Archive for the 'Afghan National Police' Category

I have long decried our irrational support of Nouri al-Maliki, who is a sectarian leading a sectarian party.  His sectarianism may be part of the reason that Allawi, a Sunni, is virtually tied in the vote count with him.  He allowed – and as Prime Minister, is accountable for – the dissociation of religious and political sects under the guise of the Iraq Justice and Accountability Commission.  In many ways, the path forward has been more difficult in Iraq because of our alignment with losers like Chalibi and Maliki.

We mustn’t make the same mistakes in Afghanistan, but it appears that we are careening headlong into the same failure there.

The Taliban, who imposed de facto rule in Marjah in 2008, appear to have scattered since the offensive, but their influence still looms. The leaders of the insurgency mostly fled, locals say, and their shadow government – complete with Islamic courts and a “police” force – has disbanded.

But the residue of nearly two years of Taliban rule remains. Most midlevel leaders and the rank and file have simply melted back into the population. “They still have spies and supporters everywhere. If they catch us talking to the troops they can behead us,” says Musa Aqa Jan, a laborer, echoing a widely shared view …

Many of those who have fled have returned, however, and say they are ready to brave the possibility of Taliban threats. But for them an even greater potential danger lurks: the new government slated to take the Taliban’s place.

The man tapped to be Marjah’s governor is Abdul Zahir, a Helmand native who has spent the past 15 years in Germany and is unknown to most of the local population. He only travels with heavy protection and has yet to visit most parts of Marjah. It may take months before his efforts can be appraised, Helmand authorities say.

In the meantime, he is helping assemble one of Marjah’s key governing institutions: the local shura, or council. This group will draw from local notables and will aid Mr. Zahir in running day-to-day affairs. The Afghan government will ultimately pick the body’s members, but with input from the local population and Western officials.

It’s the makeup of this council that stokes the most concern among locals. At the heart of the fears is whether it will include a notorious veteran mujahideen commander who has played a central role in Helmand’s politics for more than 20 years. Abdur Rahman Jan was the province’s police chief until 2006, and he heads a 34-man council of landlords, elders, and commanders that ruled Marjah until the 2008 Taliban takeover.

While in power the council became so infamous for abuse that some say it turned locals away from the government. “The main reason the Taliban grew in Marjah is because of these people,” says Qasim Noorzai, a government official in Helmand who works with tribal elders from the area. A number of other government officials, Marjah elders, and locals agree with this assessment.

Marjah elders who met President Hamid Karzai earlier in the month insisted that their backing of the new government depends on whether the old officials are excluded, authorities say. “But they [the old officials] have really good connections and backing in Kabul, so they are not out of the picture yet,” says Mr. Noorzai.

As Afghan officials work to develop a new council, the old council is angling for influence in the post-Taliban administration. “We want to convince the Afghan government and the Americans that only we can stabilize Marjah,” says Muhammad Salim, a council member, interviewed in Kabul. He and more than a dozen others have traveled to the capital several times in recent months to lobby lawmakers and associates of President Karzai

The Afghan National Police are still as problematic as ever, a continual theme at the The Captain’s Journal.

Mohammad Moqim watches in despair as his men struggle with their AK-47 automatic rifles, doing their best to hit man-size targets 50 meters away. A few of the police trainees lying prone in the mud are decent shots, but the rest shoot clumsily, and fumble as they try to reload their weapons. The Afghan National Police (ANP) captain sighs as he dismisses one group of trainees and orders 25 more to take their places on the firing line. “We are still at zero,” says Captain Moqim, 35, an eight-year veteran of the force. “They don’t listen, are undisciplined, and will never be real policemen.”

Poor marksmanship is the least of it. Worse, crooked Afghan cops supply much of the ammunition used by the Taliban, according to Saleh Mohammed, an insurgent commander in Helmand province. The bullets and rocket-propelled grenades sold by the cops are cheaper and of better quality than the ammo at local markets, he says. It’s easy for local cops to concoct credible excuses for using so much ammunition, especially because their supervisors try to avoid areas where the Taliban are active. Mohammed says local police sometimes even stage fake firefights so that if higher-ups question their outsize orders for ammo, villagers will say they’ve heard fighting.

With corrupt government and corrupt police, there is little left for the population to do other than turn to armed gangs for defense.  Enter the Taliban – again – after they have been dislodged by the blood, sweat and tears of U.S. warriors.

