Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs View Post
There might also a lack of long-term strategy play into this.

I have two pet theories about how to handle small wars as the one in AFG:

(1) As described, build foreigners into the force till it turned foreign completely, shedding the too technicized TO&E components in the process.

(2) Send your troops, but set a withdrawal table from day one and tell the locals about it. Also tell them that for every WIA you take two replacements will arrive and for every KIA you take ten replacements will arrive - so violence against your personnel will have a perverted effect and be discouraged strongly. This approach is supposed to buy a calm period, for whatever purpose that's required.


Both could be combined, but (2) would lose effectiveness in such a combination.


Meanwhile, the standard Western approach under U.S. leadership is to send relatively few occupation troops, rotate them and reinforce them if politicians get too much under pressure by poor news about the occupation.
In parallel, indigenous puppet regime forces are being built from scratch, perform rather poorly and are unreliable for many reasons.
The German example in East Africa (starting 1881) is a good one as was the British example across their colonies.

The critical success factor is based on all the officers and as many as possible of the NCOs being imported. Over time - many years - an NCO corps among the indigenous will being to form and the respective units will begin to form their own cultures.

The Rhodesian African Rifles example bears study as the officers were local and permanent as opposed to merely being on temporary secondment.

The principal US problem is the short attention span.

US training example in the DRC

Not sure the US model in the DRC is the correct method.