Setting up effective, local security forces

[Bill Moore]

What you're missing here is that the whole idea of recruiting locals directly into the armed forces of a foreign power is only possible is the foreign power rules the area. You can't do it if there's an even nominally sovereign local government in the picture. The US could and did form such units in its colony in the Philippines. It couldn't and didn't and hasn't in Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan because these are not direct imperial ventures where the US is setting up to rule, they are nominally sovereign states with their own governments and armed forces.

Either you're a colonial power, in which case you can and will take direct control of indigenous armed forces, or you're not, in which case you can't and won't. Can't have it both ways.

Exactly, that is why trying to compare the U.S. foreign capacity building to European foreign conscripts lead by Europeans is futile exercise. If we integrated foreign troops into our logistic, C2, medical, fires and intelligence systems and led them with U.S. officers and senior NCOs we could rapidly employ relatively effective forces that were largely composed of foreign troops. However, in a FID scenario that just isn't possible.

Other comments were not accurate either. Our political patience is rarely the problem. It doesn't take 10 plus years to develop a relatively effective fighting force. It may or may not take 10 plus years to stomp out an insurgency, but that is a different issue.

Where I think we go wrong (and this is just a start):

- We try to develop forces that mirror the U.S. force structure and tell them to employ our doctrine. It is generally too sosphisticated for most in developing nations to replicate, culturally inappropriate, and fiscally unsustainable.

- Department of State has responsibility for security assistance and frankly they don't know what they're doing. They have a long track record of throwing millions of dollars at these challenges with little understanding of what is actually required. The worst part is they do not develop a logistics system for the supported nation that is sustainable (if they develop one at all). If Americans had a better appreciation of how much Dept of State spent on these efforts and what little they have to show for it, I suspect more authorities would shift back to the military. State should own policy and have a veto vote, but once a decision is made to execute they need to enable and stop impeding.

- If it is a security assistance Mobile Training Team U.S. forces do not have the authority to combat advise, only to train and equip. Without mentoring them in combat it is very difficult for those trained to transition from the classroom and range to the battlefield. Mentors in the field instill confidence and can make on the spot corrections and identify shortfalls in training that need to be addressed. As that military matures over time these lessons are incorporated in their doctrine (not U.S. doctrine with their country's name stamped over it) and taught in their schools.

- Not surprisingly, when forces that are actually trained to build partner security forces like U.S. Special Forces have the resources and authorities to do so like they did in Iraq and Afghanistan they developed some very capable partner Special Forces units. Much better than the sepoys and numerous other forces developed by the Europeans during the colonial years. The point is the U.S. can do this if we have the right people in charge it enabled with the right authorities and resources. We have a proven track record. We have a dysfunctional bureaucracy and disparate authorities that make effective execution difficult at best, impossible at worst.

[Dayuhan]

Where I think we go wrong (and this is just a start):

I would add that we're inclined to assume that the nominal partner government and its security forces share our goals and objectives and our ideas on how those goals and objectives are best achieved, an assumption that is not always valid... to put it mildly.

[JMA]

Our political patience is rarely the problem.

I suggest it is, especially when it changes mid stream (as it is apt to happens with politicians) and the military have to rapidly rejig the process. That's when the compromises on quality start.

It doesn't take 10 plus years to develop a relatively effective fighting force. It may or may not take 10 plus years to stomp out an insurgency, but that is a different issue.

That depends on the quality of your enemy in that instance. If you are drawing your manpower from the same pool as the enemy then it all will come down to their training and leadership. This is what your command cadre will have to deal with when they take the unit operational.

Where I think we go wrong (and this is just a start):

- We try to develop forces that mirror the U.S. force structure and tell them to employ our doctrine. It is generally too sosphisticated for most in developing nations to replicate, culturally inappropriate, and fiscally unsustainable.

That's a problem with who gets to be put in charge of this training and these units. If they come from a rigidly structured environment they will probably not have the faintest idea how to go about it and will resort to what they know.

To be honest the US doctrine is too sophisticated for the US military to adopt across the whole military itself.

- Department of State has responsibility for security assistance and frankly they don't know what they're doing. They have a long track record of throwing millions of dollars at these challenges with little understanding of what is actually required. The worst part is they do not develop a logistics system for the supported nation that is sustainable (if they develop one at all). If Americans had a better appreciation of how much Dept of State spent on these efforts and what little they have to show for it, I suspect more authorities would shift back to the military. State should own policy and have a veto vote, but once a decision is made to execute they need to enable and stop impeding.

You know, I know that State is dysfunctional and for the most part incompetent. Is that going to change anytime soon?

