Winning Hearts and Minds in War-torn Communities

How a former Marine's West-African journey shaped the way he effects positive change

by Nicolette Good, Associate Editor


There was no chow hall. Internet was not easily accessible on this mission supporting the United Nations. For Carlo Niño, a U.S. Marine at the time, this was a hazardous and unusual deployment in Liberia outside the comforts of a military base.

"We cobbled together a generator. I used a water filter to drink from a trashcan that we filled up daily from a local creek. It was sweltering hot at night, and in the distance you could hear the drums of people praying—a sort of mixture of Christianity and local tribal beliefs, something of a cousin to Santeria."

It was in 2005, there in West Africa, that Niño's beliefs about our nation's foreign policy—and what it means to serve—forever changed.

A few years before working in Liberia, Niño (B.A. '96, M.A. '02) was serving in Afghanistan while simultaneously completing a master's in International Relations via correspondence, thanks to the support of Political Science Professor Larry Hufford, Ph.D. As Hufford told the Gold & Blue in 2002, "Any student that determined and disciplined (to finish his degree), I'm going to go out of my way and help."

It was just after the September 11 attacks, and Niño's experience in the Afghan desert left him with a lot of questions about war and his role in it. "I was very patriotic from one point of view, but only as an extension of imposing U.S. foreign policy," he recalls.

Niño left the Middle East and graduated in 2002, then studied at the Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey, Calif., before being sent to the Pentagon to analyze the Marine Corps budget. "I wasn't completely happy sitting behind a desk at the Pentagon while my brothers and sisters were fighting in Iraq."

Confident he would get to return to the "tip of the spear" where he felt he was most needed, Niño volunteered whenever a mission came up. But when he was sent to Liberia to work with the United Nations (UN) as an observer in a noncombat environment, he was forced to re-evaluate his idea of effecting positive change.

Lightning in a bottle

Niño was admittedly impatient with the UN, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and other volunteer expatriates before his West African journey.

"When you come from a community of warfighters like the Marines, you have a very bold and stark approach to problem solving," says the San Antonio native who now calls California home.

Without a weapon slung across his back and the power that had once given him, Niño had to learn how to employ new and different skills in order to be effective in Liberia—an area that had been traumatized by physical violence, frequently by people in uniform.

This education was not an easy one for Niño.

"Knowing how to keep my mouth shut and ears open has never been a key asset of mine, but I learned that you can discover a lot about people who are trying to accomplish the same things if you see the tools they work with, especially those that accomplish the winning of hearts and minds without coercion."

From building consensus among disparate groups to including disenfranchised people in projects and discussions, Niño observed expats outside the context of the military mastering these methods based in engagement and support.

"Over time I developed a respect for the many expats who entered troubled hotspots without the benefit of a gun, who had lived amongst war-torn communities, and often who continued for years without seeing results. Liberia was the key turning point for me. I have kept trying to re-capture the lightning in a bottle from that deployment."

The tip of a different spear

As Niño's views on service shifted, so did his methods.

"I began to realize I had a stronger role to play in some key areas where I was limited with the military. I could still assist the goals and aims of U.S. foreign policy, but it didn't require me jumping out of an armored personnel carrier."

But Niño's experience on both sides of the military base gave him a distinct advantage when faced with difficult assignments.

"I could access the military's Provincial Reconstruction Teams and Civil Affairs Teams, and I could live on a base and know how to find things that it might take a civilian longer to locate. I was trained to live, work and operate in kinetic environments while many expats and NGO workers were used to working primarily in post-conflict locales."

Straddling this line seemed to be where Niño found himself most valuable. After leaving the Marines in 2009, he reconnected with several St. Mary's graduates from Hufford's classes who were working in international aid for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

"Seeing how local sustainability projects worked, like the Red Cross Family Tracing program and the UN Refugee Agency, really expanded my world. It was something I wanted to belong to. I found that niche when a USAID contractor hired me to fill that role. I was a hybrid."

Today Niño works in Kabul, Afghanistan, forming and nurturing meetings (called jirgas) between local stakeholders on behalf of USAID.

Niño's team helps the community elect a council and seek recognition from the provincial governor. In the past year, they have formed more than 100 of these councils and empowered them to communicate with their provincial counterparts.

"It's a very fragile process filled with your average dangers of voting fraud, corruption, nepotism, etc. Democracy looks great on paper, but anything worth having requires sacrifice from everyone."

That is a sentiment he tries to share with the communities he works with in Afghanistan, but after both his military and civilian experiences abroad, it's a message he can take back home, too.

"The value of multilateralism is something my experiences in Liberia taught me. America can't just go it alone. It's cliché, but the international community is just that: a family of nations."


Carlo Niño plans to enroll in an International Relations doctoral program and eventually move to London with his fiancée, whom he met on a plane en route to one of his global missions.