From November 2003 through July 2005, Major John James served in the 96th Civil Affairs Battalion, and during this time he deployed as part of F Company to the Horn of Africa, specifically Ethiopia. According to James, the Joint Special Operations Task Force and the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa "were at constant odds with each other" and their unwillingness to talk to each other negatively affected the overall mission. What's more, he said, the US Embassy "rarely talked to the host nation government" and often tried to take the country in a direction other than what the Ethiopians wanted. James also discusses problems with quality control on infrastructure improvement contracts, and tells about one project in particular involving the installation of flush latrines that, as he put it, "equates to building a monument to stupidity, painting an American flag on the side of it and giving it to the Africans." In charge of one detachment made up of two four-man teams for the entire country of Ethiopia, James' detachment was tasked with helping provide support, stability and legitimacy to the host nation government but says they had far too few personnel and support mechanisms to make much of a lasting difference. He talks about them sipping from the "firehose of knowledge" during predeployment training, the CJTF not being interested in hearing any on-the-ground feedback from his teams, and shares his frustrations with having to "beg, borrow and steal for the primary tools necessary to accomplish our mission," especially interpreters. In addition, James discusses how by paying Ethiopian laborers too much money they risked throwing the local economy off balance; he names dealing with his own chain of command as the biggest challenge he faced in theater; he says that a main regret of his is that he didn't "crush" some of his NCOs; and he also expresses his belief that we often confuse what are political objectives with what are really military objectives. In closing, James shares a story that could well serve as a cautionary tale to future deployed civil affairs detachment members, in which he recounts a time in Djibouti when he was forced to venture into a very seedy and dangerous-looking urban area and deal with some very ominous-looking characters to exchange US dollars for Ethiopian burr, a scene James likens to downtown Mogadishu and the filming of the movie Black Hawk Down.

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