Military Experiences Return Benefits to War Areas
Four stories (published in The New York Times on May 30, 2022) illustrate how American military personnel, serving in overseas combat operations, looked across the war-ravaged, foreign cities, hamlets and countryside, envisioning possibilities to help others while later earning a living as a civilian.
GREEN BERET DISCOVERS TEA IS NOT JUST FOR LADIES WEARING BIG HATS
As a child growing up, Brandon Friedman once tasted tea and thought it was “the grossest thing ever, (likely appealing only to) British ladies with big hats!”
Fast forward to sipping tea as an adult in the US Army, with friendly Kurdish (Iraqi religious sect) troops who were wearing AK-47 bandoleers. He found that tea drinking in Iraq represented “stopping and slowing down, a way to remove yourself from everyday life.”
Later, back home in the States, BF found himself rummaging through halal (Muslim) grocery stories, looking for brown bags of loose tea. Meanwhile, his life moved on, with marriage, graduate school, a child, a job in politics. “I left the war and left the tea in the past.” Or, so he thought at the time.
In 2016, BF began to research the origins of the tea he had enjoyed. He soon began exploring how he might import tea from conflict zones. He began his tea education in earnest, as he learned about the aroma and mouth feel of each type.
Working with a nonprofit and seeking money on ‘Kickstarter’, BF and an Army buddy, also a former Green Beret, began the business in 2017 in a 250 square-foot office space in the back of a small building, importing tea from Nepal, Colombia, Vietnam, and other countries whose teas can be hard to find in American stores. They now have a 2,000 square-foot facility with a storefront and ship 45 teas from nine countries.
Like most businesses, there have been challenges. In Vietnam, the 300- and 400-year-old wild tea trees that grow in the mountains and forests are difficult to manage. Some suppliers are much more casual about timelines. The biggest issues arise when post-conflict nations like Myanmar and Ethiopia “turn back into current-conflict countries.” Then, of course, came the supply-chain problems brought on by the covid pandemic.
Selling tea has become an extension of his military mission, said BF. “I remain convinced that the way out of conflict is through people talking to each other, and commerce. We call this peace through trade.”
PILOT INJURED BY BURN PIT FUMES CREATES ECO-FRIENDLY BUSINESS
As he whizzed along, piloting a Black Hawk helicopter during his deployments in Iraq, Chris Videau could not help noticing all the piles of burning trash everywhere, creating an inescapable, black haze of pollution which darked the skies. The stench of burning plastic, ignited by jet fuel, hung below. These were the now infamous ‘burn pits’ which the US military has slowly acknowledged as the cause of many serious lung illnesses and cancers, some fatal.
CV thought he had left the military and the burning waste behind but apparently the chemical-filled smoke had damaged his lungs, first revealed during his morning runs at home, several years later, as a civilian. A doctor who examined his X-rays told him that his lungs were “like a 70-year-old” even though he was still in his early 30s.
So, CV started thinking about plastic and soon he and his wife began to remove it from their home, as much as possible. “That changed my outlook on life.”
Since CV’s family could not totally avoid plastic, especially in laundry detergent tubs, he began researching whether laundry sheets could replace standard soap. CV and a business partner eventually started their business after negotiating with a company that held a patent for such sheets, quickly selling 25,000 boxes of soap sheets.
After its first year of production, ‘Sheets Laundry Club’ has sold products earning over $9 million in total sales, which translates to 615,000 plastic containers not being sold.
“The intent wasn’t to create awareness for burn pits,” he said. “It was to create a sustainable business for my family. We believe if we do the right thing, the money will come.” CV’s journey has come full circle, as he now makes a point to donate his products to troops overseas. “I’ve been over there. I know what it’s like to not get things in the mail.”
THREE ARMY VETERANS, INCLUDING TWO FEMALES, START A FARM TO TABLE BUSINESS
Emily Miller was first deployed with the Army in Afghanistan over a decade ago, on a team tasked with engaging non-combat involved women and children to assure them that America was not their enemy. However, she ended her two deployments “pretty disillusioned with the war effort and how we weren’t making (a positive) difference.” She believed that business could be a more effective force for good.
So, while attending Harvard Business School, she discussed her concerns and hopes with a school classmate, Kim Jung and with Keith Alaniz, an Army veteran who had also served in Afghanistan, who had met an Afghan farmer eager to tap into the US marketplace to sell saffron (a spice).
The three friends started forming a saffron business plan together, wondering if they could connect Afghan farmers with restaurants in the US. Perhaps starting such a business could also improve economic conditions in rural Afghanistan. They traveled to Afghanistan in 2014 to meet with farmers, which sealed their plan to create a business: ‘Rumi Spice’ which later added a civilian, Carol Wang, who spoke the local language, Dari.
The business has since trained nearly 4,000 local women to work in its processing and fulfillment centers, some of them receiving a salary for their labor for the first time in their lives. The team was careful to not publicly align themselves with either the Americans or the Afghan government, which they personally and confidentially backed. This proved to be a wise move since Afghani politics are so unstable.
ARMY RANGERS CREATE AND EXPAND INTEREST IN ‘FLIP-FLOPS’ TO CREATE BUSINESS IN U.S. AND AID OVERSEAS
Matthew Griffin was a fourth generation, combat veteran and West Point graduate who “grew up (watching) Rambo and thought the best way to serve my country was to be an Army Ranger.”
After retiring from military service, MG was employed as a civilian contractor, returning to Afghanistan to help set up medical clinics. One day, he visited a combat boot factory in Kabul, where he was impressed to see workers making a boot that emulated a flip-flop sandal. He recalled that many (friendly) Afghan fighters, used to unlaced shoes, were losing thousands of man-hours a day, struggling with extensive laces on the combat boots supplied by the American military.
The Afghan factory owner had invented military sandals which “adhered to their cultural norms.” When the owner said he had no plans for the factory after the war, MG decided to turn the factory into an on-going business, benefitting the country where he had once fought. MG called another Ranger buddy, Donald Lee and the two pondered how to get Afghan footwear into the American marketplace. Their first manufacturing efforts in Afghanistan were unsuccessful, so they shifted production to Colombia (South America), benefiting from bilateral trade agreements with the U.S. and began selling ‘Combat Flip Flops’ on-line in 2013. Their first customers were 80% military and military families.
Their customer base grew and diversified as they added scarves, bags and jewelry made in Afghanistan, Laos, and the U.S. After the Taliban regained control over Afghanistan, Combat Flip Flops transformed its Afghan textile factory to make blankets and cold weather clothing for displaced Afghans suffering through a brutal winter. Some proceeds from sales have gone toward funding girls’ education in Afghanistan, land mine removal in Laos and services for disabled veterans in Washington State. “It’s been a pretty wild ride,” MG said.
