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Old 05-24-2011, 06:04   #1
Richard
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A Slice of Afghanistan Well Secured by Afghans

Hope for change in A'stan?

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A Slice of Afghanistan Well Secured by Afghans
NYT, 23 mAY 2011

Zabul Province, one of Afghanistan’s poorest, is mainly known for being a transit route for Taliban insurgents and NATO supply convoys.

But recently Zabul, in southeastern Afghanistan, has become important for another, better reason: as a small but overlooked corner of the Afghan war that offers a glimpse of what a stable future might look like as Afghans take over their own security and administration by 2014.

Afghan Army battalions have deployed in the districts of Zabul, and are the first in the country to operate independently. They are emerging as a real authority acceptable to local people and as an alternative to both the Taliban and international forces, which are still received ambivalently. Increasingly, they are handling security, relations with the people and even dispute resolution.

In Zabul, at least, there has never really been any permanent authority beyond the provincial capital, Qalat: Taliban, government officials and Americans would come and go. But Afghan forces have steadily established themselves.

The success of the Afghan Army in getting out among the people has shifted the security environment. As people have warmed to the Afghan forces, the Taliban found themselves less welcome and moved away.

“I think we are having one of those eureka moments,” said Lt. Col. Andy Veres, the Air Force officer who commands the Provincial Reconstruction Team in Zabul, now on his second tour in the province. In the Afghan military, he said, “There’s a growing sense of, ‘Yeah, we can do this.’ ”

Zabul has started to work because of a convergence of good leadership and years of combined experience of the Afghan and American partners, both civilian and military. This exists elsewhere, but is not easily replicated in each of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces.

In interviews conducted away from Afghan or foreign troops, residents of Zabul generally approved of the Afghan National Army, a multiethnic force that has been built up from scratch since 2002.

Yet they showed a lingering fear of criticizing the Taliban and complained openly about government officials and the police.

“Our government is very corrupt, but the A.N.A. still has a clean and trustworthy face,” one Zabul elder, Hajji Sayed Agha, said.

Such sentiment points to both the progress here and the myriad challenges that still face coalition forces across the country as they try to train Afghan police and army forces to eventually take over security.

The Afghan National Army is set to reach over 300,000 by the end of this year, but its quality and leadership vary. The Afghan National Police and the Afghan Border Police are way behind, plagued with corruption and unruliness.

In larger, more volatile provinces, where more is at stake and where the insurgency is more concentrated and intense, responsibility for security remains overwhelmingly in NATO hands, even as the American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, uses Afghan soldiers, police officers and local village militias to solidify security gains.

In that light the progress in Zabul may seem slight. But because it is Afghan-led, the achievements here look more sustainable than what has been done by larger, more aggressive operations in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand, where progress has depended on tens of thousands of American troops, some scheduled to begin leaving this summer.

In Zabul, the presence of coalition forces — consisting of American and Romanian troops — is confined to small teams of Special Forces soldiers, civil affairs officers, engineers and military mentors. They maintain a base in Qalat, mostly to ensure security along the main national artery, the Kabul-Kandahar highway.

Beyond that, two Afghan Army battalions are responsible for security, with Afghan commandos taking the place of American Special Forces soldiers in one area to provide extra muscle.

Col. Gadda Muhammad Dost, 43, has been the Afghan battalion commander in this district, Shinkay, for two years. A Tajik from Kabul, he has learned Pashto, the language spoken in Zabul Province, and has worked hard to counter what he calls the “black propaganda” of the insurgents.

People ran away in fear when they first patrolled villages because the Taliban had spread propaganda that his forces would kill or arrest people, he said. “The people would not shake hands with us because they said we were working with the infidels,” he said.

“So we made a plan to set up a district council, and through the council meetings explain that we are here to help you, not to harm you or destroy you,” he said. The first thing they had to do was to persuade the council that they were Muslims by inviting them to the mosque on the Afghan base, he said.

The Afghan soldiers had lessons for their foreign mentors, he said. “We told them, ‘You must never step into their mosques and never, on the basis of poor information, go into their houses,’ ” he said.

“Whenever we had information, we would ask the mullah or tribal leader, and tell him we have information and we want to search,” he said.

That approach has brought relative peace to Shinkay; the Afghan Army base has not come under attack in two years, Colonel Dost said.

The road to Shinkay District was repeatedly under attack or laid with mines until six months ago, Colonel Veres said. But the number and strength of the roadside bombs or improvised explosive devices — I.E.D.’s — have declined, he said.

Real change, however, will be measured not in the decline in attacks but in the community’s courage in supporting the government, he said. “The tipping point is not when the body count or the I.E.D.’s go down — it is when people say the Taliban are not coming back.”

There are signs of deepening trust already, he said. A family dispute led to the murder of two men in Shinkay recently. Rather than go to the police, tribal elders, or even the Taliban, villagers went to the Afghan National Army base and asked Colonel Dost to help sort it out.

