The wrong army: What we built in Afghanistan

Some day when the history is written I am sure we will find Gary's recommendations a part of proposals made and discarded as far back as 2002:

How should we have adjusted to make the Iraq formula work for Afghanistan? We should’ve built a security system of local defense organizations, rather than a huge national army. We should’ve built a smaller national army, with adequate helicopter and air support to reinforce those local forces when they got in trouble. We should have begun the village-stabilization program of local self-defense militias much sooner to rectify this deficiency on a national level.

V/R

Dave

The wrong army

What we built in Afghanistan

• By GARY ANDERSON
• Last Updated: 12:44 AM, December 26, 2012
• Posted: 11:32 PM, December 25, 2012
• http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/the_wrong_army_RLQfo2NQTmtyn0Y046oA8H

A number of recent articles in the press have discussed how unready Afghanistan’s army is to take control of the war there. They’re basically right: The Afghan National Army is a flawed instrument.

We helped to make it so, but the Afghans themselves bear much of the blame. I was part of the problem, because I didn’t realize how bad the situation was until too late.

I served as a civilian adviser helping train the Afghan government in the only Pashtun-majority district in the country’s northwest, after having done similar work in Iraq — where our training mission was generally deemed a success.

It wasn’t until late last spring that I realized what a problem we had in Afghanistan. I worked closely with our Afghan battalion; under the tutelage of an Italian unit and a US Marine Special Operations Team, it performed fairly well. With coalition helicopter and air support, it appeared to be ready for transition.

Our major concern was that the Afghan army wasn’t prepared to logistically resupply its troops in our isolated district on the Turkmenistan border, where there is no road network. All of our resupply came by helicopter or parachute drop, so we were not confident that — once Coalition aircraft were no longer available — our Afghan National Army battalion or the local police could be resupplied through the winter.

We were informed in the spring that we had to leave and transition to Afghan security control by the end of July, far earlier than expected. But we believed that, if they could be resupplied, our battalion would fight.

We were badly mistaken.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/the_wrong_army_RLQfo2NQTmtyn0Y046oA8H