As They Stand Up, We...Better Duck

by Eric Martin

In an effort to cobble together a plausible number of boots on the ground to match thegrandiose mish-mosh strategy of multi-decade counterinsurgency, counterterrorism and nation building in Afghanistan, US forces are, again, relying on the ability to raise, outfit and train highly motivated, disciplined and effective indigenous fighting force.  In addition to making up for the lack of US troops necessary for the tasks at hand, the emergence of a new national army is supposed to provide the US with the ability to begin withdrawing troops.  

Then President Bush famously explained the formula by saying, "When they stand up, we stand down."  The long and arduous process in both Iraq and Afghanistan has been more notable for setbacks than advancements.  Aside from the ever-present logistical difficulties in creating new armies, almost ex nihilo in foreign cultures that we barely understand, let alone have the ability to shape, in Afghanistan we have a hard time discerning friendly from hostile Afghans, and even when we manage to not arm and train the enemy, many Afghan recruits are not really interested in putting their lives on the line to defend a corrupt and ineffectual government.  Must be a cultural thing.

This is certainly an extreme case of security-force-building gone wrong:

Five British soldiers have been shot dead after a rogue Afghan policeman turned a heavy machinegun against a British training team inside a checkpoint in Helmand Province.

The soldiers, three from the Grenadier Guards and two from the Royal Military Police, died in the village of Shin Kalay in Nad-e’Ali district of Helmand Province yesterday afternoon. Six British soldiers were injured in the same incident, several of them seriously.

Two Afghan policemen, including the commander of the checkpost, were also injured before their assailant managed to escape.

But the picture isn't exactly rosy outside of these gruesome incidents.  Colonel Lawrence Sellini's assessment of the Afghan army does not ring of optimism:

On May 21, 2002, U.S. Army Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of U.S. Central Command, said to reporters, "I am pleased that our forces have begun training the Afghan National Army."

Franks also stated that training the Afghan army will "certainly be one of our more important projects in the days, weeks (and) months ahead, because the national army of Afghanistan is going to be an essential element of their long-term security."

On Sept. 21, 2006, U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James Jones, now President Barack Obama's national security adviser, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, "By far, the Afghan National Army is the most successful pillar of our reconstruction efforts to date."

According to U.S. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal's Aug. 30 recommendations for a new strategy in Afghanistan, one of the four main pillars to accomplish the mission and defeat the insurgency is to increase the size and accelerate the growth of the Afghan National Security Force and radically enhance partnership at every level to improve effectiveness and prepare them to take the lead in security operations.

After almost eight years of effort, the Kabul Military Training Center reports that the Afghan National Army now numbers between 88,000 and 92,000 soldiers.

McChrystal admits that after eight years of recruitment and training, the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police are not sufficiently effective to take ownership of Afghanistan's security. He said, "The Afghan National Army must accelerate growth to the target strength of 134,000 by fall 2010, with the institutional flexibility to continue that growth to a new target ceiling of 240,000."

Even Franks in 2002 did not delude himself into thinking that training and integrating a force comprised of tribal and factional members into an Afghan National Army would be easy.

In her superbly written article "Meet the Afghan Army," first published by TomDispatch, Ann Jones provides personal and direct observations on this subject...

Based on years of experience in Afghanistan, Jones said she believes there is little trust among these units composed of various tribal factions and that "these impoverished men in a country without work have joined the Afghan National Army for what they can get out of it (and keep or sell) -- and that doesn't include democracy or glory."

She notes that many recruits do not return for duty after their 10-week basic training and others "re-enlist" under a different name to get an additional 10 weeks' pay. Some may be Taliban gaining valuable insight into tactics, techniques and procedures

Compared to unwittingly providing training and arms to Taliban fighters, the payment of reconstruction dollars might not appear like such a great crime.  Still, these incidents serve as, occasionally tragic, reminders of just how out of our element we are.

Steve Hynd has more, including this from Peter Galbraith:

"The process of police training and recruiting has been very rushed. Normally the police get an eight-week training course. That is actually very short and there isn't a lot of vetting of police before they are hired.

"And actually, in recent months, they shortened the training programme from eight weeks to five weeks because they wanted to get more police boots on the ground in advance of the elections. So there was a real rush to recruit an additional 10,000, particularly in the south, particularly in Kandahar and Helmand provinces.

"So it is not totally surprising that people were recruited who may have had Taliban sympathies or were infiltrated into the police by the Taliban although I don't know yet whether in this particular episode that is exactly what happened."

The undermining of the legitimacy of the Afghan government because of the "chaos" surrounding the election had also "created opportunities for the Taliban," he said, sending his condolences to the families of those killed in the incident.

Looks like a promising endeavor, worth a trillion dollars or more and another ten years.

Comments

[Point]

I'll get back to this when I can, but for now this criticism of putting too much emphasis on training a central in Afghanistan is basically right.

