The Five Year Itch
(DOD photo)
I share Kevin Drum’s frustrations with the odd continuing leaks out of Afghanistan in which military commanders seem to be contradicting themselves:
Overall, the evidence suggests that steadily increasing U.S. troop strength has had virtually no effect in the past; that the Taliban is getting continually stronger; that the central government is corrupt and incompetent; and that even under the best circumstances the Afghan army can’t be brought up to speed in less than five years. At the same time, U.S. commanders say they understand that they have only 12-18 months to turn things around.
The other thing I wonder about is these incredibly long time horizons for getting the Afghan army up to speed. Why so long? We’re not training these guys to mount an amphibious invasion of Japan or get into dogfights with the IDF. The idea is that they need to be able to fight the Taliban. And which superpower is funding, arming, and training the Taliban? Nobody! They’re making do with limited support from perhaps some elements in Pakistani intelligence and maybe some Gulf money.
Given Afghanistan’s long series of civil wars, there are experienced military commanders around on the non-Taliban side and plenty of veteran fighters throughout the country. It seems as if relatively small quantities of American support should decisively tilt the balance of power. And, indeed, in the winter of 2001-2002 they did decisively tilt the balance of power. Did the Northern Alliance troops suddenly forget how to fight? Did we forget how to help them?
53 Responses to “The Five Year Itch”
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August 24th, 2009 at 9:23 am
Past tense… We forgot to reward them. The warlords didn’t successfully force out the Taliban to have NATO and the U.S. indefinitely occupy their land. We’re having trouble training a competent Afghani army because they get better training/pay/security from warlords than the U.S. military. Go figure…
August 24th, 2009 at 9:28 am
I’m an Army lieutenant who just returned from a year in Iraq advising, assisting, and training the Iraqi army in Mosul.
The long training horizons given aren’t how long it takes to impart tactical competence and skills at the level of the companies and platoons that do the fighting, but organizational and logistical skills at battalion and higher level to plan and integrate all levels of combat and support units throughout their life cycle – not just combat operations and how to fight, but higher level coordination and what we now call “sustainment,” which includes not just supply, but personnel management, medical, pensions, etc.
That’s what I presume my betters are thinking about when they talk about 5 year time horizons. Of course, that doesn’t solve the cultural problems of training them not to steal/take bribes, to show up for work, and to put loyalty to the nation above family and tribe. That would require at least 20 years.
August 24th, 2009 at 9:31 am
#2: Very interesting, and thank you!
As for the Taliban’s funding, my understanding is that some of it comes from us. We fund a project, and the people building the project throw a few hundred thou of that funding to the Taliban to avoid getting killed as they build.
August 24th, 2009 at 9:37 am
Also just back from seven months mentoring at the ANA at the brigade level. Everything Dylan says is #2 above is cross-applicable to that situation, as well. Five years is the new optimism. More here: http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit.
August 24th, 2009 at 9:43 am
As a concrete example, the Iraqi battalion I worked with was very competent at putting out a quick operation order and getting multiple companies and attachments from brigade and division to show up at a given neighborhood on time and efficiently cordon it off. (The search parts were never nearly so efficient, but those problems get us into the cultural issues.)
So tactically they were reasonably independent and internally competent. But they couldn’t get Humvee parts through the official supply system under any circumstances, and it was a clown show whenever you were supposed to pick up an Iraqi soldier for a joint Iraqi/US court appearance to testify against an insurgent.
No matter how hard American staff officers swore to me it was all arranged, the inevitable result on the Iraqi side was the the local unit had never heard of the guy, he wasn’t there, the battalion personnel officer had never heard of him, and if he existed, which he didn’t, he couldn’t go with the Americans to testify to an Iraqi judge without brigade or division (whichever level was currently unattainable) approval, which most certainly had not been obtained in advance, no matter what some staff weenie had told me.
Setting up functioning administrative systems like this is more than a matter of giving them a rule book and some forms and training them how to use them. It takes years to build up the institutional competence to make them run smoothly…assuming they don’t just steal the maintenance budget or lie to save face once the system does “work.”
August 24th, 2009 at 9:46 am
I found the first comment over at Drum’s post pretty interesting. It cites an Asia Times article which makes it sound very much as if this thing is headed toward some kind of negotiated settlement. Including a quote from Petraeus that could be viewed as acknowledging that.
I have no expertise in any of this. But on the face of things, that makes sense. There’s really no reason why we need to be fighting against Pashtun autonomy, which seems to be the way this war is interpreted on the ground. The de facto goal of these troop increases might be to put enough pressure on the Taliban to generate favorable conditions for a negotiated settlement.
August 24th, 2009 at 9:48 am
My impression is that it’s much harder to train a military to defeat an insurgency than it is to wage one. Afghans have been engaged in standard guerilla tactics for forever, so I doubt that takes much training. On the other hand, actually securing areas for a central government and defeating those guerillas without alienating the civilian population is not really something in the Afghan military experience, and seems infinitely more difficult to me…
August 24th, 2009 at 9:48 am
and yet, amazingly, Iraq _had_ an army just a few years ago. With equipment and everything!
So, is it that dictators are extremely efficient, or is there perhaps another issue here?
August 24th, 2009 at 10:04 am
Thank you for your insight, Dylan, and your service.
I have on question, though: why would taking to the field to defeat the Taliban require the Afghan Army to develop organizational and logistical skills at battalion and higher level to plan and integrate all levels of combat and support units throughout their life cycle – not just combat operations and how to fight, but higher level coordination and what we now call “sustainment,” which includes not just supply, but personnel management, medical, pensions, etc.
Can’t the development of those behind-the-lines skills continue apace, while the quite-skilled Afghan combat soldiers report to the front? Wouldn’t the combat-command skills in particular actually develop faster and better through the shadowing of American commanders?
August 24th, 2009 at 10:12 am
There’s a reason that Afghanistan is known as the graveyard of empires. No one “does” history any more, I guess.
August 24th, 2009 at 10:29 am
#2 and #5 both very interesting.
