Nevada Guard personnel return from Afghanistan deployment

While President Barack Obama prepared to address the nation on withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan, the first airmen in the latest wave of Nevada National Guard personnel returned Wednesday from a yearlong deployment in Afghanistan.

Eight Nevada Guard airmen from a 60-member agribusiness development team arrived at Reno-Tahoe International Airport to reunite with their families and friends.

Among them was Air National Guard Staff Sgt. Eric Ritter.

He said help from the United States with developing farming expertise that had been lost after three decades of conflict involving the Taliban was widely accepted in communities that he visited. The team worked in three central provinces in Afghanistan.

"Once you get some marketing success, the more stable it is. There are fewer desperate people," Ritter, 38, said by cellphone after his flight landed at the Reno airport.

"And fewer desperate people will, in turn, keep people from turning to an insurgency as a way of getting money."

As for how much longer there needs to be a substantial presence of U.S. troops in the International Security Assistance Force to keep stability in Afghanistan, Ritter said he could only speculate.

"Ultimately, no matter what, it’s going to be up to the Afghan people," he said. "As long as they’re letting the Taliban run the show in places, there’s going to be a need to keep a presence there."

The team worked with thousands of Afghans and completed more than 100 projects to improve the country’s agriculture production in the coming years.

The rest of the airmen and Nevada Army National Guard soldiers are expected to return in the next several days to Southern Nevada and Northern Nevada.

The team was among hundreds of Nevada National Guard soldiers, active-duty airmen from Nellis Air Force Base and Marine Forces reservists from Nevada deployed for Operation Enduring Freedom in and around Afghanistan.

Their arrival comes on the heels of some 50 Army Reserve soldiers from the Las Vegas-based 650th Regional Support Group who held a homecoming last week after a yearlong deployment that sent them to locations in Afghanistan to train national army soldiers and police.

The single largest contingent of Nevadans currently deployed in Afghanistan is 400 Army National Guard soldiers assigned to Nevada’s 422nd Expeditionary Signal Battalion.

The battalion left in January as the second-largest Army National Guard deployment in the state’s history, behind 700 soldiers from 1st Squadron, 221st Cavalry, which returned last year from Afghanistan after a year in combat in remote areas of the country.

Airmen from Nellis Air Force Base and Creech Air Force Base continue to have a presence in the region with a range of military occupations from fighter pilots and ground crews to medical and support personnel, combat search and rescue teams and remotely piloted aircraft teams.

"On any given day, we have anywhere between 800 to 1,000 deployed overseas at all locations. A large percentage of those are supporting operations in and around Afghanistan," Nellis spokesman Chuck Ramey said.

In addition to the hundreds of Nevadan citizen-soldiers and Nellis airmen, an unknown number of soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen from Nevada are deployed with active-duty units outside the state.

There have been 74 U.S. military personnel with ties to Nevada who have died in the nation’s wars overseas since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Of those, about one-third, 23, lost their lives in Afghanistan.

In all, as of Tuesday, the nation has lost at least 1,522 military personnel in Afghanistan.

Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308.