Quote Originally Posted by Rob Thornton View Post
Dave,
COL John Agoglia (formerly the director out at PKSOI at Carlisle) is now heading up the Coin Academy in Afghanistan. He came by and saw the folks and centers located at Leavenworth recently. He'd mentioned one of his big challenges was getting the enough of the right kinds of people to where they could be of use to the Academy's mission. Unfortunately, that is also everyone's challenge.
Niel and the USA/USMC COIN Center are doing their best to facilitate a multi-way COIN knowledge flow, but the COIN Center is also carrying a heavy burden on a short number of very talented folks. Others, ourselves included, are also trying to help directly, or with related issues.
SWC has a unique population, with a number of skill sets, and back grounds. It could serve as a virtual reachback for unclassified issues - or for those with SIPR access we might be able to create smaller, ad hoc work groups for sensitive projects. Part of the problem with any ad hoc effort is identifying who knows what, how they can best be leveraged, and how to communicate from disparate locations.
Rob,

Thanks for the props.

I'll think through this and perhaps work some options that the COIN Center can do next week

Will second that COL Agoglia is looking for good people (uniform types) to volunteer to work at the COIN Center in Kabul. He is working to make it useful to theater much like COIN CFE in Taji was in Iraq.

First they need the "right" sort of people - knowledgeable in COIN and willing to work. The second is our larger battle - convincing the senior leadership to resource and value such institutions.

I returned last week from a week in Poland helping train Afghan Transition Teams from 15 countries (about 150 OMLT members) - the classes JCISFA (Rob's org), Ft. Riley, and the COIN Center (me) gave really made an impact - and the sad part was that for most of the nations this was their first exposure to 'COIN 101' and 'advisory techniques 101'. Nearly everyone was stoked after our presentations about getting to Kabul for the COIN classes there. There is a lot of work to be done in syncing the multinational effort in Afghanistan to be done.

If anyone wants more info PM and I'll put you in contact.