Hi MikeF,
Meant to post this one here the other day, OBE. Merry Christmas.
From the WSJ by Ann Marlowe, Fighting a Smarter War in Afghanistan
No substantial business sends its sales force out to sell a product without supplying them with market research. But we are doing just that to our troops in Afghanistan. We've spent an estimated $173 billion in fiscal year 2009 selling a product to Afghans—cooperation with their government—without much idea why some people buy it and others don't.
On the platoon and company level, where American troops conduct ground-level counterinsurgency (COIN) in the Afghan Pashtun belt, we're fighting a good war. During five embeds with the Army from 2007 to last month, I've seen lieutenants and captains survey their area of operations, collecting information on the economy and patterns of work and travel. They regularly sit down with local elders to collaborate on development and security measures.The problem is that valuable data are collected, but then aren't analyzed, or not at the level where the rubber meets the road. What's more, experienced soldiers leave. So most of our soldiers are operating with bare guesses about where the leverage points are in their local populations.The good news is that more sophisticated methods are now being introduced in Afghanistan. Col. Pamela J. Hoyt heads the first team tasked with analyzing data in Afghanistan for the generals who set policy.
"What we have found, as you state, is that data is not in one repository with easy access," Col. Hoyt wrote to me in a Dec. 15 email. She's developing a database using previous surveys as well as "a model to evaluate if the Afghan National Army can achieve their growth objective given historical recruiting, attrition, and re-contracting rates, and increased recruiting levels."
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