But doesn’t that make the goals sound somewhat too ambitious? I mean, again, the point isn’t to train a military capable of tackling a modern western army. Doesn’t the Taliban face all these same difficulties?
August 24th, 2009 at 10:35 am
Joe @ #9:
For individual missions, sure, you could take an Afghan platoon/company along. But for long term sustainable gains on the ground that Afghan company has to know where their meals and bullets are coming from, where replacement personnel are coming from, on what schedule they are rotated out, who is going to take care of them if they’re injured, who will take care of their families if they’re killed, what they have to do to be promoted in the future, etc.
Lacking confidence in those functions impairs current effectiveness and long-term morale. Americans serving along side can (and do, although in decreasing amounts as we try to increase local national competence) give them bullets and MREs during an operation and provide on site medical treatment, but we can’t directly provide the long-term support structure necessary to motivate soldiers to risk their lives for years to try to build a new government and nation.
August 24th, 2009 at 10:41 am
Dylan’s very informative comments actually sound like what’s needed for a functioning army is a functioning polity. Is that what the US army is there for? If the Afghan’s can’t set up a functioning polity, is the US army going to use the failure of the Afghan army as a reason to stay indefinitely? Should it?
August 24th, 2009 at 10:42 am
It’s possible to overstate the current skill level of the ANA, too. You’re trying to grow their numbers fast, and improve their quality fast: it’s really hard to do both at the same time. All we’ve really been able to do the last few years is offset the dilution of talent that comes with rapid growth.
The good fighters of five years ago have been winnowed out by deaths and desertions to an alarming degree. What you have in the south at this point is a brittle, casualty-averse force, with the same battalions having been in near-continuous combat that entire time. It would have broken us… it’s a testament to their initial quality that they’re still at all effective.
August 24th, 2009 at 11:09 am
In addition to what everyone else has said on the subject of ‘why so long’ you need at least that amount of time, (and possibly the 2 decades that #2 LT Dylan alluded to) is that you need that time to create not just fighters, but NCO’s. And more importantly NCO’s that can train new recruits into new NCO’s and kick off a self sustaining cycle. It’s pretty much the defining characteristic of the modern professional militaries around the world.
August 24th, 2009 at 11:37 am
“Training” is a euphemism for “staying there forever” — always has been, always will be.
August 24th, 2009 at 11:39 am
But…but…but…what better way can there be to create NCO’s than by putting privates into combat? Think of all of the men who became NCOs in the ETO during WW2, who went there as privates.
I understand why it’s important to develop commanders, from NCOs to battalion-, brigade, division, and corps commanders. I don’t understand why this process has to happen before the ANA is in the fight, instead of while the ANA is in the fight alongside us.
August 24th, 2009 at 11:42 am
Yeah, lets get the warlords, whose human rights violations made them so popular with the Pashtuns and other ethnic groups in the south. The fact that we aligned ourselves with the brutal, drug running, warlords increased the already huge amount of mistrust that the south had for the central government.
This is the basic problem in Afghanistan. It is not really a nation-state in the modern sense of the word. At best, it could be a loose federation of tribal areas that might over many years gel into a modern nation-state. Trying to make it into another Yugoslavia will require a dictator like Tito to repress the people into the appearance of ethnic harmony, only to explode into factionalism when the cruel repression ends with the overthrow of the dictator. Meanwhile our soldiers bravely fight against an insurgency for a mythic Afghan state, being killed and maimed for a goal that is not attainable. I just hate this war and its supporters including Obama for falling into the nation building trap, where no realistic possibility of nation-building exists.
August 24th, 2009 at 11:47 am
Re #17: It’s not building NCOs. They have some very good ones. It’s building a culture that uses them.
There’s currently no functional structure in the ANA below company level. NCOs are never commissioned from the ranks. As sergeants, they are given no significant responsibility of any kind. Any promotions or other opportunities are strictly controlled by patronage and nepotism. And we have no method of changing that, other than by example, and the polite offering of advice.
Yes, put an army into battle that understands what sergeants do, and you will get more sergeants, automatically. But we had to put them into battle before we could do that, and now it’s hard to fix.
More here.
August 24th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Odd that the Boers could beat the British Army in pitched battles right off the bat, without any of this multi-year training.
And we might compare the results in countries that learned on the job,in war: I could swear that the Union and Confederate Armies managed to achieve a pretty high level of competence in a lot less than 8 years.
August 24th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Ah, so it isn’t that they don’t have people that can *fight*;
it’s that they don’t enough people to shuffle paper around
and sanitize the telephones and lobby their parliament.
All clear now. Spending $50B a year to hang around and help
them duplicate the whole Pentagon bureaucracy makes perfect
sense. It works so well for us.
And to think if we’d figured this out in 1965 we could have
beaten the NVA as well. So much progress! So many brilliant
insights from our warrior-scholars!
This is all a joke, right ? They can’t be serious, can they ?
As for who funds the Taliban, it’s simple. We pay the
Pakististan military and intelligence services several
hundred million dollars a year to … err, not build nukes …
not build *too many* nukes … err, not give away the nuke
secrets … err, fight the jihadis in the tribal areas …
err, not support terrorism (except in India, because that
doesn’t count) … err, help build civil society by having
a military coup every couple of years. Whatever it is, I’m
sure it’s a simply wonderful idea. And then ISI, which
after all *created* the frakking Taliban in the first place,
lets them hole up on Pakistani territory and keeps them
supplied.
But it’s a great investment for us, because the continued
existence of the Taliban gives us a good reason to hang
around in Afghanistan indefinitely and keep boosting the
Pentagon budget.
What’s that ? You wanted government to do *what* ? Extend
your unemployment benefit ? Help you with health insurance ?
Sorry, no can do, look at that BIG SCARY DEFICIT!
August 24th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
RE: #20
1) I’m pretty sure that supplying and training an army in the Nineteenth Century was quite a bit less complicated than it is today. Humvees are a few steps up from horses on the complexity scale.