- If it is a security assistance Mobile Training Team U.S. forces do not have the authority to combat advise, only to train and equip. Without mentoring them in combat it is very difficult for those trained to transition from the classroom and range to the battlefield. Mentors in the field instill confidence and can make on the spot corrections and identify shortfalls in training that need to be addressed. As that military matures over time these lessons are incorporated in their doctrine (not U.S. doctrine with their country's name stamped over it) and taught in their schools.

Who would these mentors be? I suggest that if they were have to be drawn from your most combat experienced soldiers with the proviso that they have the aptitude and emotional disposition to do this sort of work.

- Not surprisingly, when forces that are actually trained to build partner security forces like U.S. Special Forces have the resources and authorities to do so like they did in Iraq and Afghanistan they developed some very capable partner Special Forces units. Much better than the sepoys and numerous other forces developed by the Europeans during the colonial years. The point is the U.S. can do this if we have the right people in charge it enabled with the right authorities and resources. We have a proven track record. We have a dysfunctional bureaucracy and disparate authorities that make effective execution difficult at best, impossible at worst.

Special forces don't only have to train special forces. A special forces training team can and should be able to train anything from a village militia to a HVT hit squad. I know they seem to only want to do the sexy stuff but that is where military discipline comes in.

The problem is that there is a squeeze from both ends... from the politicians on one side and from the grunt level on the other who have all the answers... and it seems those in the middle don't have the balls to push back.

See an example from the current Australian infantry problems.

[Bob's World]

The real question is, are we attempting to build a security force to protect a government that we think is best from its own populace; or, are we attempting to help a government that its own populace wants protect them from some rogue threat (internal or external). If internal, does that "rogue" threat have any legal, trusted and certain options for engaging its government, or are they forced to resort to illegal / violent arguments?

This is a fine line, and it is one where the perceptions applied matter. Our perceptions as the intervening power are the ones that matter least, and one can rest assured that the perceptions of the government in question will be heavily biased to the preservation of their own status quo.

I am happy to argue to any audience that in Afghanistan we attempt to do the former and that more than any other factor is why we are still there slogging away after all this time and why the security force can't seem to become a competent, self-sufficient organization. GIRoA is a Northern Alliance monopoly. We think that is the right answer, and GIRoA seeks to preserve the monopoly. The excluded segment of the populace have no trusted, legal and certain means avialable to them, so they act out illegally. We brand them all "Taliban" with little regard to which are revolutionary actors seeking to force GIRoA to break their monopoly, and which are resistance actors who are simply weary of our foreign occupation of their home and the violence we bring to them on behalf of GIRoA.

Such approaches were the model for both Colonialism and for Containment as well. In the modern era, however, the pursuit of such approaches is demanding ever increasing energy and producing ever decreasing effects. It is also a major driver of the motivations that lead young men frustrated with the governance of their own country to not only join nationalist insurgency movements, but to also volunteer to support trans-nationalist terrorist organizations such as AQ.

Sometimes there may still be times and places where creating and sustaining artificial systems of security designed to protect and preserve some government against the express insurgent will of its own populace. I suspect those cases are rare.

Increasingly we are better served by employing our influence to bring those governments and populace to the table to work out new guards for their future security, and be willing to work with whatever and whomever emerges from such a process.

We need to evolve.

[davidbfpo]

I wonder whether the impact of increasing urbanisation across the world will have an impact here. To date much of the counter-AQ and counter-AQ partners has been in relatively isolated / remote / extreme climates / rural locations.

The scale of FID could well increase. Imagine if Nigeria or Egypt was the setting.

The French experience in Algeria for example, where the French at one point had security forces of 500k IIRC and this included a not insignificant local element. At that time Algeria was split evenly between rural and urban IIRC; today it is very urbanised.

[Bill Moore]

Posted by Davidbfpo

I wonder whether the impact of increasing urbanisation across the world will have an impact here. To date much of the counter-AQ and counter-AQ partners has been in relatively isolated / remote / extreme climates / rural locations.

The scale of FID could well increase. Imagine if Nigeria or Egypt was the setting.

The French experience in Algeria for example, where the French at one point had security forces of 500k IIRC and this included a not insignificant local element. At that time Algeria was split evenly between rural and urban IIRC; today it is very urbanised.

I think increasing urbanization already has had an impact on military operations, and I'm not sure why you appear to be dismissing the rather large urban CT operations in Baghdad, Tikrit, Falujah, Mogadishu, Kandahar, etc.

