Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Eschimesi a Baghdad e a Kabul!

http://www.adn.com/front/story/7588807p-7499989c.html
* BUSH: Men in the units will miss critical hunting seasons
  for tours in Iraq, Afghanistan.
It's been said that when you call out the Guard you call
out America, but not in 60 years has a war call-up reached
as far as Bush Alaska.
This summer, dozens of members of the Alaska Army National
Guard from villages so remote that even some Alaskans haven't
heard of them -- Kwigillingok, Kongiganak, Manokotak --
are scheduled to leave their homes and families for yearlong
tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The soldiers follow about 300 other Army Guard members who
have shipped out over the last year for duty in the Middle East.
The string of wartime call-ups are the first for the Guard
since World War II, and the one this summer will be the largest
in its history, with an estimated 670 people statewide.
Where the previous call-ups have largely centered on Alaska's
cities and road-system towns, this one will draw heavily on
Western and Northwestern Alaska, a region of Native traditions
and sometimes harsh subsistence living where communities aren't
used to losing their men for months at a time, let alone to a
war zone overseas.
In Kongiganak, a Yup'ik village of 350 people about 98 snowmachine miles
outside Bethel, Guard families are already trying to prepare for
the reality. "We had a big village meeting," said longtime resident
Eric Phillip. "Six boys are going out from this small village."
Phillip, who has a wife and two sons under the age of 6,
is among those leaving for the war. He said he asked the
village to help provide meat and fish for his family while
he's gone, since he'll miss several important hunting seasons.
"That's how we live. Whenever I catch walrus or seal I cut it up
and serve it to the village," he said. "So hopefully that will happen."
Phillip said his bigger concern is who will help his wife
when household problems arise. Karen Phillip said she's
worried about that, too. What will people think if a male
friend is repeatedly coming by the house to help out?
What will the man being called on think?
Even in the country's most remote corners, good intentions can be
misconstrued.
"It's hard to reach out and ask for help in Western culture and
I think it might even be more difficult in a small community,"
Karen Phillip said. "It's hard for people to know what to do,
how to help, and I think it's hard for people to ask for help.
"If I'm staying at this house at one end of the village and
I get snowed in, what man will come and help me break trail?
What man will come and help shovel me out? ... Those relationships
really need to be established while the soldier is here in the village."
Karen Phillip said Guard officials have encouraged families to
"create our own networks" of support in the villages. She said
she was initially offended by how simple they made that sound,
but has since come to appreciate that the Guard is at least trying
to reach out to families. It hasn't always been that way with
the military, she said.
"So now there's an 800 number I can call to help solve my problems,"
Phillip said with a sigh.
"She doesn't want me to go at all," said her husband.
"She might move to Bethel (while I'm away)."
Guard officials are still firming up their final roster for
the deployment, so a list of all the villages affected is not
yet available. But two of the companies activated -- about
120 people each -- are based in Bethel and Nome and have many
village members, said Guard spokesman Maj. Mike Haller.
The other companies are based in Juneau and Anchorage, he said.
It's been six decades since any of the units were called up for
even an out-of-state assignment, let alone battle in a foreign
country, according to the Guard.
"The gravity of this call-up is significant," Haller said.
"It's huge. ... It's important for community members and
community leaders to step up and support their Guard members
and their families."
About 600 of the soldiers will be going to Iraq and the other
70 to Afghanistan. The troops are slated to start shipping out
in July for three months of full-time training at Camp Shelby,
Miss., and then head to the Middle East for a year, Haller said.
The activated soldiers have all been notified, according to the Guard.
Larry Arnariak, a 20-year-old from the Bristol Bay village of
Togiak, said he learned the news at a training session in
February. Arnariak said he just joined the Guard last year
after being inspired by the drills he saw at the local armory
as a kid.
Arnariak said he's still working through how he feels about
going to the Middle East. "I wanted to go over there for a
while, but I kind of changed my mind," he said. "I have a
girlfriend right now."
Arnariak said he had a hard time with the heat at basic training
in Georgia and expects the situation to be even worse overseas.
Togiak frequently sees temperatures drop below minus 20 in the
winter, Arnariak said, and 70 is considered a heat wave in the summer.
"That was only the first time out of Alaska was to basic training,"
he said. "That place was too hot."
Eric Phillip said he joined the Guard in 1985 for the adventure
and extra income and because there weren't a lot of other choices
in his village. The chance to shoot a machine gun was also a draw,
he admitted.
"I was going to quit the Army when my 20 years was up,
but we were being called, so that 20 years is going to be
a little over 20 years," he said when reached at his home
Thursday in Kongiganak, where a baby cried in the background
and his wife was home on a lunch break from her job as a teacher.
Despite his concerns about leaving his family, Phillip said he
fully intends to honor his commitment to the Guard. "I signed
my contract and if they call me I'll go," he said.
Haller said that while the roster is still being finalized,
all the soldiers who have been notified can probably count on going.
Guard Sgt. Eva Wassillie of Togiak expected to be called up --
she got a letter saying that was a possibility -- and had a
tearful time talking it over with her 9-year-old daughter.
The girl had a hard time just being separated from her mother
for the two weeks of annual Guard training.
Wassillie said she thought of her older son after that notice came,
about how worried she was when he was in Iraq on his first and second
tours with the active-duty Army. He made it home safe both times,
she said, but the war changed him. The quietness of the village rang
in his ears when he came home to visit, she said.
"When he got back it looked like he was really alert on everything,"
she said. "I asked one time if he had that post syndrome thing and
he said he didn't have it."
Overall her son is doing well and she's proud of him, she said,
but she still worries. The war is a hard subject to broach,
she said: "We don't ask questions. We don't talk about it."
Wassillie said that when someone from Guard headquarters
called to inform her that she wasn't going to Iraq --
that "the females aren't going, only the guys are" --
she raced to tell her husband and daughter the good news.
"I lucked out," she said from her home Thursday.

Guard
"Alaskans" e "eschimesi" sono la stessa cosa per il Prode Namib :)
-Stefano