The Political Officer as a Counter-Insurgent (merged thread)

[Steve the Planner]

Semple's comments on PRTs (the last 1/2" of the uTube) was very interesting, and he said nothing I disagree with, as they have been deployed to date.

On the other hand, I thought his comments on UNAMAs intentional hands-off attitude to the election was very significant.

He called the election snafu a very avoidable problem.

Having served on the political team in UNAMI (Iraq), the team was fully deployed well-before, and after the Iraq election. The SRSG was out daily working to help Iraq get through the election laws, establish the processes and mechanics, and monitor to assure reasonable standards.

Granted what Semple said about each UN mission being different, and having their own problems, but, clearly, international oversight of the Afghan election was less than optimum.

As for the political officer comments, I usually try to avoid them because they are out of my lane, but the overview he gave really sounded to be historically well-grounded, and insightful (at least to me).

[davidbfpo]

An odd article, if only as I've not seen this anything on this Afghan-American in the public domain. Some nice quotes, my favourites are:

Amini reviewed the speeches of U.S. commanders, crossing out lines that might be perceived as culturally insensitive. In some cases, Amini was blunt: “Sir, I will not translate that,” he would say.

Followed by:

Through friendship, an Afghan will sacrifice his life for you. Through bad relations, he will turn into your enemy.

Link:http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...76f_story.html

[Bob's World]

I for one am far more comfortable seeing an Afghan who made Kebabs in Nebraska advising a US Commander in Afghanistan on Afghan culture than I am am seeing a 90-day wonder US Afghan Hand advising an Afghan governmental minister on Afghan governance.

I can't think how many times I wished that we in the United States had foreign military officers advising our Congress and senior governmental officials across civil and military and law enforcement service on how to best do their jobs. Oh, wait, yes I can remember: Never.

The very idea of it is absurd. Equally so when done by us in some foreign land.

[max161]

With all due respect but I wonder if this type of long term continuity is not an issue for us in Afghanistan. Has the advice provided over the tenures of seven commanders been sound? Again with all due respect but we tend to gravitate to those who can speak English and the local language well and know our culture and the local one(s) as well (which makes us comfortable) and this sometimes puts blinders on us. I have no idea if that is the case in this situation and I am sure I will be chastised by those who know him as a patriot but I think we should remain objective about the advice we receive and objective about those who provide advice.

[Bill Moore]

Political advisors, indigenous or not, look at the world through their own lens and generally attempt to convince others to see the same thing. I can't think of too many countries I have been in where I could simply accept the advice of local advisors without considering the context. I recall getting a lot of advise from Kurds, Sunni's, and Shia in Iraq that looked after their specific interests. The same was true in many other countries. If a foreign military ever occupies the U.S. I wonder if they would pick Karl Rove or James Carville?

While locals "must" be listened to, I actually think it makes sense to have a non-local political advisor who is familiar with the culture, language, and views of the multiple political/ethnic factions to help the commander put things in context. I think we have defaulted to blindly listening to local political advisors from Karzai to Ahmed Chalabi, and that has definitely led us astray at the strategic level, and we tend to the do the same thing at the tactical level. When we embrace "it is the tribe stupid" then we stupidly default to working with any tribal leader willing to work with us which is expedient, but often undermines our longer term objectives.

Seems that based on my readings we did much better at this sort of thing during in WWII. Somehow without human terrain teams, complexity, and COIN doctrine it was understood that socio-economic-political aspects were important and they were integrated into the planning. We picked sides based on our ends, and in some cases they backfired, but it was still done more deliberately than it has been done in Iraq and Afghanistan.