A gloomy observation on Afghan training
A gloomy observation on Afghan training
SUSAN SACHS
KABUL— From Saturday's Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Dec. 31, 2010 6:56PM EST
Quote:
In the nine months he worked as senior adviser to the chief of the Border Police, John Brewer relied on a local translator to navigate Afghan culture. Yet the Canadian Mountie spent as much time trying to interpret the actions of foreign forces to equally puzzled Afghans.
Why, they asked him, did Germany provide their training base with drug-sniffing police dogs but not dog food or kennels? Why would the Americans build a brand new border police headquarters on land with no water? And what should be done with the thousands of donated European radios that do not operate on the same frequency as the Afghan ones?
His polite response was to suggest that Afghans speak up for themselves and that NATO officers listen to them more. Still, the plain-spoken Superintendent Brewer will admit to some frustration with the waste of time and money through miscommunication. “A lesser man,” he says, “would say it’s pissing in the wind.”
...
The Afghanistan National Police (ANP)
Copied here for reference.
Police Mentoring in Afghanistan 2007-2009
Entry Excerpt:
Police Mentoring in Afghanistan 2007-2009 by Dr. William Rosenau, Center for Naval Analyses, Strategic Studies Solution Center.
The role of the police is an important but largely overlooked aspect of contemporary counterinsurgency and stability operations. Although academic and policy specialists have examined the role of police in post-conflict environments, the question of how police should be organized, trained, and equipped for counterinsurgency campaigns has received little systematic attention.
Similarly, US military doctrine and the professional military literature, while not ignoring the subject entirely, do not consider it in any systematic way. This gap is particularly ironic, given the prominent role that soldiers and Marines have played in training indigenous police and other security forces in counterinsurgency campaigns from Vietnam to Afghanistan.
If the broader topic of police and counterinsurgency is under-examined, the subject of mentoring—that is, advising and training—foreign police forces is even more neglected. American Marines, soldiers, and other military personnel preparing to deploy to Afghanistan for the police mentoring mission have few sources of information and analysis available to them.
This monograph addresses that gap. Using a series of ten vignettes, this report examines in depth the experiences of individual American and British soldiers and Marines who served as mentors in Afghanistan during the 2007-2009 period.
Police Mentoring in Afghanistan 2007-2009 by Dr. William Rosenau, CNA.
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The master of Spin Boldak
Hat tip to Abu M, who commends this article from Harpers Magazine, December 2009:
Quote:
What are the trade-offs for using a character like Col. Raziq? (On the one hand, he is seen as being effective, but on the other hand ... well, anyone who has not yet read the 2009 Matthieu Aikins profile of Raziq for Harper's should.)
Link:http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/12/0082754
The article is about the Afghan Border Police and I have not searched to see if Col. Raziq is still in place.