2) The Boers would have done a far worse job of invading England than the other way around. When you’re fighting an insurgency on your home turf, you have ready-made bases and supply chains. You can stage an attack and melt away into the civilian population. Occupation is far more difficult.
3) The big problem, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, seems to be getting people to give a shit about the future of their nation, as a sovereign entity, as opposed to securing their own place within the social networks they grow up in.
August 24th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
“1) I’m pretty sure that supplying and training an army in the Nineteenth Century was quite a bit less complicated than it is today. Humvees are a few steps up from horses on the complexity scale.”
The Afghan Army doesn’t need to have the latest and greatest
of everything. It just needs to be a bit better-equipped than
the Taliban. They don’t need Humvees. Off-the-shelf trucks
and pickups would suffice: use the technology that is already
supported in the region. And then when they get where the
Taliban is, they can call on US forces for air support if
necessary. But trying to build an Afghan Army, to be run
by a government with a *total* budget of $600M/year, based
on the model of the $200,000M/year US Army, is just insanely
unsustainable.
Give them RPGs to outgun the Taliban, and radios to call in
air support. But otherwise let them use AK47s and pickup
trucks.
As for the military history, supplying and training an army
in the nineteenth century was damn difficult: artillery was
big and heavy and hard to move around, horses need food and
water just as much as Humvees need fuel, and the training
required to get cavalry to charge at full speed close
together – and to get infantry into a square to withstand a
charge – was a big deal. And of course all that logistics
had to be managed with nothing more than pen and ink: no
computers, no calculators, not even typewriters or copying
machines.
“2) The Boers would have done a far worse job of invading England than the other way around.”
For sure. And that argument helps to explain why it’s
really difficult and expensive for the US Army to fight
the Taliban. But it doesn’t explain why the Afghan Army
would find it difficult or expensive: they’re on home turf
as well. Of course if we’re choosing to supply them with
complicated expensive Humvees and weapons for which all
the spare parts have to be shipped from the USA, that
becomes a problem for them (and a big profit for the
manufacturers). But that seems a stupid way to do it.
August 24th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
‘The US military is clearly incompetent. 6 weeks of boot camp with US advisors supervising for a year is all that is required to bring the Afghani military out of the 3rd century B.C.’ Message received. Thanks.
August 24th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
With respect to #23, I think you’re underestimating the problem. A huge gap in survivability between two armies who are interspersed at the platoon level is unsustainable. A thinking enemy will soon take out the weakest link, and the remainder will then be combat-ineffective. That general principle applies in the Afghan context to bases, convoys, and patrols among the populace equally. A quantity of homemade explosive that might only ding an armoured vehicle will disintegrate an ANA Ford Ranger. And now whatever you were just doing with that combined force has now stopped as you pick up the pieces.
You’ve also got to give them more than radios to enable air support. National rules of engagement of any nation require more than just blind faith in the ground force’s ability to discriminate their enemy from the local populace. Entrusting Afghans operating entirely independently with that responsibility would be a huge leap of faith. Would you want to be the commander who saw “U.S. bomber annihilates village (or another U.S. unit) on ANA orders” in the NYT the next day? Which means you’ve got someone on the ground. And a translator. And a vehicle to keep up. And a second vehicle of Westerners in case his vehicle is the one that the IED blows up. So you’re talking deploying a minimum of 6-8 Westerners (in other words, a mentor team) to give any ANA unit the capability you’re talking about. Which brings us back to the first problem.
Also, what makes you think the Taliban don’t have RPGs in vast quantities? And LMGs, and quite a few GPMGs, recoilless rifles and mortars, too. You don’t get in a firefight with the Taliban without having to deal with heavy automatic and support weapon fire, generally at a location and time of their choosing.
August 24th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
As for the military history, supplying and training an army
in the nineteenth century was damn difficult…
To be sure. But much of the added expense and complexity of the modern army stems from our lesser willingness to treat human lives as expendable. The Afghan Army doesn’t *need* body armor, APCs, supply trucks, sat phones, military courts, and air cover. We could relatively cheaply and easily hand them all Kalashnikovs, scrape up a few mortars, saddle up a few horses for the officers, force march them to the Helmand on nothing but water and tinned beans, steal grain from all the villages they pass and burn them to the ground, and shoot deserters.
Whether doing so would serve our interests in the region is an entirely different matter.
August 24th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
The war has been going on for eight long years and still the Taliban grows ever stronger!
Wrong. The war is four months old, maybe five, and the same size Taliban has been sitting there, waiting for us.
The work has just begun. Let’s not panic. We have the doleful obligation of fighting the war George Bush and his cronies forgot about.
George Bush has the unique honor of having committed two of the three greatest military blunders in United States history. One, attacking Iraq and creating a two front war for no good reason. Two, believing he could invade Afghanistan and gain control of the whole country by parachuting in 48 chain-smoking CIA operatives.
It sucks. It really sucks. George Bush should be forced to face a military tribunal for gross incompetence. But it is what it is. This is the United States. We frequently elect unbelievably stupid men to the highest position. We have to acknowledge the will of the people in these matters and accept the oft dire results of said will.
So thanks to stupidity of George Bush AND the American people, we still have to fight this war -starting basically from scratch.
August 24th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
“To be sure. But much of the added expense and complexity of the modern army stems from our lesser willingness to treat human lives as expendable.”
Let me make that more precise: “Much of the added expense and
complexity of the modern US Army stems from the USA’s lesser
willingness to treat American lives as expendable”.
That’s entirely accurate. But there are a whole lot of
modern armies without those gizmos, and a whole lot of
countries without such a great preference for spending
money rather than lives. And I’m pretty sure that it would
be more realistic and more sustainable to build an Afghan
Army that’s modeeled on the Pakistani or Indian army,
rather than one modelled on the fabulously expensive US
Army. The US Army costs about $200B/year; total Afghan
government revenue is about $600M/year. So let’s suppose
they had an Afghan Army that was about 1/10 of the size
and cost of the US Army (they’ve got about 1/10 of the
population, after all): that would cost $20B/year, or
roughly 33x larger than the whole Afghan government revenue.