We are in such a hurry to develop a legitimate government and security apparatus that we are on the verge of developing an illegitimate one.  We (or rather, the British) made this mistake in Musa Qala as well.  If we are going to appoint rulers, the least we can do is appoint men who actually care about the people under their charge.

From Reuters:

Afghanistan is sending 8,000 to 10,000 troops to its most volatile southern provinces, where U.S. and NATO commanders complain of having too few Afghans to back them up, the Afghan Defense Minister said Saturday …

U.S. and British commanders complain the Afghan army and police have fielded far too few troops in the main battlefields, especially southern Helmand province, where 10,000 U.S. Marines and 9,000 British troops vastly outnumber their Afghan allies.

Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak told Reuters about 8,000 to 10,000 additional Afghan troops will deploy in Helmand and neighboring Kandahar, by far the deadliest areas for foreign forces since the war started in 2001.

Neither the British nor especially the U.S. Marines need Afghan National Army “backup.”  They are implementing the policy dictated from above, namely a quick startup of the ANA.  But one recent report from the Helmand Province isn’t so promising concerning their new Afghani colleagues.

The U.S. Marines were tense looking for bombs buried near a mud compound in this remote farming town in southern Afghanistan. Their new Afghan police colleagues were little help, joking around and sucking on lollipops meant for local kids.

The government had sent the new group of 13 police to live and train with the Marines just a few days earlier. Most were illiterate young farmers with no formal training who had been plucked off the streets only weeks before.

ANP, sure.  But the ANA aren’t any better.  We’d better plan on pacification of Helmand without the ANA or ANP.

We have covered the Afghan National Police in their own separate category, and the links and prose are there to be studied.  I have the best readers on the web, and yet another sad example comes to us via reader amarriott, an incident in which more than 70 Afghan National Police voluntarily surrendered their weapons and body armor to 10 Taliban.  It happened in the Baghlan Province.  See 3:30 into the video.

Folks, this isn’t an “I told you so moment.”  It’s not a time to preen or posture.  This is sad – very sad and depressing.  Training the ANSF is seen as the ticket out of Afghanistan for some nations who do not yet understand what General Petraeus said, i.e., that of the long war, the campaign for Afghanistan would be the longest.

See also Here is your Afghan National Army

General McChrystal’s report to Secretary Gates lays the groundwork for a request for 40,000+ more U.S. troops.  The actual need for troops will be higher than that.  McChrystal’s report relies heavily on Afghan National Security Forces (Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police), closely following the strategy laid out by CNAS to ramp up the readiness of ANA.  But the left side of the isle doesn’t have the sole claim for plans to rely heavily on ANA.  Kimberly and Frederick Kagan also recommend a similar reliance on a rapid increase in the size of the ANA to provide the necessary troops for population security.

But recall the problems that we have documented concerning the ANA.

We have watched the ANA engage in drug abuse, smoke hashish before patrols, collude with Taliban fighters to kill U.S. troops, themselves claim that they cannot hold Helmand without Marines and fear being killed if they even go out into the streets, be relatively ineffective against Taliban fighters, sleep on their watch, and claim to be on vacation in the Helmand Province.

There has been robust debate concerning whether these examples are typical of regular behavior, but the reports of ANA problems keep being filed.  One particularly troubling one comes from David Pugliese the Ottawa Citizen.

Army staff and National Defence headquarters officials were told in 2007 that young boys had allegedly been sexually abused by Afghan security forces at a Canadian base in Afghanistan, but the concern at the time was that the incident might be reported in the news media, according to military records obtained by the Citizen.

In addition, last year Brig.-Gen. J.C. Collin, commander of Land Force Central Area, passed on to the senior army leadership the concerns raised by military police who said they had been told by their commanders not to interfere in incidents in which Afghan forces were having sex with children.

The newly released records raise questions about a military investigation that earlier this year concluded that allegations about sexual abuse of Afghan children by members of the Afghan army and police were unfounded. The Canadian Forces National Investigation Service also stated that its thorough investigation concluded allegations of such incidents were never reported to Canadian military commanders.

The allegations first surfaced publicly in June 2008 after concerns about the incidents, originally raised by soldiers and military chaplains, were reported in the news media.

