NARRATOR: In Afghanistan, the proliferation of weapons has had a profound impact on the daily lives of people like Shahida Hussein. Here in Kandahar, she tries to maintain family life in a weak state dominated by warlords while a U.S.-led coalition battles the Taliban insurgency.

SHAHIDA HUSSEIN: There are stockpiles of weapons. And people are bringing them as we speak. Where do so many weapons come from that you can have 80 men around you as guards? Where did all these weapons come from? Where are they getting all these weapons?

NARRATOR: This atmosphere of potential violence means that even a women’s rights activist like Hussein can find she misses the relative security that prevailed under the Taliban’s repressive regime of the late 1990s.

SHAHIDA HUSSEIN: During the Taliban era, women went out wearing burqas. They traded, made purchases, went from one house to another, went on picnics to Dala, Arghandab, went wherever, with their husbands, their brothers, their fathers. However, in these conditions since the Americans came to Afghanistan, now in Kandahar, we can’t go on picnics, we can’t go to the market, we can’t eat at restaurants, you see?

SHAHIDA HUSSEIN: Will there be a suicide attack? Will American tanks or NATO forces pass by and open fire on people? You see? It’s a place of great fear.

NARRATOR: For non-combatant, civilian populations today, “national security” is less important than a more people-centered view of stability, which some are now calling “human security.”

MARY KALDOR: Human security's really an alternative to national security. It's about protecting the security of the individual and the communities in which they live, rather than the security of states and borders.

MARY KALDOR: So the way in which you deal with these kinds of conflicts is extremely different. You have to do it through dampening down the violence. You have to do it through protecting ordinary people. You have to do it through trying to develop a rule of law and a legitimate political authority.

MARY KALDOR: It's particularly important that nowadays, the source of war is not enemy states. It's not actually Russia and China and Iran and North Korea. The source of war is actually weak states. It's Bosnia. It's Afghanistan. And they're also the source of terrorism. And the way you deal with those wars is not through defeating them. In fact, if you use military force, you further weaken those states. That's what happened when we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. CONDOLEEZZA RICE: We learned a pretty hard lesson in these latest wars – whether it’s in Afghanistan or in Iraq for that matter – which is that when the population doesn’t feel secure, it’s very hard to win their hearts and minds. And when you aren’t winning their hearts and minds, they’re not going to make choices in favor of your forces, they are going to hedge their bets and perhaps help the terrorists. And so, making the population secure turns out to be very, very important to making the state secure.

NARRATOR: The U.S. Military in Afghanistan realized it had made a crucial mistake – it was failing to connect with half the country’s population.

SERGEANT ABBY BLAISDELL SOT: Ask her how she is?

NARRATOR: Rural Afghan women, though rarely seen by outsiders, hold the key to understanding life in the villages. By not fully engaging them, the military was missing out on a vital source of information – and an opportunity to win hearts and minds.

SERGEANT ABBY BLAISDELL: Alright, let’s go girls.

NARRATOR: Army Sergeant First Class Abby Blaisdell leads a Female Engagement Team, or ‘FET’ – one of about 75 such teams now operating in provinces throughout the country.

SERGEANT ABBY BLAISDELL: We’re maybe going to get the word to go up and do some talking with some women or children. I’m going to see what kind of issues they may have in this area, whether it’s health care or if they need school for their children.

SERGEANT ABBY BLAISDELL: We just wanted to make sure you saw that we brought the doctor back to help the women.

NARRATOR: In tribal Pashtun areas, women are often forbidden from interacting with men unless bonded by marriage or blood. The all-female units give the military new access to a world that was formerly out of reach.

SERGEANT ABBY BLAISDELL: Actually, we’re very well received out here right now as western women because we don’t fall under the Muslim rules. And we’re not as imposing as the male soldiers…

SERGEANT ABBY BLAISDELL: We’re going to go right in here. Just have one guy stand here for security Sir, and we’ll be good inside.

SERGEANT ABBY BLAISDELL: Basically it’s our goal to go out and engage the women within the population of Afghanistan and try to find out what their needs are and how we can assist them to improve their quality of life.

FET MEMBER: Are they healthy?

SERGEANT ABBY BLAISDELL: A year and a half old. You got anything for something like this?

NARRATOR: Sergeant Blaisdell, her medic and her translator check in with the village elder before moving on.

SERGEANT ABBY BLAISDELL: Ask her if the women that we visited with yesterday, that our doctor treated, if they are satisfied with the treatment they received.

NATS of talking in native language: All of the women are very happy with it. Only the people who didn’t receive it were unhappy.

SERGEANT ABBY BLAISDELL SOT: It’s very important that we all work together, especially as women, because we have a lot of good ideas and sometimes the men don’t know to listen to our ideas. But if we all work together we can probably bring some resolution much more quickly.

CYNTHIA ENLOE: When you start thinking about women and war, you really change your idea about what security is. Security becomes, is there water out of the tap? Or is the well polluted? We begin thinking about electricity and what happens to women's security when electricity fails? How do they make a living in the middle of war? Makes you think about really a more realistic notion of security.

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