Helping Joe Understand the Locals
Not too long ago, I read this post over at Bill and Bob's Excellent Afghan Adventure.
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As we moved into the Ghain, the TF Fury soldiers came into direct support of my sad peschak. Mind you, we had been given very little time with these cats to prepare them for this operation, concentrating our efforts on the most dangerous aspect; house clearing. The ANP moved exactly as I have described them; like a herd of cats. Their tactical movement bore scant resemblance to the tactical movement of the more highly trained ANA and no resemblance whatsoever to the movements of the elite kids from the 82nd. The airborne troops held my peschak-ha in absolute disdain. They couldn't get enough of amusing themselves derisively at the ANP's expense. While the ANP couldn't understand a word that was said, they understood every word that was said.
Disrespect requires no translation.
It took a lot of work to help my ANP through the Psyops that were laid on them by these "highly-trained, elite" soldiers of the Airborne Pride of the Army. I wanted to butt-stroke the muscle-headed airborne bastards.
My question for the council is, how can a platoon or company commander develop more cultural awareness in his command? I've read Cavguy's posts regarding how there is literally not enough time to do all of the officially required training. In between the safety instructions, combat training, and the rest, how can junior officers give their men a better understanding of their mission and cultural context in which they are operating?
Or am I in my ignorance seeing a problem where there is none?
That's one side of the story.
May be true, may not be. I don't think there's enough information to express a valid opinion. Always two sides to any peeing contest and the truth is generally in between. Not a good plan to rush to judgment on hearsay...
If it is true, it is indeed an unquestionable leadership fault on the part of the 82d folks, picking on the ANP shouldn't have been tolerated by anyone SGT and above. The TF Fury Bns were new at the time (last year) but that's no excuse.
I'd also really like to know what he did about it at the time...
However, I'm reminded by this that the 'Elite' bit is a two way slanging watch. There's a surprising amount of venom directed at those perceived rightly or wrongly to be higher in the pecking order by folks who presume they are looked down upon. Much of that is wrong and unnecessary IMO. In my experience, there is more hatred and discontent expressed upstream than there is derision, disdain or disrespect sent downstream.
Take it a step further, the active Army disparages the ArNG -- and the ArNG can be way beyond disparaging about the active Army -- generally among themselves, rarely to the active folks in person. SF and the conventional Army which get plenty of coverage here -- lot of mud slinging which does no one any favors. Been my observation that there's plenty of wrongdoing -- or wrong saying -- on both sides of most of those peeing contests.
On this particular topic in that theater, folks I know who deployed with the 82d to Afghanistan recount problems and conflicts with the ArNG folks on the training teams on a variety of issues and therefor a residual batch of hurt feelings on both sides.
My impression is that the Troops from the 82d have no problem and have generally good rapport with the ANA -- who themselves deride the ANP as lesser mortals and do not like to operate with them -- but do tend to treat the ANP like most everyone in Afghanistan seems to; poor relations.
That's not right and, if true needs to be fixed but it is, I believe at the Joe level understandable (and thus needs a little supervisory direction). Be nice if everyone was grown up and did a good job at everything all the time but that's unlikely.
With respect to Ian's question:
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"...how can junior officers give their men a better understanding of their mission and cultural context in which they are operating?"
Some of you guys that are more current than I am can give him a better answer, but IMO, the answer is:
It is not the junior officers job to do that; it is a Command (read at least Bn) responsibility. At the junior officer level, what should occur is insuring that all the troops get to all the classes and in conjunction with the PSG, decide on a course of action to improve upon and reinforce the higher echelon stuff. That would include but not be limited to insuring all the NCOs have copies of the cultural handouts from the CoCom and theater, have a phrase book and practice the critical phrases among them selves -- it will filter down to the troops (most of them, anyway). The important thing for the junior officer is to learn what's right and what's wrong and to make sure that his NCOs enforce the rules and guidelines with common sense once you get in country.
None of that takes a great deal of time -- or effort -- and it can all be done while other things are happening and at scheduled training lulls when all are sitting around waiting for the next relay or event. The real effort is just making sure people do what they're supposed (and generally know that they are) to do
Class-structure focused comments
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"In COIN, every positive interaction is very important, and every negative action is amplified or even confirms the enemy's IO. We fail on the training, and there are quite often failures on the leadership side. This is also cultural. A recent article noted the difference between the stateside and the deployed Army. We are not fighting in our preferred venue of AirLand and it shows. There is a great reluctance to embrace COIN, and when it is claimed, it is often counter-guerrilla incorrectly labeled as COIN."
Between that and incredibly centralized command and control in many cases, the Army is not effectively applying a very distributed methodology. These are key causative issues whose proof is in the worsening situation in Afghanistan."