On the other hand I think your point is still interesting, it does seem AQ affiliates/partners generally establish strong holds in rural areas (where in theory they should be easier to target). I suspect part of the reason their activity is limited in the larger urban areas is due to security concerns. A lot of citizens watching and reporting, so unless they could establish control in an urban area this will likely remain the norm (of course there will also be exceptions that we may to respond to). I don't think too many people in the world, even the Muslim world view AQ as liberators, so I suspect AQ will generally be at greater risk in larger urban areas and forced to work in a traditional underground cellular in these areas for security.

FID encompasses a broad range of activities and actors, and if the scale of the AQ presence and activity in an urban areas is, the appropriate response is generally small scale security assistance composed mainly of personnel from intelligence, special operations, and contractors with speciality skills. This is often enough to enable the affected state to defeat/suppress this threat.

[Bob's World]

Bill,

The Soviets promoted a worker's movement, focused in the Cities. Mao tried that and it fell flat, so they shifted to rural areas where their message of land reform resonated more effectively in their agrarian society. Bottom line is, as an insurgent leader go with what works, not with what the book says. Actually that is some damn good advice for our COIN gurus as well...

There can be many reasons why more activity happens outside a city rather than in, some as simple as the old rule of not defecating where one eats.

Most of the insurgency we see inside of Afghanistan is the resistance (small t taliban) against the US forces, and the populaces with the most reason for resisting the US/NATO forces are in the rural areas where we have been operating.

Similarly, the revolutionary aspect of the insurgency (coming out of Pakistan where the Big T Taliban take sanctuary) primarily targets the low hanging fruit of GIRoA governance, and it is much easier to take out a police outpost or disrupt traffic on some remote highway than it is to storm the Provincial HQ.

[ganulv]

There can be many reasons why more activity happens outside a city rather than in[.]

The days of an urban cadre in the Guatemalan civil war with which I am familiar were numbered indeed (and s/he knew it). On the other hand, I suspect that during the darkest days of the conflict guerrillas in the hills slept more soundly than did civilians in the cities and pueblos. Something like a third of the Guatemalan population was urban at that time, as compared to about two-thirds of the contemporary Iraqi population. And in Iraq, outside of the north there isn’t much in the way of highlands to abscond to. And of course the stability of governance in Iraq in 2007 didn’t approach that in Guatemala in 1983. So, as you say, lots of reasons.

[davidbfpo]

Bill,

That will teach me to post on a Sunday afternoon after gardening. How could I overlook Baghdad and Basra?

I would disagree with you and this is not the subject of this thread:

I suspect part of the reason their activity is limited in the larger urban areas is due to security concerns. A lot of citizens watching and reporting, so unless they could establish control in an urban area this will likely remain the norm...

Citizens do not always watch, let alone report. I do still wonder if AQ & partners switched to an urban area, let alone a huge metropolis, how external FID would work today. In Iraq AQ was not the main enemy, rather a local coalition.

[Bill Moore]

David,

Agree part of this is not on topic, but still necessary to put things in context. There are few places that AQ would be welcome in urban areas. You can't compare them to the Leninists, but people do inappropriately compare them to the Maoists, so you can't win in that regard.

The Brits had to deal with a very tough IRA problem that appeared to those of watching from the outside to be mostly urban. From that problem set a number of useful urban fighting tactics (not to be confused with strategy) we're propogated throughout the West (and perhaps beyond). We now have our own lessons that we can teach in this regard, but the key in my mind is not to confuse teaching tactics with helping the partner get their strategy right.

Long way of saying I think we're quite capable of helping a nation through FID with urban security problems (especially AQ), but we haven't overcome our own deficiencies in getting the strategy right. This generally seems to be area of friction. A local government may have the right strategy, but the wrong tactics, and we show up and often teach good tactics, but push the wrong strategy based on our view of how the world works. Probably taking this down a path you don't want to this thread to go down, but I think it is relevant. If we get the strategy right (more accurately those we're assisting get the strategy right), and communicate it effectively, is likely the forces we help train will fight more effectively. There are a lot of reasons those we train often don't fight well, and one of the intangibles is they often don't believe in the cause and method. The whole world can see it on u-tube, Frontline, National Geographic, and other news specials where the media accompanies our guys into battle with their Afghan counterparts. The most interesting parts of those shows are when they translate the discussions between the Afghan forces and the locals and the Afghan forces apology for the tactics, but say right now they're being forced by the coalition to act this way. We're not good at listening, so I doubt many in our nation focus on those cues, but instead focus on the boastful U.S. NCO or officer explaining how inept the Afghan security forces are because they don't act like us.

Back to your point, what significant change and challenges do you think we would face with our FID doctrine if the focus shifted from the rural to the urban? I think I'm still missing your point.