This is insane.
*We* can afford Humvees and body armor and a massively
expensive logistics tail. Afghanistan can’t. Sure it
would be nice, but they need something roughly 50x cheaper.
It’s going to end up as AK47s and pickup trucks once we
leave: they might as well get used to it now, and merely
make sure that they have *more* AK47s and pickup trucks
and RPGs than the Taliban do.
August 24th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
“A huge gap in survivability between two armies who are interspersed at the platoon level is unsustainable”
OK. Sounds like a good argument for us to get the hell out
there. If we build them an army with a US cost structure,
then they’re screwed as soon as we stop paying for it.
So we should build them an army with a sustainable cost
structure, and then we should get the hell out and leave them
to it. If they can’t win with their own resources then they
can’t win in the long run, period.
August 24th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Re #28, agreed that the equipment we give them is unsustainable. The real reason it’s still supported (in addition to the survivability concerns mentioned above, and the advantages of having interchangeable logistics between ISAF and the Afghans, and the somewhat lesser likelihood they’ll just sell the weapons and ammo) is because we bundle the training with the equipment.
Most Afghans think they can shoot well. They can’t. And they won’t accept training in how to shoot well from us other than in the context of handing them a new weapon. ALL Afghans think they can drive well. Most can’t. And they won’t accept driver training from us other than in the context of giving them a new vehicle.
Soldiers aren’t stupid, you know. We all know that the equipment we’re giving them is unsustainable in the long term. But getting Afghan soldiers on the line who obey fire orders, can swap magazines with you, and are less likely to overturn their vehicle before the battle starts are judged as sufficient to justify the expense.
August 24th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
“Most Afghans think they can shoot well. They can’t. And they won’t accept training in how to shoot well from us other than in the context of handing them a new weapon. ALL Afghans think they can drive well. Most can’t. And they won’t accept driver training from us other than in the context of giving them a new vehicle.”
But that gets us back to the earlier point that there were
plenty of Afghans who could shoot well enough to rout the
Taliban in 2001. And why should *our* Afghans be any less
competent and any less well-equipped than the Taliban’s
Afghans ?? Surely if the Taliban have lots of RPGs and
heavy weapons and good equipment then they must have the
same logistics issues as the Afghan Army, and they must
have big arms dumps and trucks to move the arms around and
all kinds of other highly visible and vulnerable activities ?
If they’re a big well-equipped army, then we can see them
and bomb them; if they’re small lightly-armed groups, then
a lightly-armed Afghan Army can tackle them.
“Soldiers aren’t stupid, you know. We all know that the equipment we’re giving them is unsustainable in the long term. But getting Afghan soldiers on the line who obey fire orders, can swap magazines with you, and are less likely to overturn their vehicle before the battle starts are judged as sufficient to justify the expense.”
Individually, soldiers aren’t stupid, I agree. But the
collective stupidity of the US national-security institutions is limitless. I think the higher up the chain the stupider
it gets. And this makes no sense: teach a man to fish,
and you feed him for life; get him accustomed to a diet of
smoked salmon, and you doom him to bankruptcy and starvation.
August 24th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
to paraphrase George C. Scott playing Patton commenting on the Northern Alliance reluctance to help out: “Don’t die for your country let some other poor dumb bastard die for his country”. It often seems we have learned nothing from history especially our own. Iraq, Vietnam, now Afghanistan. Is it the arrogance of power that we can imagine that we will succeed here, whatever “succeed” means now. That for another $1 trillion and say 5,000 more US combat deaths, untold numbers of Afghani deaths, and another 7-8 years we can create another Iraq? And yet a large number of us are willing to believe that health care reform for 50 million of our own countrymen is a secret marxist, nazi plot to take over health care? We have become a nation of fools. Bill Maher is correct. America is dumb f**king country. WTF?
August 24th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
The five-year time frames are estimates from professional soldiers trying to build the type of force with which they are familiar and understand. Our current military is organized and operated according to what works for us politically, militarily, and technically. The difficulty is that Afghanistan is not going to be able to graft on a U.S.-style military and have it work. They don’t have the money for that. They don’t have the same size population or system of government. They don’t have the same kind of culture or history. They may benefit from a different kind of military, but then we’re dealing with a system that we don’t understand very well.
August 24th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
# BruceR Says:
“The good fighters of five years ago have been winnowed out by deaths and desertions to an alarming degree. What you have in the south at this point is a brittle, casualty-averse force, with the same battalions having been in near-continuous combat that entire time. It would have broken us… it’s a testament to their initial quality that they’re still at all effective.”
This sounds real good – until one realizes that it applies to the f*cking g-d-d-mn Taliban just as much.
August 24th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
“Humvees are a few steps up from horses on the complexity scale.”
I’d say horses are way more complex than humvees. Fortunately, they are so complex that they are capable of performing much of their own maintainance, reproducing themselves, and even aiding in their own operation, although they don’t have the speed, power, or protection of a humvee, and are more prone to catastrophic, irreperable failure when they’ve sustained enough damage.
August 24th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
One might recall that we diverted the troops and funding for Afghanistan to Iraq for the Bush administration to invade Iraq with–without a congressional vote. The effect is that the result is much like the Greek folktale about the old lady with two laying hens each of which she loved equally — but when one got sick, she slaughtered the healthy one to to make chicken soup to nurse the sick one back to health with; thus she was left with two dead birds with. Harry Reasoner a real newsman–with CBS and ABC loved that story. Since my Congressman, Jerry Lewis, actually moved the appropriation from Afghanistan to Iraq without a congression vote–success of (and lack thereof must be judged by) the unconstitution and illicet misappropriations that he remains to be accountable for.
August 24th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Re #31: Just a thought: maybe the 2001 “rout of the Taliban” had little to do with the Afghans. Just throwing it out there.
Re logistics: the Taliban don’t use anything that can’t be carried on the back of a motorcycle. It limits them, and it frees them. You could train a force that could fight on the same scale, but in the Afghan context at this point that’s really saying you need to start over from scratch.
