Military

Afghan Delegation Visits Camp Pendleton

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published December 2, 2011 at 1:03 PM PST

This story was published more than 13 years ago.

American withdrawal from Afghanistan is imminent, so Marines have a limited time to hand over security operations to their Afghan counterparts.

Five Afghan army commanders and police chiefs visited Southern California to see the American way of doing things first hand.

First Lieutenant Rebecca Burgess of the First Marine Expeditionary Force, said the training on base for lower ranking non-commissioned officers shows leadership doesn’t stop at the top.

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“That was the kind of emphasis we wanted to leave with the Afghans, that it’s not just the officers running the show,” Burgess said. "Without our NCOs we wouldn’t run smoothly, so we need to teach leadership at the very basic level.“

The Afghans also spent time at a public school on base; less than 30 percent of Afghanistan's population can read and write.

Burgess said the idea was to show the Afghans how, despite of the drastic budget cuts to California schools, Americans value education.

“It shows them that every country has its own problems,” Burgess said, “and every country is dealing with its own budget deficit. So, despite all of that, we still have education for our children. That is what we are trying to show them: that educated children are the future.”

Burgess said the delegation also went to Los Angeles to speak with inner city law enforcement and visited a Joint Operation Center in San Diego to discuss border security with the Border Patrol.

Military

Alison St John

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.