Former Cpl. Travis Schouten told military officials he had witnessed an Afghan boy being sodomized by two Afghan security personnel at Canada’s Forward Operating Base Wilson in Afghanistan in 2006. Another soldier also came forward to a Toronto newspaper to report a similar occurrence at the same base in 2006. A military chaplain talked about the abuse in a report sent up the chain of command at Canadian Forces Base Petawawa. Two other chaplains have also come forward to state that soldiers came to them upset about such abuses.

The issue is sensitive for the Canadian Forces and the federal government as the Afghanistan mission has been promoted to the public as being about protecting Afghan civilians. The Afghan National Army and police are seen as key to Canada’s military withdrawal from that country in 2011.

It is the position of the Canadian Forces that its troops have no jurisdiction over the activities of Afghan military and police personnel, even those operating on Canadian bases.

The military records obtained by the Citizen through the Access to Information law note that a 90-minute meeting was held between an army public affairs staff member and a member of army commander Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie’s executive staff in the summer/fall of 2007. According to the June 2008 e-mail written by Lt.-Col. Stephane Grenier, an adviser on operational stress injuries, the meeting focused on various controversies that might be brought out in the news media, including, “ANP/ANA members having anal sex with young boys.”

ANP stands for Afghan National Police while ANA refers to Afghan National Army.

A second meeting about Afghan police and soldiers having sex with children was held later that week at National Defence headquarters involving senior members of the Defence Department’s civilian and military public affairs staff, according to the e-mail.

In addition, on June 18, 2008, Brig.-Gen. J.C. Collin, commander of Land Force Central Area, passed on to Leslie’s staff and Brig.-Gen. Ian Poulter the concerns raised by several military police officers. Collin called the e-mail from the military police commander, “rather disconcerting.”

Included were details from military police who noted it was well known among Canadian troops that ANA and ANP personnel had sex with kids. Another was upset that military police were told not to intervene in such matters, according to the e-mail.

Also queued up is a recent report by Ann Jones for the Asia Times.

In the heat of this summer, I went out to the training fields near Kabul where Afghan army recruits are put through their paces, and it was quickly evident just what’s getting lost in translation. Our trainers, soldiers from the Illinois National Guard, were masterful. Professional and highly skilled, they were dedicated to carrying out their mission – and doing the job well. They were also big, strong, camouflaged, combat-booted, supersized American men, their bodies swollen by flack jackets and lashed with knives, handguns, and god only knows what else. Any American could be proud of their commitment to tough duty.

The Afghans were puny by comparison: hundreds of little Davids to the overstuffed American Goliaths training them. Keep in mind: Afghan recruits come from a world of desperate poverty. They are almost uniformly malnourished and underweight. Many are no bigger than I am (1.6 meters and thin) – and some probably not much stronger. Like me, many sag under the weight of a standard-issue flack jacket.

Their American trainers spoke of “upper body strength deficiency” and prescribed pushups because their trainees buckle under the backpacks filled with 50 pounds (110 kilograms) of equipment and ammo they are expected to carry. All this material must seem absurd to men whose fathers and brothers, wearing only the old cotton shirts and baggy pants of everyday life and carrying battered Russian Kalashnikov rifles, defeated the Red Army two decades ago. American trainers marvel that, freed from heavy equipment and uniforms, Afghan soldiers can run through the mountains all day – as the Taliban guerrillas in fact do with great effect – but the US military is determined to train them for another style of war.

Still, the new recruits turn out for training in the blistering heat in this stony desert landscape wearing, beneath their heavy uniforms, the smart red, green, and black warm-up outfits intended to encourage them to engage in off-duty exercise. American trainers recognize that recruits regularly wear all their gear at once for fear somebody will steal anything left behind in the barracks, but they take this overdressing as a sign of how much Afghans love the military.

My own reading, based on my observations of Afghan life during the years I’ve spent in that country, is this: It’s a sign of how little they trust one another, or the Americans who gave them the snazzy suits. I think it also indicates the obvious: that these impoverished men in a country without work have joined the Afghan National Army for what they can get out of it (and keep or sell) – and that doesn’t include democracy or glory.

In the current policy debate about the Afghan War in Washington, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin wants the Afghans to defend their country. Senator John McCain, the top Republican on the committee, agrees but says they need even more help from even more Americans. The common ground – the sacred territory Obama gropes for – is that, whatever else happens, the US must speed up the training of “the Afghan security forces”.

American military planners and policymakers already proceed as if, with sufficient training, Afghans can be transformed into scale-model, wind-up American Marines. That is not going to happen. Not now. Not ever. No matter how many of our leaders concur that it must happen – and ever faster …

The current projected “end strength” for the ANA, to be reached in December 2011, is 134,000 men; but Afghan officers told me they’re planning for a force of 200,000, while the Western press often cites 240,000 as the final figure.

