In April 2012, "Defense News" reported that the Director of HTS, Colonel Sharon Hamilton, had been "working on a plan" to expand the use of HTS into other regions such as Africa and Latin America, and was considering whether HTS personnel could be deployed in Mexico to support military counter-narcotic work. In August 2012, Hamilton retired from HTS and from the US Army, and was replaced as Director by Colonel Steve Bentley. In October 2013, Colonel Bentley was replaced by Colonel Thomas Georges. As part of the ongoing drawdown from Afghanistan in 2013–2014, the Army programmed HTS funding to drop proportionately, eliminating human terrain teams as units were removed from theater. By September 2014, all HTS teams and personnel had been withdrawn from Afghanistan. Contract and personnel support to the program ceased at the end of the month, effectively ending the program's operations as of 1 October 2014. However, money was still allocated for the program in FY 2015. During a 15-day operation in the late summer of 2007, 500 Afghan and 500 US soldiers were deployed to clear an estimated 200 to 250 Taliban insurgents out of Paktia Province, secure southeastern Afghanistan's most important road, and halt a string of suicide attacks on US troops and local governors. During the operation, an HTS anthropologist, Tracy St. Benoit, identified an unusually high concentration of widows in poverty, creating pressure on their sons to join the well-paid insurgents. Citing St. Benoit's advice, US officers developed a job training program for the widows. She also interpreted the beheading of a local tribal elder as an effort to divide and weaken the Zadran, rather than as a more general attempt at intimidation. As a result, Afghan and US officials focused on uniting the Zadran, one of southeastern Afghanistan's most powerful tribes, as a way of hindering the Taliban's operations in the area.  800 Afghan soldiers, 400 US soldiers and 200 Afghan policemen took part in Operation Maiwand, in which Afghan soldiers raided houses of suspected militants. "Stars and Stripes" reported that in one Pashtun village, Kuz Khadokhel, the Human Terrain Team (HTT) made it possible for negotiator Captain Aaron White to understand body language in the context of the culture, to identify leaders during negotiations, and to reinforce a perception of leadership by not conferring with fellow officers and by demonstrating good faith through projects facilitated by the Ghazni Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), which included roads, a visit by the PRT's mobile medical clinic, the construction of a deep well for irrigation, and the beginnings of a road to Afghanistan's main Highway 1.