Amid rising violence and uncertainty in neighboring Pakistan, the Pentagon plans to send 3,000 Marines to Afghanistan to counter a Taliban spring offensive.

The manpower strain on active-duty forces for ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan has increased demands on reserves, and Hawai'i's citizen soldiers are being deployed to help.

Among these are about 100 Hawai'i National Guard troops who are serving in Afghanistan, the less publicized of the nation's two wars.

Danger in Iraq comes from roadside and suicide bombers and small-arms attacks — on mostly flat roads and often, while in vehicles that offer some degree of protection.

In Afghanistan, U.S. troops face similar threats, but often at lung-busting altitude in the mountains and after a day-long hike. The mission is remote in every sense of the word — far from civilization and public consciousness.

Kevin Napoleon, a Honolulu police officer, has been at Forward Operating Base Kala Gush for nine months and was able to come home recently for the holidays before he returned to the small, austere outpost in northeastern Afghanistan on the yearlong deployment.

The 37-year-old works with a Provincial Reconstruction Team, and spends his days driving on cliffside roads, and hiking to remote villages.

Few people have any idea how physically challenging the effort is in Afghanistan, he said recently while at home.

One Hawai'i soldier received a commendation for saving the life of an Arizona service member who had slipped and started to fall down a steep mountainside.

During a trip took that took 4 1/2 hours, Spc. Emil Bedan from Hawai'i saved the life of the Arizona National Guardsman who fell while traversing a narrow ledge, Napoleon said.

"Spc. Bedan jumped over two soldiers and passed two other soldiers, ran over and grabbed him, and almost fell off the mountain in the process," Napoleon said.

Bedan received a Meritorious Service Medal for heroism, he said.

But the mission remains part of what is still largely a forgotten war.

"It's surprising. A lot of my friends forgot that I went to Afghanistan," Napoleon said. "They all think we're in Kuwait and Iraq right now."

About 75 of Hawai'i's citizen soldiers left for Afghanistan in the spring to fill out the more than 600-member 1st Battalion, 158th Infantry Regiment of the Arizona National Guard.

MORE DEPLOYMENTS

Ongoing combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan have meant increased interim deployments between stepped-up war duty for the Hawai'i National Guard's larger 29th Brigade Combat Team, which deployed to Iraq and Kuwait in 2005 and is expected to return to Kuwait late this year.

About 27,000 U.S. troops are on duty in Afghanistan more than six years after the fall of the Taliban. That compares with 137,000 in Iraq, a total that has dropped from 160,000 in recent months.

To say thanks to his troops, Maj. Gen. Robert G.F. Lee, the state adjutant general, recently traveled to Kuwait and Afghanistan, and brought with him 375 pounds of coffee from Ka'u coffee growers.

Napoleon is with the Provincial Reconstruction Team in Nuristan province along with five other Hawai'i soldiers, but Hawai'i Guard members are spread around Afghanistan.

"We've got lots of these teams in the outskirts," said Lee, who heads the Hawai'i National Guard. "Sort of like when the surge in Iraq got the troops out with the people. In Afghanistan, our troops are out with the people."

The Hawai'i contingent includes about 91 Army Guard soldiers — including 16 working with Afghan National Police — and about a half dozen Air Guard airmen.

At FOB Kala Gush, eight-man tents and a tented dining facility have been replaced by plywood "B-huts" in time for winter, Napoleon said.

When he left for 15 days of leave, the surrounding mountains were getting covered in snow. Local Afghans told the troops the base itself, which is at about 3,000 to 4,000 feet, doesn't usually get snow.

"But it's been getting pretty cold, so we're not really sure," Napoleon said.

CHALLENGING TERRAIN

The Provincial Reconstruction Team is made up of fewer than 100 soldiers, sailors, airmen and State Department engineers who conduct counter-insurgency operations, meet with local leaders, and build wells, schools and bridges.

Getting to the mountain villages where that engagement takes place is half the challenge.

"We have one road in, and one road out," Napoleon said. "Down south (in Afghanistan), the roads aren't too bad. Up north, it's kind of like driving through an Indiana Jones movie because you might have 3 inches on the driver's side and a wall to a mountain, and on the passenger side, a 900-meter drop into a valley or river."

Those roads turn into goat paths, and from there, the mission becomes a hike.

The people of the remote region, once called "kafirs," or unbelievers, were converted to Islam only about 70 years ago, and in legend refer to the Greek god Dionysus as their patron, according to the Afghanistan embassy.

In 2006, the U.S. reinforced its presence in Nuristan to counter Taliban and al-Qaida influence, and Napoleon said three soldiers with the Arizona National Guard battalion have been killed — two from roadside bombs and one from a rocket-propelled grenade.

The Provincial Reconstruction Team that Napoleon is with has four Purple Hearts, he said.

U.S. military deaths, suicide bombings and opium production hit record highs in 2007 in Afghanistan with a resurgence of the Taliban, according to The Associated Press. A total of 110 U.S. troops died.

Napoleon said he and fellow soldiers face more danger from falling off a mountain. Insurgents operate in five- to 10-man cells "and they are not going to get into a close-up firefight with us," he said.

The Taliban has instead resorted to guerrilla-style ambushes, which, along with the mission as a whole, go largely unnoticed back in the United States.

"We have areas of Afghanistan that there's fighting constantly, every day, and it's not reported in the news," said Napoleon, who's expected to return from Afghanistan in March.

He served in Iraq in 2005, volunteered for the Afghanistan mission, and also may go to Kuwait later this year.

The deployment frequency, indicative of a U.S. military force stretched by six years of war, also has redefined what it means to be a citizen soldier.

"In the beginning, I was upset, I didn't want him to go to Afghanistan," said Napoleon's wife, Jennifer. "But we talked about it and I accepted it. That was what he wanted to do. He's a soldier and that's what he does."

Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com.