“People feel with the A.N.A., they are here to stay,” Colonel Veres said.

Eventually, the Romanian and Afghan soldiers who patrol the Kabul-Kandahar highway, and the main towns along it, hope to hand off that responsibility to the Afghan police, as that force is trained and expanded.

The Afghan Army, then, will be free to secure outlying districts, south to the border with Pakistan, and to cut the Taliban’s infiltration lines, a task currently done by American Special Forces units. As the Afghan forces assume broader control of the province, foreign forces will pull out.

Afghanistan may well have to live with having some of its more remote districts lie outside government control for some time, Colonel Veres said. Those can be gradually dealt with through fighting or by inducements to join with the government, he said.

But both he and the Afghan brigade commander in Zabul, Maj. Gen. Jamaluddin Sayed, in his fourth year in the province, struck a cautionary note, saying that the Afghan Army still lacked the resources and equipment to fight the insurgency on its own. It was Special Forces operations against Taliban leaders and strongholds that have largely helped turn the tide in the province, the Afghan general noted.

Both Afghan commanders stressed that they would need continued international support to counter Al Qaeda and the Taliban. “Afghanistan is like an old man crossing the desert with a group of young men, and in the middle of the desert he gets weak,” Colonel Dost said. “Will they leave him, with war and snakes all around him?”


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/wo...a/24zabul.html
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Old 05-24-2011, 12:13   #2
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I worked with the Afghan 205th Corps in Kandahar and surrounding provinces for two years. There are plenty of challenges but lots of opportunities there too.
I'm sure alot of this is manpower related but I wish SF would spend more intense time with the ANA. Imbeded at the Corps/Dv level is what needs to happen.
The Officer Corps/NCO Corps need professionalizing and basic training.
I know SF does alot with the ANA but there is not (or was not) the follow thru @ higher levels to imprint methodology...the MDMP of not what to think but how to think thru ops and resource.
At the time the rotating NG units were inbedding and doing what they could, some did well, others totally sucked and it was hap hazard at best.
SF did a great mentoring job in the field, when they had them but I really hoped for a full time imbed.
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Old 05-24-2011, 21:41   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard View Post
Hope for change in A'stan?

Richard


A Slice of Afghanistan Well Secured by Afghans
NYT, 23 mAY 2011
Richard This is the NY Times... They know how well it is going there.

My Nephew is there in Zabul and he is telling me that his unit for their first month there is doing much at all. He did his first patrol three in country. Driving him nuts.
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Last edited by MtnGoat; 05-24-2011 at 21:53.
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Old 05-24-2011, 21:51   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by PRB View Post
I'm sure alot of this is manpower related but I wish SF would spend more intense time with the ANA. Imbeded at the Corps/Dv level is what needs to happen.
The Officer Corps/NCO Corps need professionalizing and basic training.
I know SF does alot with the ANA but there is not (or was not) the follow thru @ higher levels to imprint methodology...the MDMP of not what to think but how to think thru ops and resource.
This is so true.. What I think is very funny is within OIF SF sent many SF MAJs and E8 and E9 to work with just the higher leveling in teachingthem how to do Battle Staff Operations. Yes we send the ANA High.. way High to JRTC and Bliss and other US Bases. But what have Military done to teach ANA High and mid level leaderships.

SF has done a great job at teaching or making ANA to lead and be the first in the Doorways. Not to take bullets but now to make them take the lead on the nations problems. But while I have been in AFG we almost, I know a few Firebases do, never get the same ANA Comanpies back at the fire bases. I have had ANA pulled just before a major operations for leave.

Has the US set up something like a ANA COIN methodology schooling for serior NCOs and Officers at Kabul Military Training Center (KMTC)?
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"Berg Heil"

History teaches that when you become indifferent and lose the will to fight someone who has the will to fight will take over."

COLONEL BULL SIMONS

Intelligence failures are failures of command [just] as operations failures are command failures.”
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Old 05-24-2011, 23:25   #5
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You have to start at the top and work down.
The Soviet style of leadership (that many ANA Officers have experienced) fits the Afghan tribal mentality much better than our type of delegated authority does.
The quickest way to get killed in the old Astan: by the Soviet trained army or by the tribal organized Mujahadeen was to 'make a decision' and it not be correct. Survival was best served by standing around waiting to be told what to do. Can't get in trouble doing that.
Our delegated decision making/risk tacking goes against centuries of their experience.
If the Generals ain't on board (and many are not) you're not going to get the mid level guys to work it.
I think a decision was made to focus on the mid level and wait for the old guys to die off...not exactly a 'quick' process.
That's why you need dailey/hourly imbedded contact to fight the natural 'wait and see' attitude that prevails. It can work but it's a one on one thing developed over weeks months and not days.
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