Foreign Policy Blogs

GailForce: More On Afghanistan COIN Training

Been on travel so haven’t found time to Blog.  Before I hit the road, I participated in a Department of Defense sponsored Bloggers roundtable on Monday, August 23rd with Lieutenant General William Caldwell the Commander of the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan.  It was enlightening and informative.  As discussed in previous Blogs, this training is a critical part of the COIN strategy.  Although training has been ongoing since at least 2002, the NATO training command was only activated in November 2009.  General Caldwell began by explaining the mission stating it is essentially to develop Afghanistan’s Ministries of Interior and Defense. 

 

The General didn’t pull any punches.  He remarked before the command was activated, “the development of the Afghan National Security Force…was hampered by a lack of resources…there was little time really dedicated to building and developing the Afghan National Security Force as an enduring force…key inputs that addressed the professionalism and quality of the force, such as leader development, losses from attrition and literacy of soldiers and police were overlooked.”

 

General Caldwell said beginning in 2002 “the average raw growth was about 15,000 personnel in the Afghan National Army (ANA) and about 12,000 in the Afghan National Police (ANP)…These numbers were below the requirement to meet both the ANA and the ANP strength goals.”  The trend has been reversed and both the ANA and ANP goals are currently three months ahead of schedule.

 

From the General’s perspective the biggest challenge is building a professional, self sustaining security force.  To achieve this goal the training is focusing on three things, “leader development, literacy and addressing losses through attrition.  General Caldwell says leadership is the most important element and training efforts are “focused on quality training, developing experience and providing appropriate education…dedicated to creating an ethos of service and loyalty.  It is only when the leaders embrace a culture of service to others that the Afghan national security force will truly be professional force.”

 

As of last week, the Afghan Army numbered 134,000 and the Police force 115,000. The goal is by October 2011 for the army to reach 171, 600 and for the police to reach 134,000.  The General stated attrition is the biggest obstacle to professionalization.  These losses include desertions, deaths and low retention…based on the current attrition rates…to meet their 31 October 2011 goal of 305,000, we together will need to recruit and train 141,000 soldiers and police.”  The attrition issue was one that also jumped out at me.  The day before the Bloggers Roundtable, the New York Times had published a story on the attrition issue.  According to the article 646 Afghan police were killed in 2009, compared with 412 foreign coalition troops and 282 Afghan Army personnel.  The article further stated that this year the police were being killed by the Taliban at a rate of four to six a day.  I asked General Caldwell to comment on the article.

 

He said the number of police deaths was greater than the number of Afghan Army deaths but they working very hard on the problem, “we’re looking at the training and equipping and whether or not there’s something we should do to modify how, in fact, we continue to train local police here in the future and…perhaps even some different type of equipment.” 

 

It’s clear to me after participating in this series of Blogger Roundtables that a lot of people are working very hard on this part of the COIN strategy.  It’s also clear that the July 2011 deadline probably at least at this point doesn’t mean all of the NATO forces will pack up and go home on that date.  An article about a press conference with Afghan Ministry of Defense spokesperson Major General Zahir Azimi quoted him stating, “Over talking on whether foreign forces will be pulled out by 2011 or not will only help the enemy gain more energy.”  In response to questions about the withdrawal of Coalition forces, he reportedly indicated “while Afghan forces will be able to take responsibility for the lead in operations by 2014, that it does not mean Afghanistan will be abandoned by its partners.”

 

Well that’s about it for me.  I’m sure I’ll be blogging about this topic again. As always my views are my own.  I’ll be writing a Blog on my take of the Iraqi force drawdown in the next day or so. 

 

Author

Gail Harris

Gail Harris’ 28 year career in intelligence included hands-on leadership during every major conflict from the Cold War to El Salvador to Desert Storm to Kosovo and at the forefront of one of the Department of Defense’s newest challenges, Cyber Warfare. A Senior Fellow for The Truman National Security Project, her memoir, A Woman’s War, published by Scarecrow Press is available on Amazon.com.