Audio Interviews and Transcripts

Interview with Lieutenant Colonel Abrahm DiMarco
by Andrew Nelden

Below is the interview Andrew conducted with his professor, Lieutenant Colonel Abrahm DiMarco. Having taught Military Science at Clarkson in the ROTC Army program and been to the Middle East and beyond as an Army Officer, DiMarco had been one of Andrew's role models while he was training to become an Army Officer. You can read a part of the interview below in the transcript typed out by the student or listen to the full interview in the audio player below.


From 51:20 to 58:03

Nelden: You said you didn’t work very much with the Iraqis in Iraq. Did you work more with the Afghanis?

LTC DiMarco: We did. By that time, this was 2008. I was there in Afghanistan, my first time around. We were doing more and more of the COIN type operations. The Afghans had a small Air Force that was forming. We worked with them some. We would transport their President, President Farsi. We would have to work with them on occasion. As they [the Afghans] were forming more and more Army units and police units, they would go out on operations, so we would work with the Afghans in that manner as well. But at this stage we would primarily work with other Americans. So, each of these units would have an American advisor and he would always be there when we were planning something like this. But we started to deal with the Afghans more and more, not nearly as much as ground guys. But more contact at this point than with the Iraqis.

Nelden: Ok. I was also curious, besides the bases you would stay at, was the Russian occupation still kind of there or was it similar to Iraq?

LTC DiMarco: No. I was talking to some guys once. They were up in a remote corner of (Mirorstan – trouble hearing). I think it was a remote providence of Afghanistan. They drove up in a Humvee and they were walking around. Some Afghan, he looked like he was 102 years old with his goats stopped and said that they were the funniest looking Russians that he had ever seen. And then wondered off. So evidently part of the population hadn’t gotten the memo yet that the Russians had left 30 some years ago. So, I think there are portions of the population out there that we were working with that were a part of the Mujahedeen. There were Mujahedeen Commanders that were still alive and active. And were apart of the government and apart of the insurgency even today. So I think that the Russian occupation loomed very large in their psyche in certain people. You would talk to people and they would mention it.

Nelden: Ok. With your interactions with the Afghanis, if you could predict into the future, how will culture play into effective warfare?

LTC DiMarco: I think that… I had one more trip to Afghanistan and I was working at the headquarters and that’s really where I spent most of my time working with Afghans. We were planning missions with the Afghan planners. And this was all in headquarters type stuff. I didn’t go out onto these missions. These were all regional and national type things we were planning. We were at the operational level. We as westerners, and especially as Americans, are very comfortable with staff coming up with ideas and generating options, doing the research, and understanding things and then presenting that to the boss [Commander]. Saying “This is what we have learned, sir and this is what we think we oughta do about it.” And then having the commander look at the three options, Course of Action 1,2,3, and he says I like 2 and you take that and execute it. The Afghans, that’s just not how they were taught. They were taught on a Soviet model and they were expecting their Commander to come and tell them the answer and they would type up the paperwork and then make that happen. They were not comfortable going to their Commander and telling him things. The expected it to work the other way around. So we were always constantly pushing, trying to get this information, and trying to present all of these different options and they didn’t see the value in it. They were content that someone was going to give us [LTC DiMarco and his team] that answer. The Commander was the Commander because he knew everything and that we he decided he would tell us. It was very different than the way we operate. Just the general idea of what a government does. What is the government’s job? What’s the government responsible for? Very different. We are very comfortable with a strong, central government. Afghanistan has never had that. This was the exact opposite of Iraq. Iraq had a dictatorship for 30 years. That’s all they ever knew. They were very comfortable with the idea of a strong central government and getting the orders from Baghdad. “We aren’t going to do anything until Baghdad tells us to do it.” Afghanistan was the opposite. They would get something from Kabul and they didn’t care what Kabul says. They can’t tell us what to do.