ANSF performance 2015 onwards

[omarali50]

This is just a vague thought, but here goes:

Afghan army officers identify their primary mission as protecting the Afghan state in a very conventional sense. Their main concern is Pakistan, and the defense of Afghanistan against conventional Pakistani forces....

This sounds odd at one level (conventional attack from Pakistan being unlikely, insurgency being very real, etc) but at another level it seems like a possible source of asabiya and future stability. States and their armies are based on some notion of common identity and common mission. Counter-insurgency on behalf of the corrupt ruling elite may be their mission, but is a shaky basis for common purpose and asabiya. What works in other states will also work in Afghanistan (and vice versa, what does not work well elsewhere will not work well there either, in this context). This sense of mission may be a positive..

[davidbfpo]

I'd seen a headline on General Campbell restricting access to data previously published and missed its importance until this hitherto unkown blog comment appeared via Twitter:http://sunnyinkabul.com/2015/01/30/w...e-afghan-army/

What General Campbell doesn’t want us to know is that the army that’s supposed to be taking over for the US to fight all the terrorist things? It’s disappearing. Even faster than usual.

So why is the Afghan Army quitting in droves? According to the Americans, it’s because…

…high operational tempo, sustained risk, soldier care and quality of life, and leave issues. Afghan casualties increased since the ANSF took the lead for security in June 2013. Although combat losses comprise a relatively small percentage of total ANSF attrition numbers, reducing ANSF casualties remains both a top morale and operational priority for ISAF and ANSF leaders.

But what’s underlying that is the uncertainty the Afghan forces feel after only a few years of existence. They haven’t been around long enough to know what it means to fight on their own. For most of those years they had their hands held by the most powerful military in the world. And by holding hands I mean we brought death from above in the form of all the A-10s and the B-1s and the F-16s and all the exploding things in the air over Afghanistan.

[davidbfpo]

Sub-titled:

A week on the frontlines with the Afghan National Police.

Link:http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/08/ma...hanistan.html?

A good read, if depressing.

[davidbfpo]

A NYT report:

Months after President Obama formally declared that the United States’ long war against the Taliban was over in Afghanistan, the American military is regularly conducting airstrikes against low-level insurgent forces and sending Special Operations troops directly into harm’s way under the guise of “training and advising.”In justifying the continued presence of the American forces in Afghanistan, administration officials have insisted that the troops’ role is relegated to counterterrorism, defined as tracking down the remnants of Al Qaeda and other global terrorist groups, and training and advising the Afghan security forces who have assumed the bulk of the fight.

Link:http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/30/wo...ghanistan.html

[Bob's World]

A power that creates and protects a government in some foreign place, cannot create a security force to effectively secure that de facto illegitimate government against some challenger who's forces perceive their cause as legitimate.

The US tried and failed in the Philippines in the early 1900s; in Vietnam in the mid 1900s, and in Iraq and Afghanistan in the early 2000s. Each with the building of partner military capacity as the corner stone to the strategy, each a complete failure.

This is not, by the way, in the much touted "Decade of War" lessons learned. We have not learned this lesson.

[omarali50]

"A power that creates and protects a government in some foreign place, cannot create a security force to effectively secure that de facto illegitimate government against some challenger who's forces perceive their cause as legitimate."

This is too broad a generalization. It depends on the power, the force they create and the enemy they face.
In this case, failure was not guaranteed. But of course, it COULD fail.
The tragedy is that it could have worked.

[Bob's World]

Broad indeed. But not too broad.

Please give me an example of where this has worked?

[Bill Moore]

"A power that creates and protects a government in some foreign place, cannot create a security force to effectively secure that de facto illegitimate government against some challenger who's forces perceive their cause as legitimate."

This is too broad a generalization. It depends on the power, the force they create and the enemy they face.
In this case, failure was not guaranteed. But of course, it COULD fail.
The tragedy is that it could have worked.

I'm with you on this and it takes us back to the wise saying that, "all models are wrong, but still useful." If someone becomes overly enamored with their model, it no longer serves its heuristic role. Clearly the USSR created a number of governments where its security forces held the line for decades. One could argue we did the same in Germany and Japan. In Vietnam, the government did hold against the insurgency, they couldn't hold against the superior conventional power of North Vietnam, and no this wasn't Phase 3 of Mao's insurgency model. You can also argue that the UK and France created a number of states and trained their security forces that have held the line.

If you're going to argue that they failed 50 to 100 years later, that is getting a bit petty and unrealistic. New issues emerge, history doesn't freeze in place.

If you look at the Arab Spring, any state that kept control of their security forces defeated the uprising, with the exception of Syria. Assad's government in Syria, to the surprise of many who embrace liberal social models, still exists.

Clearly these issues are much more complex than any simplistic model can explain. We need to use multiple modes as lens to try to understand, but also free ourselves from models to take a fresh look at the issue as it really is, without the bias of a model or ideology.

[Morgan]

I was under the impression that US efforts in the Philippines did work....? Messy to be sure but successful, yes? Wasn't it essentially a fairly peaceful US "colony" until 1942?

[Bill Moore]

I was under the impression that US efforts in the Philippines did work....? Messy to be sure but successful, yes? Wasn't it essentially a fairly peaceful US "colony" until 1942?

It was relatively peaceful, and we were relatively effective, but the Philippines in my view has never been peacefully united. It has always been a violent country with its various militias, insurgent groups, and criminal groups (both state and non-state). There have been rays of hope with the likes of Magsaysay and the current Aquino, but overall it is a still a basket case in many places due to high levels of corruption (and no it isn't culturally appropriate) and power struggles among different groups. It is just another example of state where simplistic models do not provide understanding or answers.