Re #34: Agreed re the Taliban. Their reliance on IEDs has to be interpreted as a casualty-averse strategy, as anything else they could try against us would likely lead to unsustainable losses. The problem is they’ve found a tactic that allows them to keep in the game even if we outspend them 1000:1, so long as the population remains on the fence, whether due to proclivity or intimidation.
August 24th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
“Re #31: Just a thought: maybe the 2001 “rout of the Taliban” had little to do with the Afghans. Just throwing it out there.”
Sure. In which case all we need is the 350 or so special
forces we used back then to rout them again, not the 60K+
that we have in theater now. That would work for me.
“Re logistics: the Taliban don’t use anything that can’t be carried on the back of a motorcycle. It limits them, and it frees them. You could train a force that could fight on the same scale, but in the Afghan context at this point that’s really saying you need to start over from scratch.”
What we’ve been doing evidently isn’t working, and seems
both ineffective *and* unsustainable. So yeah, blow it up
and start again with a plan that makes sense. Isn’t that
the point of electing a new administration ?
August 24th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
It sounds like coordinating with Halliburton is a problem. Does Afghanistan have any nation resembling an ally with a functioning military? What are we going to teach them, really? Our troops were buying their own armor and GPS, were being charged exorbitant amounts for laundry, and were being poisoned by the water in their camps. Supplies were erratic because contracted truck drivers were abandoning supply trucks when faced with danger or flat tires. We routinely, remotely massacre extended families in wedding parties. We are extremely risk-averse when it comes to our own deaths. We’re overly reliant on satellite technology and carpet bombing.
In order to learn, you have to want to learn from the people teaching you. Why on God’s Green Earth would Afghanis want to be taught how to structure a military by us?
August 24th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
Here’s the obvious bottom line. All this crap about developing an Afghan army that can function effectively at all levels is TOTALLY IRRELEVANT.
A conventional army CANNOT and WILL NOT be able to defeat an insurgency which has the covert support of the population, or at least the inability of the population to decisively act against the insurgency.
The ONLY success in this regard is Che Guevara in Bolivia, where he had a small band, no support about Bolivians, and no infrastructure. NONE of this applies in Afghanistan or Pakistan, nor did it apply in Iraq.
There is NO WAY an Afghan army is going to be able to defeat the Taliban as long as the Taliban have CREDIBILITY on their side and the Karzai government does NOT.
This is strictly an internal political problem for the Afghans and no amount of US “training” is going to improve the situation enough to make US staying in Afghanistan an option. Not five years, not ten years, not twenty years, not fifty years.
You people keep thinking the the US military is capable of winning a COIN operation ANYWHERE. It isn’t. By definition.
As I’ve said repeatedly here, COIN operations can ONLY be conducted by a force large enough to put a platoon in every neighborhood, and ONLY when the force speaks the language and understands the local population – i.e., is a MEMBER of the local population – AND has the political and economic motivation as well as the political good will of the population.
None of which applies to the situation in Afghanistan vis-a-vis US forces – and the Afghan government and police are corrupt and inefficient and will remain so.
The only possible solution is for the US to get out and thus force the Afghan government to come to terms with the Taliban in some way – or allow the Taliban to take over.
None of which is relevant to the threat from Al Qaeda in ANY event, which is why the war should never have been started in the first place.
August 25th, 2009 at 1:28 am
I came here from Bruce’s article on the challenges with training the ANA:
http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/archives/2009_08_24.html#006508
Bruce was an adviser with the 1st Brigade, 205th ANA, until earlier this year, and he knows his stuff. I am amazed by the naivete of much of the discussion here.
1) There are good quality ANA units. See 203rd ANA Corps. It already performs better than most of the Pakistani army does.
The throughput of the ANA and ANP remains far too low (number that can be trained at a time.) As a result, basic training is far too short for a brand new military without sufficient officers and NCOs.
2) Most of the “Taliban” don’t fight well. Most of those that do are probably lead by retired Pakistani Army officers and NCOs (many Pakistani Army are Pashtu, and in the East although not in the South a fair number of Punjabi Taliban fight.)
3) The idea that the Taliban are winning is a bunch of US media theatrics . . . maybe to make the “A Team” look good when it succeeds.
4) Can anyone here name the last company sized ANA engagement it lost? {OK, this is a bit of a trick question.}
5) The Pakistani Army does “NOT” fight well. It has lost more dead fighting the Taliban in recent years than the combined coalition deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 excluding the ANSF and ISF. The Pakistani Army generally performs worse against the Taliban than the ANA does in terms of kill to kill ratios. I can’t believe that some Yahoos on this website want the train the ANA to be another Pakistani Army . . . we do want the ANA to win, don’t we? This said there are good quality Pakistani units, its just that most of them are not good quality.
6) The ANA was severely underfunded and under resourced until 2007. The 2006 operations budget of the ANA was only $242 million. The ANA has only graduated one class of 4 year acadamy officers since 2001. This class graduated only 84 second lieutenants in January, 2009. That is it. 84 second lieutenants for the army and air force of a country of 33 million. Why, because Cheney and Rumsfeld thought the Afghans should pay to train their own officers and NCOS if they wanted more.
7) The US refused to significantly train, equip and fund the ANP until November 2006. Rumsfeld and Cheney felt the Afghans should do it on their own, or that other countries should do it. {But then they refused to allow Russia, India and Iran to do it when they offered.} A country of 33 million only had 3,000 trained police at the beginning of 2008.
9) Many in the GIRoA and parliament don’t know that there is a war going on. They don’t allow the ANA or ISAF/OEF to arrest Afghans, or even to detain them for long periods of time.
I tire of this. But before people here start insulting the ANA, consider that it suffers more deaths than the entire international coalition put together. Remember that the ANP suffers three times the deaths of the ANA. Remember that 91% of Afghans had a negative view of the Taliban in a Feb 9, 2009, public opinion poll. Remember that 92% of Afghans had a negative view of Osama Bin Laden in the same Feb 9, 2009, public opinion poll. Remember that the ANA is by far the most loved, respected and admired institution in Afghanistan today, according to every Afghan poll that has been conducted.
