Why are we still leading missions, instead of supporting Afghans conduct them?

[Dayuhan]

The big unless is unless we stop backing one side to the exclusion of the other and instead take a more neutral role to oversee a negotiated settlement that leads to shared governance under a new constitution.

Will they negotiate a settlement and share governance, or will they fight until someone wins, with the winner taking complete control and stomping the loser?

Given recent history and the prevailing political culture, which is more likely?

[Bob's World]

Will they negotiate a settlement and share governance, or will they fight until someone wins, with the winner taking complete control and stomping the loser?

Given recent history and the prevailing political culture, which is more likely?

I don't know. I just know what will happen if we only support one side enough to create an unsustainable "decent interval" and then leave.

Better to try what might not work but creates a chance at an enduring stability than to try what we know is unlikely to create an enduring stability but that might create a narrow window of "success" that we can withdraw through.

[jcustis]

They can do it their way, and their way will probably be better than ours.

In my humble opinion, their way may have its own unique effect, but it is not better, when framed against our impatience, the context of national policy timelines, and our overall work ethic.

To second a little bit on what I think Ken is saying, along the careerism vein, getting the ANSF out there in the lead requires substantial investments in utilizing the right leadership to get the job done. Sacrificing a rock star(s) to leave a command to do the job forces a commander to run the risk of his own command not performing as well during the deployment.

You could attribute that to a commander simply wanting to complete the mission and do it well, but we are not even effectively accomplishing any mission over there right now, IMO. We are simply holding the various threads together until the next team can come in and take hold...and they then do the same until their rotation comes to a close. The metrics for success shift, morph, and change between unit rotations not so much from a calculated process of analyzing the problem set and establishing good measures of effectiveness and performance, but too often from pet peeves, parochialism, and our own cultural hang-ups. The larger problem anyway is that we have not established MOE/MOP for ANSF that make any sense, in the context of the policies of GIRoA or the MOD. Put another way, even if we are screwed up for not structuring our fight properly, it doesn't matter because the attention should not be on us, as has been brought up here.

Mission success, put another way, is just so arbitrary that it's hard to lay a bulk of blame on careerism. I think the larger culprit is our collective impatience. I don't think it's wrong to be impatient, and although the MOEs/MOPs tend to be shewed and not reflect any sensible way forward, we as Americans expect to see results...something...anything. The ANSF move at a decidedly different pace that even drove me up the wall at times

This sort of impatient rears its ugly head when you sit back and take a look at the cycle of new programs and initiatives that are paraded out by the RCs. It can be dizzying at times to try to keep up with it, and lays bare the fact that unless there is a cohesive plan at the highest levels, small unit commanders who own the battlespace and do the row hoeing waste a ton of time trying to grasp what the next greatest idea is to come down the chute (and one that often doesn't reflect their tactical reality).

Internal to the ANSF, nepotism, graft, and corruption are rampant, at least according to the context that I viewed it. Some may say, well, that is THEIR way, and I agree that it is important to be able to step back and look at it all with bit of patience, cultural understanding, etc., but when you have a private in a platoon of Afghan Border Police who (by virtue of his family connections) effectively runs the platoon over the sergeant who is already there (because the officer is not there, BTW) and directs the post-standing rotation to where his tribe mates rarely leave the COP while other soldiers spend all the time down at the TCP, there's a problem. It's their way, but that way grinds and tears at any fabric of military efficiency that is to be had. Add in a dose of angst over lack of pay, or the graft that comes along with it when the commander takes his cut of the food stipend, and we get the understandable desertion rates and ghost solider problems that we face. Someone still has to get outside the wire tomorrow and patrol, and our boys are there anyway, so they saddle up and get 'er done.

We haven't been at this for all that long, in terms of ANSF development. Granted, we have been mentoring and employing militias for a long time, wearing shemaghs and long beards, and have worked our SOF elements into the mix with a variety efforts, but we have not been at the business of establishing cohesive armed formations, capable of employing C2, that can be integrated into the large coalition effort, as long as we had by the time the OIF surge took hold. The ISF had a military tradition and framework that was light years ahead of Afghanistan, so I only put the Iraqis out there because I think it is too easy to measure our success there and get easily frustrated when it doesn't work in OEF.

[Demon Fox]

I'm currently working as an S2 mentor for an ANA Commando battalion. I see this problem starkly with the SpecOps unit currently assigned as their FID partners. Their OPSEC measures are so restrictive, that the Commando leadership has very little input on operations and planning - much less know where they're going when they get on the helo. Dislosure is limited to the ground tactical plan. They get to see imagery of the target village, but are never told where the village is located or the HVT names.

