ANSF performance 2015 onwards

[Bob's World]

One cannot train a soldier to fight for what he does not believe in.

We always want to make these things objective and measureable. Create a government. Check. Create a military. Check. Employ military to preserve said government. Fail

There is a reason retention has always been horrible in Afghanistan. There is a reason the Taliban fighters fight rings around most ANA units. Legitimacy of the Taliban, and illegitimacy of GIRoA and the ANA. Legality does not equal popular legitimacy. Revolution and Resistance against foreign forces and the collaborating governments and forces they create in those foreign lands historically enjoy tremendous legitimacy across the rest of the society involved.

We need to stop believing that because what we bring is so good, that we will be exempt from this natural human response. The nature of our actions create the nature of the response. The character of our actions, and the character of what we seek to change does have a mitigating effect on the degree of that natural response. But nature is what nature is.

We see SecDef Ash Carter publicly criticizing the "Iraqi Military" for lacking the will to fight. That shows his own lack of understanding of this type of conflict. First, the state of Iraq and the Iraqi military have not existed in fact for months. What is left is a Shia remnant of that state. Second, this is a government WE created and a military WE created to preserve that government. To criticize these men and their lack of will, while not recognizing and appreciating the fundamental nature of the conflict and fundamental flaws of the system we created is our own failure. Our strategic failure of understanding far exceeds any failure of performance on the part of those we have seduced into those systems.