As a retired purple suiter who happens to be Air Force, using shared knowledge from good friends now and recently in Afghanistan, here are a few observations:
1. We, the Allies, had to take and work with whatever military superstructure existed in Afghanistan since 9/11.
2. This meant we allied with and inherited the Northern Afghan Alliance made up of Afghan ethnic minorities vs. the majority Pukhtun population of Afghanistan (many of which Pukhtuns were born in refugee camps inside northern Pakistan).
3. The Afghan Army is/will be officered in future by ethnic quota driven filling of officer candidate school slots. Whoever naturally is brighest and best qualified has little or nothing to do with who gets a commission.
4. Many of the older top field grade and flag rank Afghan officers were USSR trained and indoctinated, which is a topic unto itself for another discussion.
5. The desired future education of the average Afghan soldier we are "trying" to bring up to a third grade level, using a US education system standard.
6. Afghan soldiers go to solve or deal with family problems when and as needed which does create what to us would be AWOL gaps in the ranks but no one wants to openly address this fact. This to a Westerner's eyes is sheer chaos.
7. Briefly summarized, tribal differences, focus on home and family, and in today's world in Afghanistan taking home your pay to support you family...in part due to lack of what we would in the US call the "money-wire system"...are akward at best. **This total lack of a transfer of local funds within your own country issue is again an entire topicunto itself.
Thus, I would not blame our Allied soldiers nor say that lack of cultural awareness is "the problem" but that the very low level of Afghan formal education, the left over USSR trained flag ranks, and cultural tribalism are factors largely over the heads of our rank and file soldiers today.
But, if I am so smart, what is the answer? There is no prior history, ever, of democracy in Afghanistan. No past tense military academy which objectively and openly goes after and promotes the very best qualified vs. ethnic quotas, etc.
And, to an atypical Afghan soldier whose main source of the lowest education level possible is memorization and virtually blind adherance to and of Islam, there is nothing more than self example of a sectarian set i values each soldier can offer, coupled with his or her personal witness of how they live life daily as a Christian or whatever US source faith system our troops practice individually.
Respect is not reciprocated from primite Islamics to "non-believers", this is only possible, even if phoney, at the highest levels of the ruling top folks in Afghanistan today.
This is the huge cultural and religious challenge for our young solders to address. You simply cannot separate "religion" from "culture" as these terms have one and the same meaning in Afghanistan, and always will have such meaning.
I for one believe our soldiers, regular and SF are all doing as good a job as is humanly possible. Let's not blame them for the "cultural" barriers and vacuums, of which there are very many, as they make do with foreign "standards" beyond anything we have encountered before, even in Iraq.
Afghanistan nationally is to me a collection of tribes and not much more. To think "centrally" especially regarding civilian governance is irrational in the face of the facts on the ground there. Each province in Afghanistan I believe will work best almost as if each is a separate nation, as this is how the locals minds and attitudes have run for hundreds of years.
My two cents. Good luck and thank you for the excellent job you boys are doing for us all over there.
Agree, George. Good points all.
The troops are doing the best they can. Given inadequate training but their basic adaptability, they're coping fairly well. They were put into an AO that was and is unbelievably poor, more so than any other the US has been to in the last 100 years or so and were essentially, given no mission -- not on a strategic or operational plane at any rate.
Said strategic vision or mission is still, eight years later, in flux (I'm feeling charitable today...). That flaw drives a lot of trains...
As for failure to properly apply COIN techniques. That is a bum rap.
Accurate, yes -- but that failure is due to, in order:
1. Inadequate full spectrum military training and education at all levels due to flawed policy decisions over many years. Not an excuse -- but it is a very important reason. You cannot leave important spectrums of conflict of the training regimen for years and expect rapid adaptation by those whose training and education lacked important elements.
2. Poor mission assessment and assignments by senior people. The COIN specialists, SF, are being badly misused and are too heavily engaged in DA efforts to an extent that precludes their employment in the COIN role other than peripherally (IMO, any DA is too much; not their job). Units are assigned in a piecemeal fashion, rarely if ever return to an area with which they are familiar. Units that trained up for DA missions were diverted to lesser roles. Units trained for one mission assigned to another. Even last minute theater swaps. Mission dictates rule, understandably -- but some basic common sense would not be remiss. Excessive control and reluctance to deploy small units in the Army has had an adverse impact.