August 25th, 2009 at 7:30 am
So, let’s see, what have we learned?
1. There are good quality ANA units
2. Most of the “Taliban” don’t fight well
3. The Taliban aren’t winning
4. Over 90% of Afghanis have a negative view of the Taliban
The conclusion is obvious – 60,000 US troops need to stay in Afghanistan for the next five years.
August 25th, 2009 at 10:05 am
Bruce: “Re #34: Agreed re the Taliban. Their reliance on IEDs has to be interpreted as a casualty-averse strategy, as anything else they could try against us would likely lead to unsustainable losses. The problem is they’ve found a tactic that allows them to keep in the game even if we outspend them 1000:1, so long as the population remains on the fence, whether due to proclivity or intimidation.”
Thanks, Bruce. That leads to the crux of the problem: until a US-desired government *can* protect the Afghan people, the Taliban are in a good position. This puts us on the bad side of a (guessing here) 100:1 leverage situation, where the key trick (protection) is not one amenable to straight up spending or industrial produciton.
anand Says:
“Bruce was an adviser with the 1st Brigade, 205th ANA, until earlier this year, and he knows his stuff. I am amazed by the naivete of much of the discussion here.
4) Can anyone here name the last company sized ANA engagement it lost? {OK, this is a bit of a trick question.}”
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT!!!!!!!!!!!!! You are now disqualified. The whole freakin’ point of a guerrilla war is that large-scale force on force actions tend to go very badly for the guerrillas (unless and until the national army is actually breaking down, and the guerrillas are forming a conventional force).
We saw this vain boast in Vietnam.
(note – I’m pulling anand’s items out of order)
“1) There are good quality ANA units. See 203rd ANA Corps. It already performs better than most of the Pakistani army does.”
A good unit doesn’t make a good army. At the very least one needs lots of good units. Again, we saw this in Vietnam, where some ARVN units performed well, while most didn’t. All that that meant was that the people in the good ARVN units died, while the people in the bad ones had a chance to live.
“3) The idea that the Taliban are winning is a bunch of US media theatrics . . . maybe to make the “A Team” look good when it succeeds.”
Everything that I’ve seen coming out of Afghanistan paints a picture of coalition forces subject to attack anytime they leave their bases. Which says a lot about the position of Joe Afghan Native. Again, this is old school ‘the guerrilla wins by not losing; the government loses by not winning’.
August 25th, 2009 at 10:50 am
Ray, where do you get: “The conclusion is obvious – 60,000 US troops need to stay in Afghanistan for the next five years.” This isn’t my conclusion at all. I think that each ANA Corps or Division should get an advisory ISAF brigade. Each ANA brigade should get an ISAF advisory battalion. Each ANA battalion should get an ISAF advisory company. I think that all battlespace in Afghanistan, all reconstruction and all PRTs should be transferred to the ANA or ANP in some cases. THe ANA is capable of much more than it is tasked. Maybe some of you should read actual briefings by ANA advisers.
“Everything that I’ve seen coming out of Afghanistan paints a picture of coalition forces subject to attack anytime they leave their bases. Which says a lot about the position of Joe Afghan Native. Again, this is old school ‘the guerrilla wins by not losing; the government loses by not winning’.” Well you heard wrong. A lot of the time it is pretty boring for the ANA, ANP and ISAF. Their are many different Taliban groups that don’t exactly coordinate well together, or even get along all that well. Most of them aren’t exactly great fighters.
What do you mean about “Joe native?” 91% of Afghans have a negative view of the Taliban, whereas in some polls 87% have a favorable view of the ANA. But public opinion has a limited impact on the battlefield in the short run.
What is true is that the ANA and ANP are “FAR TOO SMALL” for a country of 33 million people and some of the most difficult terrain on earth. Afghans complain that their aren’t enough ANSF to protect them. Can you blame them?
“A good unit doesn’t make a good army. At the very least one needs lots of good units. Again, we saw this in Vietnam, where some ARVN units performed well, while most didn’t. All that that meant was that the people in the good ARVN units died, while the people in the bad ones had a chance to live.” Perhaps the real lesson is to expand the throughput of officer and NCO training; and to greatly expand the throughput of the ANA in general. This would replenish the ranks. Keep in mind that any time an ANA unit gets good, often its best cadre will be removed to form new ANA units. Rapid ANA expansion is the largest problem with improving the quality of the ANA.
Barry, you drew the wrong lessons from Vietnam. The ARVN was defeated by a conventional attack from the NVA (North Vietnamese Army.) 800 NVA tanks broke through ARVN lines and played a major role in the fall of the South.
Eventually the Taliban, Haqqani, Heqmatyur will have to conventionally engage the ANA and ANP much more than they have to date to actually hold and govern territory. Remember, as soon as Haqqani/Quetta Shura Taliban/Hekmatyur have to govern territory, they become the occupying counter insurgent power, and the GIRoA, ANSF and its allies become the insurgent.
What is it with ANA bashing on this blog?
August 25th, 2009 at 11:11 am
“3) The idea that the Taliban are winning is a bunch of US media theatrics . . . maybe to make the “A Team” look good when it succeeds.”
That’s about what I thought. But why do we have to keep
increasing our force and lengthening our time horizon if the
Taliban isn’t really a major threat ? In that case, we’re done:
and once US troops are out of the country, the “media theatrics”
will stop and we’won’t care about Afghanistan any more than
say, Liberia, or Zaire, or 50 other poor violent countries.
“I can’t believe that some Yahoos on this website want the train the ANA to be another Pakistani Army . . . we do want the ANA to win, don’t we?”
The point is that a) the US is going to get tired of
spending $20B/year in Afghanistan sooner rather than later,
and b) once we stop spending money, Afghanistan *will* have
the kind of army that it can afford. Which means poor,
ill-equipped, and, if they’re lucky, about as competent
as Pakistan’s. When Wile E. Coyote goes off the cliff,
eventually he falls. Trying to build a US-style army is
simply a fantasy, and a fabulously expensive one.
