Afghan security forces; too big, too fast

The Washington Post questions the Obama Administration’s strategy of assigning a goal for the size of the Afghan security forces without considering whether or not they are capable of being trained to a standard sufficient for performing their assigned mission.

As a consequence, several U.S. officers and civilian specialists who have worked with those forces have started to question the wisdom of the 352,000 goal. To them, the obsession with size has been at the root of much that has gone wrong with the Afghan security services.

“We’ve built a force that’s simply too big,” said Roger Carstens, a former Special Forces lieutenant colonel who spent two years as a senior counterinsurgency adviser at the NATO headquarters in Kabul. “When you try to generate that many people that fast, you create leaders without the requisite leadership, maturity or acumen to get the job done. You can’t meaningfully vet anyone. You can’t ensure morale and discipline.”

Imagine that. An artificial timeline and an arbitrary goal for recruitment doesn’t work like everyone had hoped. We can also assume that the rush to make recruiting goals contributed to the recruitment of Taliban plants who turned on our forces. And some of those Taliban also turned on their own countrymen. A recent attack caused 6 Afghans to be killed yesterday. I wonder if those 6 Afghans blew their noses in front of the Taliban insurgents;

The police officer and the cook worked with outside insurgents in the assault, which hit police manning a checkpoint in the Gereshk district of Helmand province, the governor’s office said in a statement.

They poisoned two of the officers and then the militants attacked from outside, killing the remaining four officers, provincial spokesman Ahmad Zirak said. He did not say how the officers were poisoned. The police officer was captured as he fled, but the cook escaped and remains at large, Zirak added.

The gunmen escaped by motorcycle with weapons and ammunition, the governor’s statement said.

Of course, folks with any real knowledge of how to fight an enemy have been warning since 2004 that arbitrary withdrawal dates won’t work. But, then no one has accused this administration of knowing how to fight our wars. Every strategic decision has been based solely on the political benefits rather than a tactical or strategic benefit. So let’s have four more years of this.

Category: Terror War