What did the PRTs teach us?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jcustis
I never noticed a shift because I was prepping for my Afghan deploy in 2009 and into 2010 (having finished an Iraq deploy in April '09), and FM 3-24 remained a bible we were leaning on. The notion of the PRT somehow holding the key to the lock box of answers was rampant to the point of a farce by the time I saw the PRT's shoddy work.
Jon,
I am still working on my reflections from a faraway armchair, but this passage caught my attention.
My own reading on the PRT theme was in the earlier years and a couple of encounters with those who had been involved later on. Alongside more reading on the role of the Political Officer along the Durand Line, in the British Imperial era.
Was Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) a far more acceptable label and concept for the Afghans and those who were in the audience back home? At the start of our intervention, which was overwhelmingly coercive, Afghanistan had some limited governance at provincial level and almost none at the national level. The PRT's role was really to act as political officers, with a tiny non-military component, a small protective detail, some good comms and a bag full of cash.
It was clear by 2005 and certainly by 2006 that the level of violence within Afghanistan meant neither the political or reconstruction role was working. I recall one PRT rarely left its own base and relied on non-Afghans for security.
The British PRT which moved from the north (Mazar-i-Sharif IIRC) to Helmand, growing in size with larger civil staff (DFID, FCO, SOCA etc), then was reported to embark on projects that stretched credulity - a children's playground, with a ferris wheel comes to mind - and distributing ammonium nitrate fertiliser, in the chemical composition to make IEDs! Shoddy became dangerous.
NPR piece on PRTs in Afghanistan.
There was an NPR piece on PRTs in Afghanistan last month [LINK].
From the transcript:
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Weekend Edition Sunday host Rachel Martin talks to Kael Weston about the closing of the first Provincial Reconstruction Team in Afghanistan. PRTs are humanitarian missions run by military troops and civilians that built roads and schools. Weston spent seven years as a diplomat for the State Department, and says the teams have a mixed legacy.
The Enemy Is Still A System.....Not A Country!
Here is a link to "Top Secret America" a PBS report that covers everything not just A'stan. But it is worth watching the first 15 or 20 minutes to see how clearly the CIA understood we were fighting a Terrorist System not a Country and what to do about it. In large part the American military did not get it and still doesn't! Which is why we could have a carbon copy of the USA in A'stan and it would still not stop Terrorist attacks as we found out recently in Boston. I think that is the real lesson that needs to be learned and we can either learn it and adapt or not learn it and keep on getting attacked all the while wasting unbelievable amounts of money!
Here is the link:http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...secretamerica/
Girl Green Berets As A Lesson To Be Learned
I don't know if this is a lesson to be learned or not but here is a link to how valuable female soldiers are in A'stan and they are clearly designated as special forces both by the commentator and their shoulder patches.
http://videos.komando.com/watch/3231...-screen-shot-b