As a retired reserve officer (6 active and 25 in the reserve, last 8 with USSOCOM/formerly USREDCOM) I am glad to read of your several interests and experiences with CA and hope more will join in.
To me, perjudiced view of course, I am also interested to read that the CA program in Afghanistan was ginned up by a reservist.
Major General Burford, a reserve Army type, now on active duty with HQUSSOCOM is from this area and while I don't personally know him several of my retired regular Army friends here locally know him well and say he is doing a good job. He is of course reserve special forces background.
Today's military does not exist without the mix of regular, reserve, and Guard folks, which is why we have all three components.
To jump start hoped for more discussion here on SWJ the CA programs separately in both Afghaninstan and Iraq had to be unique to each separate country as each is a different field of action...I as now only a mere observer find Afghanistan very unique and it's CA needs are very tough, indeed, due to the religion/cultural differences within and among the Pukhtun majority and the several minority tribes which are not Pukhtuns.
To repeat myself on one point from this past weekend here on SWJ, our basic alliance began and still depends in large part on the so-called Northern Alliance in Afghanistan who are essentially non-Pukhtuns, whereas the majority of the Afghan population are Pukhtuns.
We also have the issue of many of the Colonels and Geneals (older in age, literally) were trained up under/during the USSR occupation of Afghanistan. Direct feedback I get from friends (all younger than me of course, but still personal and family friends) in theater in Afghanistan is that the older senior Afghan officers are an "issue" unto themselves and not in their private view much of a helpful part of the CA solution. This is a tough subject and perhaps bears light handed commenary on SWJ in the open.
The cost of a Japan/German style of CA as involves Afghanistan, which has no meaningful natural resources, which Iraq does have, oil, is a huge factor...and in these economic hard times and pressing insurgency times is quite different, my view, than an aceeded and flatly defeated Germany and Japan style of CA. Our CA in Afghanistan is literally still under hostile fire, and as is and has been the case in Northern Pakistan, it is hard, sometimes physically impossible, to building roads, bridges, schools, etc. while under fire or when after you build same, the terrorists come along and blow same up all over again. This is a tough nut to crack.
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