in other ways. The command gained 113 recruits for the Afghan National Army and three for the National Police from Kapisa just last month.

The ANARC kept this momentum by conducting a recruiting leadership conference here Feb.16. More than 200 local elders and mullahs from all six of Kapisa’s districts came to the conference to hear their governor and senators endorse the Afghan National Security Forces. The elders were asked to do the same.

Army Maj. Bryant Schumacher, team chief for Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan’s Recruiting Assistance Team, also spoke at the conference. Schumacher also mentors the ANARC commander, Lt. Gen Azziz Rahman.  Although his team advises the ANA on recruiting, conferences like this are an Afghan initiative.

 “We don’t get ourselves involved in the leadership conference,” Schumacher said. “It’s an Afghan event.”

In a display of successful recruiting in Kapisa, 14 new soldiers and policemen from the province were introduced during a speech. They stood in a single rank at the back of Kapisa’s Culture and Youth Department center, and each introduced himself.

“The reason that the ANA and ANP have grown is because of young men like these,” remarked Schumacher.

Col. Ghulam Faroq is an ANA recruiter who credits the local mullahs and elders for the recent increase in recruits. He believes that relating to local leaders in Kapisa is vital to recruiting because they influence local men to join the ANSF more than the media does. In fact, the leaders not only help to enlist them, they also help keep them in.

Faroq likes to have tea with the local leaders weekly and wants to have events like the leadership conference more frequently. However, with 34 provinces in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Rahman can only join them once a year. The goal for the ANA is to go from its current manning of 49,000 to reach an end-strength of 80,000 soldiers by December, 2008.