In this March 2010 interview, MAJ Peter Marks, US Army, Special Forces, discusses his deployment to Afghanistan as a ODA-A commander for 7th Special Forces Group in 2004 and 2005 in support of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). MAJ Marks talks about his missions of foreign internal defense (FID), direct action, building rapport with the locals, Civil Affairs, and governance. He describes the Afghanistan soldiers he was working with and talks about some ethnic issues he dealt with. He discusses some challenges he faced and shares some of their Civil Affairs projects. He shares a specific memory of training the Afghan drivers in night-vision goggles and discusses holding religious Shuras with the local religious leaders. MAJ Marks closes his interview by stating, "From a resource standpoint or an endstate, military endstate or government endstate thing, I think there's been some frustration. I’ll take the liberty here of speaking on behalf of my teammates -- I think there was a little frustration with, 'Where is this thing going or what are we expected to do here, because it just seems like from rotation to rotation we're not really accomplishing a lot.' No, overall, I think people feel it's definately think it's worthwhile. When you go there and serve there, you definately get a sense that it's worthwhile."

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