I understand their concerns due to the rash of FID partners turning on their trainers. They even had an incident of their own recently, but they must take that leap of faith and allow them to plan and run their own missions and be given the information and resources to do it.

The problem extends into equipment employment as well. For example, the Commandos have a slew of Etrex GPSs sitting in their arms room as part of their Tashkil (MTOE). As far as I've been able to assess, the Commandos have received no training on this equipment (as well as simple map and compass) and their US FID partners do not allow it for fear they will plot their coordinates on the objective and discover their location. This is not how to do FID, folks.

My team did it plenty in Iraq and we never had OPSEC issues. Our FID partners were thankful to us that they were finally given a measure of trust to be equal participants in operations.

I found it interesting the day after the news broke about us killing bin Laden, several of the Commandos stated "the next you invade Pakistan, we want to go with you!" They were serious. They KNOW who the real enemy is here.

v/r

DF

[TDB]

I too was unable to watch the documentary, might have to find an illicit way of downloading it. I did however read an article linked on the SWJ main site, as someone has posted above, the rejection of local/human intel is quite alarming. Not to mention that human geography seems to be almost ignored, not exactly big news as everything I seem to be reading is pointing to the U.S trying to apply a fairly rigid COIN strategy throughout the country with little consideration for the situation on the ground. Evens in Nuristan (Pech valley) and Kunar (Korengal) have shown this, I wonder if people have been aware that the populations in these area (or anywhere across this part of the border with Pakistan) have rejected any form of central government for centuries if they'd even have bothered. Not that i'm saying that trying to conduct state building in these areas in a fulorn hope, i'm saying that going about the way the U.S/ISAF have hasn't worked and only result in a withdrawal (from the areas noted above, or at least as far as I'm aware).

[davidbfpo]

This SWJ article helps to explain and at the end there is some positive nes on the ANA:http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/jou...p/776-doan.pdf

Elsewhere, probably in several threads, we have debated the length of a tour (6-15 months), the lessons learnt in the Imperial era in NWFP (political agents, locally recruited units with long service British officers etc) and the cultural divide.

I still maintain, yes from my "armchair", that only when Afghans serve alongside all allied soldiers / marines will progress be made - at an individual and unit level. 'Advise & Assist' may work and I know claims were made that in recent operations in Helmand Province the ANA took the lead. I simply don't think either side at the lowest levels, assuming it is a simple 'black & white' situation, have accepted joint working 24/7. Murders of ISAF clearly do not help and cast doubt on "jointness".

[TDB]

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...man_insurgency

I think this article nicely sums up the complexity of the situation when it comes to ANSF.

[JMA]

This SWJ article helps to explain and at the end there is some positive nes on the ANA:http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/jou...p/776-doan.pdf

Elsewhere, probably in several threads, we have debated the length of a tour (6-15 months), the lessons learnt in the Imperial era in NWFP (political agents, locally recruited units with long service British officers etc) and the cultural divide.

I still maintain, yes from my "armchair", that only when Afghans serve alongside all allied soldiers / marines will progress be made - at an individual and unit level. 'Advise & Assist' may work and I know claims were made that in recent operations in Helmand Province the ANA took the lead. I simply don't think either side at the lowest levels, assuming it is a simple 'black & white' situation, have accepted joint working 24/7. Murders of ISAF clearly do not help and cast doubt on "jointness".

David, sadly it is a case of... "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

The Brits have enough experience from across their empire to draw on so they really don't have any excuses.

Certainly in this neck of the colonies the model of the Kings African Rifles was good and worked... with I suppose the best example being the refined model of the Rhodesian African Rifles which was superb in so many ways.

I suggest that Ray with his sub-continent experience will have important and valuable input into how given the Indian experience of forming colonial units from scratch what the most efficient way to have created/formed/built the ANA would have been.

To me the start point that everyone gets paid and seems to go to the highest bidder is a game changer. Even the insurgents (Taliban) get paid. Interesting.

Then we see out of Somalia troops trained and armed by the EU (including most bizarrely a Finnish contingent) defect to Al-Qaida and/or Al-Shabaab on becoming operational. One wonders how they were selected?

Clearly not enough experience is there nor enough thought given to forming/establishing/building indigenous forces in Afghanistan. The prognosis is poor.

We did discuss this matter somewhere here before. And I say again that both the Brits and the yanks got there act together in terms of tour lengths and training the Afghans right from 2006 it would be a different story now. Too late she cried.