With the mid term elections over, Afghanistan is once more in the news headlines. Over the weekend Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai gave an interview to the Washington Post criticizing the NATO war strategy. Karzai stated: “we’d like the Afghan countryside…not to be so overwhelmed with the military presence…you can have the U.S. presence in the bases where they are…but the majority of security operations, the majority of day-to-day activities where security is concerned…is the job of the Afghan people.”
Other expressed concerns were the increased Special Operation night raids, the 100,000 “or more foreign troops going around the country endlessly…the raiding homes at night…Bursting into homes at night, arresting Afghans, this isn’t the business of foreign troops. Afghans have to do that, and one of the important elements of transition that we’re working on is to end these raids of Afghan homes and arrest of Afghans by foreign forces in Afghanistan and civilian casualties.”
At first President karzai’s comments caused some to wonder if there was a major rift developing between the Afghan government and NATO forces; but, subsequent statements by Karzai spokesman, Waheed Omer, on Monday suggest the controversy may be dying down. According to an article in the Washington Post “at a news conference, Omer said the president’s comments were not intended as a vote of no-confidence in Petraeus, but rather a sign of a ‘maturing partnership’ in which both sides are willing to speak frankly. ‘This kind of debate has always been there, and as the relationship is maturing, there is room for substantive reflection on both sides,’ Omer said. He added that Afghan and NATO officials agree on most of the current NATO strategy, but that spirited debate is ‘something that is going to take us to another level of partnership…”.
Omer indicated that General Petraeus’s staff had been contacted and told President Karzai had been talking within the transition framework. Additionally according to media reports, the White is seeking to further ease tensions by promising to gradually give the Afghans greater control over Special Operations missions. It would seem to me that any alliance is problematic and disagreements are inevitable and part of the process. For instance, Britain is probably our closest ally yet there were numerous disagreements and discussions on how to conduct operations against Germany during World War II. I also suspect President Karzai’s emphasis on Afghans taking over security operations may reflect a growing confidence on his part in NATO’s efforts training the Afghan Army and Police force; which brings me to the subject topic.
Last week I participated in a Department of Defense sponsored Bloggers Roundtable with Lieutenant General William Caldwell, the Commander of NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan (NTM-A) and Combined Security Transition Command. The occasion was the one year anniversary of the training command. General Caldwell began the interview by stating: “Before November of last year, 2009, there were insufficient resources which led to a focus on really just quantity alone. Recruitment and assignment of soldiers and police with little to no training, paying them less than a living wage and the inability to address leader development were the result of this lack of resources.”
Working with their Afghan partners to reverse the negative trends, Caldwell said, “the focus shifted to improving the quality, building the foundation for the professionalization of the national security force, while also maintaining the capacity to increase their end strength. Today we have built a foundation for the Afghan ministries of interior and defense to recruit, train and assign police and soldiers across their country.”
The gains over the past year have been quite impressive. NTM-A has just released their Year in Review publication. In it they indicate “In ten months, the Afghan National Army (ANA) total strength grew from 97,011 to 138,164 an increase of 41,153 (42%), and the Afghan National Police (ANP) total strength grew from 94,958 to 120,504 an increase of 25,546 (27%).” All in all the security force increased by 35% with an end strength of 258,668.
General Caldwell emphasized caution saying, “Despite the progress achieved so far, now is not the time for us to slow our momentum. We must continue to maintain a sense of urgency that we have created over this last year. In fact, it’s going to be required if we’re going to overcome the significant challenges that still remain.”
The General had mentioned the training had been “infantry centric”. I asked the if they were plans to train the Afghans in professions that support military operations such as intelligence or maintenance. He replied: “We were not doing any schools at all of that type last year. Last November there was not one specialized school that was operating. Today we have stood up and now have in operation 10 specialized schools out of the 12 we’ve identified that are necessary…the 10 that we have…are intelligence, human resources, finance, logistics, engineer, religious and cultural affairs, infantry, artillery, military police…And the one that we have not yet brought on line is…the armor school”
Literacy and attrition remain problems. Currently, only 15 to 18% of the security forces can read or write. The General stated: “Without the basic ability to read a map, write down a weapon serial number or read a bank statement, Afghan national security force recruits are greatly at risk on the battlefield and become highly susceptible to corruption in garrison.” I’ve mentioned in earlier blogs that NATO has literacy training programs in place to address the problem.
General Caldwell was asked to comment on reports that the Afghan Brigade currently deployed in Kandahar was ineffective. He said the Brigade did have significant problems but the Commander had just been replaced. He indicated the Afghans “started at the top, recognizing they had poor leadership that was in charge of that organization that was causing –obviously setting the stage for a lot of the problems that they were having.” Caldwell provided more insights by saying: “The second thing is they’re being better partnered…Partnering really is absolutely essential to be effective…we do the initial base training and then the initial collective training through the training mission here, and then we field the organization out to the field. But once it gets there, it needs to be continually trained even further.”
Think I’ll end here. Getting ready to head to Alabama to spend the holidays with my 83 years young Mom. It will be interesting to see what happens concerning Afghanistan in the next couple of weeks. It looks like the Obama administration may be backing off of the July 2011 deadline. 2014 is the year that keeps popping up in media reports and statements by various administration officials. I’ve blogged several times about my concerns that saying we would begin to leave by July 2011 favored the Taliban military strategy. NATO is meeting in a few days and one of the major topics is Afghanistan. I will look with interest at what comes out of the meeting. As always my views are my own. Happy Thanksgiving.