As for whether we want the Afghan army to “win”, well, I’m
not really sure whether I care, any more than I care about
the government of Liberia. On humanitarian and utilitarian
grounds, I’d like to see an Afghan society that treats women
better and provides more education and better opportunities
for *everyone*. But while it’s clear that the Taliban is
bad in that respect, it isn’t really clear whether our
attempts to micro-manage the direction of the Afghan
economy and society and institutions is likely to do much
to further that goal. And it certainly isn’t going to do
as much as $50B/year could do applied to non-military aid
to poor but peaceful countries.
“6) The ANA was severely underfunded and under resourced until 2007. The 2006 operations budget of the ANA was only $242 million.”
Which is something like 40% of the total government budget.
That’s what they can afford. You’d better figure out a way
to make that work, and putting them in $150K armored Humvees
that need a constant supply of expensive spares from the USA
isn’t a plausible answer.
“I tire of this. But before people here start insulting the ANA, consider that it suffers more deaths than the entire international coalition put together.”
I don’t think anyone here has insulted the ANA (except
perhaps those who’ve worked with them who suggested that
they can’t shoot well, can’t drive well, and aren’t
willing to learn …). The issue is with the crazy US
policy of trying to train and equip the ANA to be something
that it isn’t, and can’t afford to be: an expensively-
equipped, casualty-averse Western army.
August 25th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
“those who’ve worked with them who suggested that
they can’t shoot well, can’t drive well, and aren’t
willing to learn” isn’t an insult. Because it is actually true, and Bruce is offering constructive feedback because he wants the ANA to win. Bruce’s is why the ANA needs more and better officers and NCOs and a culture that uses NCOs.
I think the international community should give the Afghans $250 billion in grants over 20 years, of which more than $100 billion should go to the ANSF. It is far cheaper than sending US troops. The ANA needs to be an expensively equipped but not casualty averse westernized professional army {not western, but westernized . . . such as the Japanese, South Korean, Malaysian or Singapore armies.}. Do you think the US army is casualty averse? One of Petreaus’ positive innovations I thought was making the US military less risk averse.
Richard, your main critic appears to be why we should care. How about this:
-Al Qaeda linked networks and their allies are intent on terrorist attacks on many countries around the world, and some Afghan cities such as Kabul.
-91% of Afghans have a negative view of the Taliban. 92% have a negative view of Osama Bin Laden. The Afghans will sacrifice their blood to fight them. The people the Afghans want to fight also happen to want to mass murder American civilians. It is far cheaper in terms of American blood and treasure to help Afghans fight them than for US troops to fight them.
As we speak, Al Qaeda linked networks are trying to obtain WMD. Where do you think they will be used, if they get them? {My view: Shia stan, America, Europe, Russia and India are the most likely candidates.}
August 25th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
“I think the international community should give the Afghans $250 billion in grants over 20 years, of which more than $100 billion should go to the ANSF. It is far cheaper than sending US troops”
And I’d like to buy myself a BMW. It’s far cheaper than a
Lamborghini. But it isn’t going to happen. So could we
discuss policies that have some remote possibility of
being implemented on *this* planet, rather than fantasies ?
Let’s note that the total US aid budget is around $20B/year.
So what you’re proposing is that, in a world with $6B+ people
and 200-odd countries, a sum that’s 60% of the aid budget
of the world’s richest country should go to a single nation
with about 0.5% of the world population.
The solution to one insane policy should not be another
insane policy.
“Do you think the US army is casualty averse?”
Yes, of course. Very much so. And I’m not saying that’s
a *bad* thing, for an army with a $200B/year budget.
It’s just really really expensive. The USA can afford the
incredible luxury of fighting its wars in a high-tech way
that achieves results with minimal casualties. Hardly
anyone else can. Even the UK, with a similarly professional
force, fought the Falklands War in some pretty low-tech and
risky ways that the US would never contemplate: e.g. landing
troops far away and “yomping” (walking) with 80lb packs
across 50-odd miles of swampy terrain to retake Port Stanley.
And taking quite a lot of casualties in spite of a vast
superiority in training and equipment.
I don’t give a shit about Petraeus, who as far as I can see
has exhibited no great talents other than toadying to the
unspeakable G.W.Bush and assiduously cultivating the media.
I think Iraq, Afghanistan, and the USA would all be better
off if he had never existed.
“-Al Qaeda linked networks and their allies are intent on terrorist attacks on many countries around the world, and some Afghan cities such as Kabul.”
Sure. But AQ isn’t in Afghanistan any more. And even if
they were, Afghanistan is a *lousy* base for attacking the
USA. Which is why the 9/11 plot involved a cell in Hamburg,
and people going to flying school in Florida. Sitting in
Afghanistan now, 8 years after 9/11, isn’t helping. By
continuing to occupy Afghanistan and occasionally drop bombs
or fire missles at villages where innocents get killed,
we’re playing into AQ’s anti-Western propaganda and making
further attacks by AQ and AQ-inspired groups *more* likely.
“It is far cheaper in terms of American blood and treasure to help Afghans fight them than for US troops to fight them.”
And it’s cheapest of all to leave them in Afghanistan and
let them alone. They can’t kill Americans if there aren’t
any Americans there. And, as you say, the vast majority
of Afghans don’t like them and are willing to fight
them themselves. The USA should leave the Afghans to deal
with the Taliban themselves in their own way – which I expect
will be pretty brutal and may linger on for a while, but
really no-one has any way to do this quickly or cleanly,
the only question at stake is whether it gets done cheaply
or at vast expense (leaving the priorities of the other
95.5% of the world’s population underfunded).
“As we speak, Al Qaeda linked networks are trying to obtain WMD.”
Of course. And there are no WMD at all in Afghanistan, and
not much of AQ any more. So it seems like a huge mistake
to be concentrating our effort *there*, rather than where
the *next* problem might be.