3. Force design and structure predicated on the War the Army wanted to fight instead of the wars (note earlier singular capital and current lower case plural w...) the Army has known it might have to fight since the 1980s -- really longer than that. The wrong kinds of units got priority in funding which led to the wrong kinds of training. The political (not military) decision to form USSOCOM also had a pernicious effect in that it removed (purposely) the proponent for COIN and FID from the Army for all practical intents and purposes, thus further insuring that the Army, per se, would be clueless about and indifferent to those types of efforts --again, even though it was abvious that that kind of commitment was highly likely. Consider the fact that the Bush Administration walked in the door saying 'no nation building.' They rapidly discovered that wasn't solely their call...
Those things are changing in some cases, however the legacy effect is still with us. Kudos to those who are effecting the changes but there are some who resist and hold back the others.
Long way of saying, yeah, it isn't going great but it probably is gong better than we have a right to expect in view of the aforementioned flaws.
The key thing will be the determination by Washington of what to do now.
We can produce a functioning nation with an effective central government -- but I doubt we have the patience for the 50 or so year effort that would take. We should not leave the Afghans in the lurch by summarily leaving but we need a realistic assessment of what we can afford, undertake and sustain. there are a number of things that are possible. We'll probably try several that aren't before settling on one that is... :wry:
Oh, and on the elites and their disdain for lesser being? Well, yeah. People are like that. So what. Not going to change. Marines do a little better because they hold themselves to a higher standard than most Army units do. SF and the 'quiet professional' stuff is hype. SF folks are quiet because, mostly they're older and the older guys keep the younger ones quiet. They are indeed professional but I know that the 'get along with the locals' does not extend to thinking that the 82d, say is as good as they are , much less that the 9th Battalion (Mechanized) of the 9th Infantry is. They will not disparage other units in public -- but privately... ;)
What did you do for the other 10 seconds?
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Originally Posted by
Schmedlap
...The rest were just the result of cocky 18-year-olds (redundant?) being jackasses...Total time required for this briefing: 30 seconds.
Yep. At least some things don't seem to have changed all that much... :wry:
No democratic traditions nor history in Afghanistan
Old Blue, let me disagree.
The tribal and jiirga traditions are as feudal and unrelated to Western style democracy as an day is to night.
Since 9/11 almost daily dialogue with Afghans, together with good friends at pretty senior levels there, in the field, do not support you view.
Decentralized feudalism is the name of the game in Afghanistan, controlled by the most undemocratic factor of all...religion...Islam. Been there more than once, in person, even though years ago...compared to the ages of history, noting much has changed there from my era down to today.
However, you can use your new math ideology and allow me to depend on factual history and we are each entitled to construe different viewpoints respectfully and maybe even humorously for that matter.
Here is an excerpt from Afghan royal/tribal history to exemplify the undemocratic traditions there then and still found out in the tribal areas, outside the City of Kabul:
"In 1800 Zaman Shah began his invasion of India and while in India, His brother Mahmood Joined his forces with Fateh Khan and received further aid from the Persians and the British to defeat Zaman Shah and declare Mahmood Khan king of Afghanistan. With the support of disfranchised tribal chiefs, the gates of the kingdom was opened and Mahmood Was declared the king of Afghanistan. Upon hearing this news, Zaman Shah hurried back to Kabul to raise an army to fight Mahmood Khan but the Chindawoli force in Kabul had already made a pact with Mahmood Khan and defeated the forces of Zaman Shah. Being defenseless Zaman Shah fled to Jalalabad where he was captured by Fateh Khan and by the order of Mahmood Khan, Zaman Shah was blinded and imprisoned in the Bala Hisar prison in Kabul. Prince Mahmood was declared Shah Mahmood Khan Durrani in 1801."
As found @:
http://www.afghanland.com/history/zamanshah.html
The above describes the beginnings of the Durrani long serving dynasty of kings of Afghanistan. See my following footnote about a Durrani who is retired from the Pakistan Foreign Service, whose Grandfather was the two times back King Duranni (line) in and of Afghanistan.
FOOTNOTE: A former senior cabinet member under the late Pakistani Prime Minister S. A. Bhutto started e-mail dialogue with me, and I with him, shortly after 9/11. He saud at the outset after 9/11, and I then foolishly ignored him, that the West just did not understand the religious non-democratic mind set of tribalism in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This fellow, by he way, is the Grandson of the two times prior King of Afghanistan. As I am age 69 today, if he is still living [haven't heard from him for over a year now, he was retired in Rawalpindi area] he would be in his early 80s now.
What my parents taught me
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You don't have to reject your (Catholic) upbringing and language in order to assimilate here (Northern PA), but you need to be less dependent (on it).
Yep, way too over simplified, but it works for me to this day.
Case in point: Those successful immigrants in CONUS speak (English) and know our culture to exactly what level? Do they need to speak English or even understand American Society to succeed?
OK, it's not war or social and political upheaval. Or is it?