News from Our Military Chaplains
A Report from Chaplain Alfred Pena:
CARAT 2007 COMRELS (Community Relations Projects)
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October 13 2007
We have just returned from CARAT 2007 SE Asia at sea deployment. CARAT (Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training) is an annual series of bilateral maritime exercises between the United States and five Southeast Asian nations including Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, and the Philippines. The exercises began in May of 2007.
The purpose of CARAT exercises is to enhance learning, trust, and cooperation potential between our nations in the fight against international terrorism, piracy, human trafficking and illegal smuggling. The exercises also provide a great opportunity to encourage the fostering of mutual goodwill, good relations, and cooperation between military forces and the local civilian populations through COMRELS (Community Relations Projects) in those nations. COMRELS provide a less formal and more relaxed atmosphere, as compared with other military settings, for positive cultural and personal exchanges that are long remembered and appreciated.
In the Philippines, we were able to execute successful COMRELS at elementary schools and orphanages in spite of a significant terrorist threat in some areas. We were all under heavy protection by US Marines and the Philippine military. We delivered greatly needed dried food items, medical/personal care supplies, schoolbooks, and sports equipment. Most importantly, we were able to help the people residing in some areas to send a clear message to terrorists groups in those regions that more people are coming together to counter their activities, that we don’t want them in our countries, that they are in the minority and losing their strongholds, and that we are all getting much better at halting their violent and extremist agendas.
In Thailand and Malaysia we visited elementary schools and brought greatly needed dried food items, medical/personal care supplies, schoolbooks, and sports equipment. The children in these areas loved the attention from the COMREL volunteers who also had the opportunity to act like children themselves. The COMREL volunteers also loved their time with the children who were simply unconcerned about any language, cultural, or religious barriers that existed. Here the accomplishments of our COMREL volunteers were an example that such barriers need not matter in the end for good relations and mutual cooperation in order to accomplish our shared national/community interests; to acquire our basic life’s necessities and the security to do so. In addition, although our various religious faiths may be quite diverse, we all can actually coexist in peace in the same location in appreciation and respect of each other as people; all with the same basic needs/interests for our families and ourselves.
In Brunei and Singapore we visited facilities that house children and adults with special needs. Such COMRELS make us all aware of another dimension of civilian society that in large part gets ignored in all nations- those who are physically, mentally, and socially challenged and tend to live outside the margins of regular society. The accomplishment here was bringing more public attention to such needs along with the benefit of mutual interaction between people with special needs, military personnel, and their national/community media and government organizations.
While in Singapore we also executed a beach and waterways clean up. The accomplishment here was bringing more needed public attention and international cooperation to the care of our environment. Even if we do manage to eliminate whatever terrorist threats are out there, we all still need an ecologically stable environment in order to accomplish acquiring our shared basic needs/interests for our families and ourselves.
Most importantly, we have all come to realize that the benefits of all our COMRELS (21 in total) not only reach far into necessary professional exchanges/cooperation that foster enhanced land and maritime security against terrorism, piracy, human trafficking, and illegal smuggling affecting all CARAT nations.
In the end, the civilians benefit the most. CARAT COMRELS are another means by which they can be assured the ability to go about their daily lives- earning a living, providing for their families, maintaining and advancing their infrastructure, and enjoying their leisure time- with more certainty of security from those who wish to bring them or a better way of life into harm’s way.
Although small, we all have come away from CARAT 2007 with the feeling that we have made a positive difference in the lives of over 10,000 children and adults overseas; and such a difference will continue to win the hearts and minds of the residents in these areas in order to help open more doors for good international relations and security in years to come.
LT. Alfred V Pena,
U.S. Navy Chaplain (PCUSA),
Destroyer Squadron-1