After all, the last time the country was truly stable was with a very decentralized state. A strong central army's probably not the way to go.

[McKinneyTexas]

Leaving specific strategy choices aside, how can Obama (or anyone else) continue this war without some kind of stated strategy/end game? Let's stipulate that Bush took his eye off Afghanistan due to preoccupation with Iraq. Let's also assume that, if we leave Afghanistan, life will be unbearable for the female half of the population, Taliban or not, and the male, non-Taliban portion of the country. That is, the past is past and it can't be fixed and the effect of leaving will be as traumatic, probably even more, than with the US staying, but that is true for any hyper-despotic regime that is temporarily displaced.

The question going forward, is: what strategy and what goal are we pursuing? If I had the answer, I'd give it, but I don't and I am not sure there is one.

My wife and I had friends spend the past weekend with us. They have a son and son-in-law in the Marines. The son-in-law is recently back from Iraq and the son is hanging fire on deployment to Afghanistan. Presently, it seems we are fighting a holding action. As an American without direct 'skin in the game', I want our president to fully evaluate his position and do what he thinks best. If I were like our friends, I would not be warm about my son or any of his friends 'holding ground' for much longer without some kind of plan in place. The men and women on the ground are due some kind of answer in the relatively near future.

[Nigel]

"... In pursuit of this objective, Obama has so far committed to building ‘an Afghan army of 134,000 and a police force of 82,000’, and adds that ‘increases in Afghan forces may very well be needed.’ US generals have spoken openly about wanting a combined Afghan army-police-security apparatus of 450,000 soldiers (in a country with a population half the size of Britain’s). Such a force would cost $2 or $3 billion a year to maintain; the annual revenue of the Afghan government is just $600 million. We criticise developing countries for spending 30 per cent of their budget on defence; we are encouraging Afghanistan to spend 500 per cent of its budget.
Some policymakers have been quick to point out that this cost is unsustainable and will leave Afghanistan dependent for ever on the largesse of the international community. Some have even raised the spectre (suggested by the example of Pakistan) that this will lead to a military coup. But the more basic question is about our political principles. We should not encourage the creation of an authoritarian military state..."
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n13/rory-stewart/the-irresistible-illusion

[Nigel]

>>mish-mosh strategy of multi-decade counterinsurgency<<

The few historical examples of successful counterinsurgencies have relied either on exceptional indigenous leaders (Magsaysay in the Philippines), or exceptional brutality (the example of the Mau Mau uprising holds some resonance for President Obama).

The former is utterly unrealistic, the latter unacceptable.

[Tony P.]

Thank you, Nigel. Thank you for pointing out basic arithmetic -- something which US politicians shy away from like vampires from garlic. But even you understate the arithmetic absurdities.

According to the CIA World Factbook, Afghanistan's GDP in 2008 was $22 billion in purchasing power parity, and just $12 billion at official exchange rates. Whichever figure we take as more meaningful, either one is much smaller than the $50 billion, minimum, that the US must spend annually to keep 100,000 soldiers in Afghanistan.

Whether the US "needs" to "win" in Afghanistan might be debatable. That US jingoes keep pushing for a ludicrously expensive way to go about "winning" is not. That US jingoes are almost exactly the same people who incessantly caterwaul about "wasteful spending" is just icing on the cake.

--TP

[Nombrilisme Vide]

Let's also assume that, if we leave Afghanistan, life will be unbearable for the female half of the population, Taliban or not, and the male, non-Taliban portion of the country.

I don't really want to get into a side argument so early into the thread, but what I've read really makes me have trouble accepting that our departure will make things markedly less bearable than they already are, excepting perhaps in Kabul.

[Hartmut]

Some more realistic plans ;-)
1. Make Afghanistan the 52nd state (51st being Israel), then it would be troops on American not foreign soil and the expenditures would be petty cash compared to the total defense budget.
2. Award US citizenship to all interested Afghan females and let them relocate free of charge to the US mainland
3. Buy the whole poppy harvest each year, refine it (or substitute it with pot) and offer it at low or no charge to the population. A permanently high population will have less interest in making trouble at home or abroad.

[Jay Jerome]

Eric: in what's good for the goose is good for the gander mode:

mish-mosh is a slang word, and far less acceptable in formal writing then irregardless, which, contrary to your previous assertion that it isn't an "actual word" is listed in numerous dictionaries as a prescriptive non-standard adverb, "used on occasion by educated speakers from a desire to add emphasis" because of the conjunction of the two negative elements ir- and -less.

And, of course, if you type irregardless in the comment box below you won't see the red error line below it for non-existent or incorrectly spelled words.

A dreadful language? Man alive!
I’d mastered it when I was five.
And yet to write it, the more I tried,
I hadn’t learned at fifty five.

—T.S. Watt

Other than that, carry on. :)