Mock Afghan City Helps Train Civilians

For more than 1,000 U.S. civilians being sent to Afghanistan to aid the nation's political and economic recovery, training starts in a small Indiana city where the Army and National Guard have built a mock Afghan city complex.

1 minute read

December 22, 2009, 6:00 AM PST

By Nate Berg


"The Army and the Indiana National Guard have turned the windswept complex, known as Muscatatuck, into a simulacrum of a war-torn Afghan city, with a courthouse, a jail and a graffiti-smeared marketplace. While the table-flat farmland around here hardly evokes the Hindu Kush, this is where the government trains Americans who are part of the most ambitious civilian campaign the United States has mounted in a foreign country in generations - a "civilian surge" intended to improve the lives of Afghans."

Civilians go through a week-long course at the facility, training in Afghan customs and acting out situational encounters with locals.

Sunday, December 20, 2009 in The New York Times

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