August 25th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Typo correction: (leaving the priorities of the other
*99.5%* of the world’s population underfunded).
August 25th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Anand, and in 1972, 1973 and 1975 the ARVN were basically incapable (as an army; some units were funcitonal). And no, it wasn’t due to any US cut-off of aid.
August 25th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
Barry, the ARVN had 18 Ranger groups (18 brigades), 1 elite Marine division, 1 elite Airborne division, 4 other good divisions (out of the 20 plus in the regular army, and a good air force. I think they could have held out indefinitely if they had gotten more money and supplies.
Evaluate the order of battle at the time. The NVA broke through the DMZ with 800 tanks; but they wouldn’t have gotten to Saigon in 1975 if the Rangers hadn’t run out of ammunition, fuel and supplies. The Rangers were ordered by their government to stand down. How much do you know about the Rangers?
Israel would have fallen in 1973 without US supplies.
“I don’t give a shit about Petraeus, who as far as I can see
has exhibited no great talents other than toadying to the
unspeakable G.W.Bush and assiduously cultivating the media.
I think Iraq, Afghanistan, and the USA would all be better
off if he had never existed.” Oh my God.
The WMDs are in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. Now who backs the Quetta Shura Taliban (Mullah Omar) and Haqqani again? Why were these groups created?
OK, let me come out and say something that can’t be said out load. Pakistanis will not allow foreign troops inside their territory. The only troops that might be able to get away with it are Pashtu ANA. This is another reason why the ANA should be internationally funded. So should the ANAAC.
The ANA – ANAAC will cost about $10,000 per person per year; or about $2 billion/year excluding the ANAAC for 200,000 troops. This is what I support. The ANAAC will need another $2.25 billion a year (have some spreadsheets on this.) ANP will need about $4,000/year per person or about $520 million a year for 130,000 ANP. This is the end state I think the ANSF need, or about $5 billion a year; or $100 billion over 20 years. Does it really take rocket science to understand why it might be better for the ANAAC to conduct air strikes across the Durand line than the US?
August 25th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
“This is the end state I think the ANSF need, or about $5 billion a year;”
If the Afghan security forces have $5B/year, and the rest of
the Afghan government has $600M/year, then it’s pretty clear
who’s going to end up holding all the effective political
power in the country. And you can call me a pessimist, but
the track record of military dictatorships sustained by
foreign money doesn’t seem promising, either in terms of
their durability or their effects on human rights and
economic development. This is a plan that will *inevitably*
have terrible results even if it *succeeds* …
And meanwhile, if, in one of the most notoriously corrupt
countries on the earth, just 2% of the money ends up in the
hands of Taliban sympathizers (and how could that *not*
happen ?), then that will be a cool $100M/year to fund the
Taliban and AQ. Probably peanuts compared to what they get
from the money we give the to the jihadi sympathisers in the
ISI, but still, more of a bad thing is worse.
August 25th, 2009 at 9:28 pm
To clarify, I think the GIRoA needs $150 billion in economic grants ($60 billion in education funding, $90 billion CAPEX in roads, rails, electricity), $100 billion in ANSF/NSD grants, and $100 billion in loans over the next 20 years. But this $250 billion in grants is from the entire international community. I only think America should put up $150 billion of that, with other countries putting up $100 billion. There are countries who have more to lose from a Haqqani/HiG/Mullah Omar victory than the US; specifically Russia, China, India, Iran, Turkey and Europe. Get them to pony up. Get Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, and Japan to contribute sizably.
9/11 cost the global economy hundreds of billions of dollars. Compared to the cost of another couple of massive terrorist attacks, this is cheaper.
Richard Cownie, I would worry less about corruption in the MoD than in the rest of the Afghan government. MoD is hostile to Taliban/Al Qaeda to the bone. It is also one of the most competent and professional parts of the GIRoA.
Again, ask yourself, what options do we have? It costs $100 billion a year to keep a lot of US troops there. Afghans actually like America, unlike Pakistan where only 13% of Pakistanis have a favorable view of Obama; and America hatred is rife.
August 25th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
“But this $250 billion in grants is from the entire international community. I only think America should put up $150 billion of that, with other countries putting up $100 billion”
You’re living in a fantasy. No way will one country, with,
as I said, 0.5% of the world population, get that much
money. Nor should it.
“9/11 cost the global economy hundreds of billions of dollars. Compared to the cost of another couple of massive terrorist attacks, this is cheaper.”
Possibly. But if (actually, when) we *don’t* spend this
money, we probably won’t get another 9/11, because everyone
is taking the threat seriously and actually applying
considerable *defensive* effort. And if we *did* spend
that money on Afghanistan, there’s no guarantee we wouldn’t
get an attack from AQ or AQ-inspired groups based in
Somalia, or Madrid, or Indonesia, or Yemen, or Saudi Arabia,
or Bradford, or Detroit. So the argument is weak. The
cost of buying me a Lamborghini is way cheaper than suffering
another financial crisis and recession: but so what ?
“I would worry less about corruption in the MoD than in the rest of the Afghan government.”
Sure. But then the Afghan government rates as fifth-most
corrupt in the world. So being better than fifth-from-last
doesn’t inspire confidence. But then heck, I don’t trust
the Pentagon either, because the GAO regularly finds they’ve
simply *lost* billions of dollars with no clue where it’s
gone. If the ANA learns accounting from the Pentagon, the
money will disappear really quickly (like it did in Iraq).
Instead of building castles in the air with plans and
spreadsheets for pumping $250B into Afghanistan, get real:
we’ve been there 8 years, the US public is sick of it,
the US economy is lousy and we’re facing a $9T deficit over
the next 10 years. What we need is an exit strategy, and
preferably one that starts winding down before the 2010
midterms and gets everyone out by the 2012 election. Fit
in with that political reality, and you might be able to
bargain for a modest amount of financial and military aid
to the Afghan government to keep them afloat once we’re
gone, say $500M/year. Otherwise the plug will be pulled in
a pretty ugly way, as happened with ARVN.