The number 400,000 is often mentioned as the supposed end-strength quota for the combined security forces – an army of 240,000 soldiers and a police force with 160,000 men. Yet Afghan National Police officials also speak of a far more inflated figure, 250,000, and they claim that 149,000 men have already been trained. Police training has always proven problematic, however, in part because, from the start, the European allies fundamentally disagreed with the Bush administration about what the role of the Afghan police should be.

Ann goes on to document the poor training of the ANP and the disagreement within both the ISAF and Afghanistan concerning exactly what the capabilities of the ANP should be.  In either case, the ANP are widely known as corrupt and criminal people who don’t have the best interests of the Afghans at heart.  The ANP is horrible, and more horrible still.  Whether it’s the ANP who require bribes or the ANA who pluck the chickens of the locals when they enter their homes, the Afghan National Security Forces are not yet fully trusted by their own people, much less the ISAF, and for very good reason.

There is big trouble looming for those who believe that the ANSF is our strategy for a rapid exit.  This doesn’t mean that the campaign is not winnable.  It does mean, however, that there will be no rapid exit if we are to succeed.  Western armies are the greatest on earth, no only with the requisite moral and social underpinnings of the institutions but also an NCO corps that makes them unique compared to Middle Eastern armies.  Standing up an Afghanistan army will be very difficult, especially one that is large enough to assist in the campaign but also small enough to be supported by the GNP of the country.  Whatever final size obtains, it will almost certainly be too large to be supported by Afghanistan alone.

The need of the hour is ANSF that is somewhat smaller, but much more reliable, more well trained and disciplined, and more respected by the Afghans.  The need is not numbers.  The need is an ANSF that actually contributes to the campaign.  Also needed are more U.S. troops to perform counterinsurgency operations in the mean time, including killing the enemy and protecting the population from the same.  More troops to train the ANSF is a romantic idea, but the notion that we can quickly rely on them is pure myth.

UPDATE:

From the Daily Times of Pakistan.

… much of the recruitment that has brought the strength of the Afghan army to some 89,000 has come from Tajik areas, perhaps because Pashtuns have been intimidated into not joining, or perhaps because of the policies adopted by the largely Tajik-dominated bureaucracy of the Afghan defence ministry. The increase already approved to 134,000 will also come in current conditions from the Tajiks or other minority ethnic groups.

The further increase to 240,000 which has or will be proposed by Gen McChrystal will further compound the problem, of having a national army in which the largest ethnic group is underrepresented, and may give added reason for the Pashtuns to identify with the Taliban.

An internal Afghan problem, but affecting our efforts nonetheless.

Colonel Gian Gentile continues to point out the obvious dictum that counterinsurgency is not a strategy.  It is a set of tactics rolled up into a discrete form of military operation.  But it may not be so obvious to everyone.  Beyond implementing certain kinds of tactics (tactics that by themselves, i.e., without the necessary force projection, do nothing, or worse yet, harm the campaign), what is the overarching plan for the campaign?

The populist narrative can be found at a recent Huffington Post article.

From a strategic and financial perspective, the push to bolster the numbers and quality of the Afghan forces makes clear sense. On the strategic level, the coalition simply doesn’t have enough troops to satisfy the “clear, hold and build” formula of the counterinsurgency campaign against the Taliban. Earlier this year, the Director of National Intelligence, former Admiral Dennis Blair, told Congress that the Afghan forces were less than one-tenth the size necessary to defend country. And as McChrystal has noted, “The demand and the supply don’t line up, even with the new troops that are coming in.” The financial equation is equally apparent. In pure dollar terms, the U.S. can field and train 60 Afghans for the price of one deployed American soldier.

Tactics and dollars are important criterion by which to evaluate the proposal; however, the real value of increasing the strength and size of the Afghan forces is less obvious. A successful counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan will require the coalition to protect the civilian population and win their support in the fight against the Taliban. With these goals in mind, strengthening the Afghanistan National Army and Police may represent the single most important aspect of McChyrstal’s new strategy.

Why? Because bolstering the Afghan security forces will not only restore trust in coalition forces, but also build Afghans’ confidence in the future of the country.

