Nearly 15 months later, Cole has returned to his native Pensacola with this observation: The people of Afghanistan are no different than Americans, he said.
"They're just like me and you, with goals, aspirations and dreams," Cole said. Last week, he resumed his duties as economic development coordinator for the City of Pensacola.
A captain in the Army Reserve, Cole's most recent deployment took him to the Afghan capital of Kabul, where he served with Florida's 1,300-member 53rd Infantry Brigade from Pinellas Park. The brigade is part of the overall 17,900 U.S. troops involved in Operation Enduring Freedom in the southwestern Asian nation.
Cole did not engage in combat in Afghanistan. Instead, he worked with the Kabul government out of a building at Camp Phoenix, a U.S. military base on the outskirts of the city. He and a financial team worked to upgrade Afghanistan's budget and payroll systems -- two critical areas to a nation that hasn't had a functioning elected government for decades.
For much of the 1990s, some 23 million Afghans lived under the harsh rule of the Taliban. The Taliban later was overthrown by a U.S.-led military operation for harboring terrorists accused of masterminding the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. A new democratic government has since been elected.
"When we first arrived, money for the Afghan military and other government personnel was disbursed in cash only in Kabul," Cole said. "But we were able to later develop an enterprise database that allowed for such disbursement to be done in the regional provinces."
Cole also interacted with government officials and ordinary Afghans, whom he said were appreciative that their lives are better than they were under the Taliban regime.
Just before he left Afghanistan in July, Cole said he noticed a number of U.S.-based companies moving into Afghanistan. Among them are DHL Worldwide Express and financial services firm ING.
"One of the biggest things that I learned is that we're very privileged to live in the United States, where our government is diligent," Cole said.
"We have a system of checks and balances, which is not the case in Afghanistan," said Cole, a graduate of Pine Forest High School in 1991 and West Point Military Academy in New York in 1995.
The Afghan deployment was his second tour of duty. His previous five-year active-duty service, which ended in 2000, took him to Camp Hovey in South Korea and then Fort Sill in Oklahoma. The following year, he earned a master's degree in economics from the University of Oklahoma in Norman, and soon after joined Gulf South, a Houston-based natural gas pipeline company.
A second tour of duty was on tap for Cole in 2005 when he was called up to serve in Afghanistan. That was barely 15 months after he got married.
"When Kyler was called up, my first reaction was, 'I just can't believe this is happening,' " Shannon Cole said. "But now that he's back home, it's more of a sense of relief and happiness."
Ed Spears, Pensacola's Neighborhood Economic Development administrator, said Cole's return will aid the city's effort in developing a commerce park. The city has started to acquire land adjacent to Pensacola Regional Airport for the park, which has been a part of the airport's master plan since 2000.
This is cache, read story here
