Quote Originally Posted by davidbfpo View Post
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.