So the overall strategic goal is to train the Afghan National Army, start them up more quickly, and make the size of the ANA larger.  It’s simple math according to the Huffington Post.  Get 60 for one – what a deal.  But like used car salesmen, when you’re told that there is a deal waiting for you, it’s a lie.  There are no deals, and how a country with the GNP of Afghanistan is going to support a professional ANA of this size of simply not yet even on the drawing board of the planners.

Recall our coverage of the ANA? We have watched watched the ANA engage in drug abuse, smoke hashish before patrols, collude with Taliban fighters to kill U.S. troops, themselves claim that they cannot hold Helmand without Marines and fear being killed if they even go out into the streets, be relatively ineffective against Taliban fighters, sleep on their watch, and claim to be on vacation in the Helmand Province.

But if the Huffington Post is the idiot’s narrative for the “new strategy,” there is a moderately more sophisticated version on the other side of the political isle.  It comes from Fred Kagan, who argued at the National Review Online (a link that is no longer valid) that the number of forces per non-combatant required in FM 3-24 could be filled by ANA, not U.S. or NATO forces.  So Kagan argues for the same counterinsurgency tactics as a strategy, but concurs with the notion of a rapid startup of ANA in lieu of U.S. force presence.

“The surge of forces that some (including me) are proposing is intended to bridge the gap between current Afghan capacity and their future capacity, while simultaneously reducing the insurgency’s capabilities. Whatever may happen in Afghanistan, counterinsurgency theory does not call for the deployment of hundreds of thousands of coalition forces for decades.”

The Afghan National Police are horrible, and even more horrible still.  The ANP cannot be relied upon any time soon, but is the assessment we have made of the ANA above still accurate after lo these many days (30 or so) since we opined?  Well, when Julie Jacobson isn’t wasting her time taking photos that should never have been published, she is actually doing some fairly good reporting in certain instances (but one has to wade through the trash to find it).  This kind of report is what she should have been doing all along, since it actually informs the reader.

It was freakin’ hot. About 115 degrees. The patrol started at 11 a.m. I don’t know whose bright idea it was to start it at that time. We started walking in two columns. Not five minutes out of the post gunfire erupted from the hillside to our right. We all just started running for cover behind walls. The ANA dropped into holes to provide cover but I don’t think they ever fired a shot. They just kind of sat there staring. All the cover fire came from the Marine support vehicles.

So the ANA dropped into holes and never fired in this kinetic engagement.  How are they doing with the whole winning hearts and minds tactic?  This account gives us pause.

The U.S. military is reaching out to civilians more now that NATO’s top commander in Afghanistan, U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has made gaining popular support the crux of his counterinsurgency strategy.

While that includes doling out cash, it also means consulting villagers in a region where local councils are a normal means of decision-making — including allowing residents directly affected by operations to air their grievances.

Abdul-Hamid, his wife, and their 10 children, for instance, endured a terrifying, middle-of-the-night ordeal on the outskirts of Dahaneh, a longtime Taliban stronghold stormed last week by Marines from Golf Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines.

The Marines arrived by helicopter in the middle of the night, shoving M-16s in the family members’ faces as multiple squads stormed through. At one point, one of the farmer’s adult sons cried softly because his plastic handcuffs were so tight his fingers turned purple.

The Marines then used explosives to burst through the wall into the compound belonging to Abdul-Hamid’s neighbor. A baby started crying after the second explosion sent shrapnel and debris flying high over Abdul-Hamid’s courtyard.

Minutes later, the Taliban in town had regrouped and begun firing rockets, mortars and missiles at the Marines resisting from Abdul-Hamid’s and his neighbor’s compounds.

Barely two days after that, Abdul-Hamid sat down with village elders, Afghan army officers and a dozen Marines, discussing how to improve relations and bring normalcy back to Dahaneh.

The elders wanted their detained clansmen freed, which Marines said would happen once they’d been fully investigated. The elders assured the troops that no Taliban were left in town and pledged to press fleeing civilians to return.

Abdul-Hamid wanted the troops to return to his house, where Afghan soldiers who’d moved in along with the Marines were already plucking chickens from his courtyard.

There you have it.  Plucking the chickens of the locals.  The reality of the situation is that the planning for ANA troops has been there all along.  There is nothing new regardless of what the Huffington Post says, and this still won’t work in the short term regardless of what Fred Kagan says.  Afghanistan is a long term commitment, and without the force projection by professional troops such as the U.S. Army and Marines, the campaign is lost.