We Can't Even Train the Afghan Army - UPDATED Posted by Michael Cohen

So I've been a bit busy over the past few days to do any Afghanistan blogging, but please don't confuse my attention to other commitments with something close to optimism . . . because these days there isn't much reason for hope about the US mission in Afghanistan.

Case in point, training of the Afghan Army, which is the cornerstone of US efforts in Afghanistan - and according to the Financial Times it is not going well:

A US government audit to be released at the end of the month will cast doubt on the $25bn effort to build Afghan military and police forces, a blow to the cornerstone of President Barack Obama's exit strategy.

According to the audit, the standards used to appraise the Afghan forces since 2005 were woefully inadequate, inflating the abilities of Afghan units that Mr Obama has called "core to our mission".

The Nato-led coalition's rating system measured forces based on such factors as training and equipment, rather than a metric that would more accurately assess their fighting abilities, the report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction concludes.

Military officials now acknowledge the system's vast inadequacies. "It became clear to us that the assessment wasn't giving a clear picture of the actual operational readiness of Afghan national security forces," Colonel Dennis Devery, deputy director of the ANSF development assistance bureau, told the Financial Times.

For nearly five years, the "capability milestone" measure was used to advertise the growing number of competent Afghan soldiers. According to the measure, 22 Afghan National Army units were "fully capable" by May 2009 - a seemingly rapid improvement, since not a single unit met that standard until 2008.

But government auditors and analysts say those ratings belie the forces' actual capabilities. One source cites the example of an ANA unit that was allotted 12 trucks, even though only three of its 12 drivers had the required training. The unit was reported as achieving the highest capability rating because it had the requisite personnel and equipment, despite the lack of qualified soldiers.

"The system deliberately exaggerated the combat capacity of Afghan troops, and it disguised the true level of attrition and desertion," said Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Wow. "Deliberately exaggerated" . . . those are some pretty strong words and I for one am shocked, shocked that anyone would exaggerate the effectiveness of US efforts in Afghanistan. I mean it's not as if David Petraeus told the President of the United States that he was "confident we can train and hand over to the ANA [Afghan National Army]" by June 2011. Clearly he wouldn't have said that unless he was 100% confident about his prediction; after all, he would never want to leave President Obama holding the ball if things don't work out that way.

And it's not as if the President of the United States actually believed that such a goal was achievable.

I mean if that were to have happened well then the US would almost certainly be operating under the false assumption that we can actually achieve our goals by June 2011 and turn over key territory to the Afghan Army; and it would mean we are undertaking an offensive in Kandahar that will be next to impossible to hold and build on and will mire us even more deeply in fighting the Taliban insurgency.

I mean THAT would really be bad for US policy in Afghanistan. Whew! Good thing it's not happening . . .

UPDATE: And under the file name "You Really Can't Make This S*** Up" here is Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO Secretary General offering his thoughts, via Twitter, on the state of the Afghan Army:

Afghan Army will reach this years target of 134.000 members 3 months ahead of schedule. This success is what the Taliban don't want to see.

I'm going to go on a limb here and say that if you need to buy a shovel right now in Brussels you might be in trouble . .

Comments

[Don Bacon]

General Petraeus's ability to forecast the success of foreign army training is not as great as his ability to pander to presidents.

Petraeus headed the Iraq Security Transition Command Jun 2004--Sep 2005. After he had been in charge of training the Iraqi Army for three months, he famously wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post which was published in September 2004.

During a crucial time in the presidential campaign, when Kerry said Iraq was headed south, Petraeus's piece was a rosy prediction of things to come. “Six battalions of the Iraqi regular army and the Iraqi Intervention Force are now conducting operations. . .Within the next 60 days, six more regular army and six additional Intervention Force battalions will become operational. . . Nine more regular army battalions will complete training in January”

Nope.

Sep 2005–Gen. George W. Casey Jr., who oversees U.S. forces in Iraq, said there are fewer Iraqi battalions at “Level 1″ readiness than there were a few months ago. . . The number of Iraqi army battalions that can fight insurgents without U.S. and coalition help has dropped from three to one, top U.S. generals told Congress yesterday.

From 21 battalions to one. Quite a drop.

Of course Petraeus had the last laugh when he later replaced Casey and then moved up another notch to CENTCOM, proving that truth has no relevance in warfare, and may even be detrimental. Now he's doing it again.

It'll all be water under the bridge when Dave makes his political move.

[ds r4]

Training of Afghan Army? That's more I think,we can't even see their training and the rules.Its too much hard and also very rude.

[SNLII]

Actually, Michael, the metrics on ANA are far, far better than what we've established for other aspects of the OEF "strategy." Granted, we're nearly a decade into the war, but still...

The larger problem is the one Eikenberry always warned about when he was at the theater helm. We've paid for Karzai to build a sectarian military around sectarian outfits and warlords. So we train a largely Tajik, Uzbek or Hazara military and then use it to invest the lands of that Pathans, with all the obvious issues that crop up with central government legitimacy, the Pashtun belief that we've picked sides in a retributive civil war and Pakistani intrigues to ensure that we don't block their faves in the process of positioning Afghanistan for an even worse proxy war when we leave.

These are profound strategic concerns that we're glossing over so that we might show "progress" in meeting numbers and deadlines (forgetting that a quarter of all ANA are AWOL at any given time).

[Michael Cohen]

"Actually, Michael, the metrics on ANA are far, far better than what we've established for other aspects of the OEF "strategy."

I don't disagree . . . which is why we're completely fucked. Come December some intrepid officer will find some compelling metric for how we are making progress (say a decline in civilian casualties) and how we can't afford to leave . . . want to take a guess how that will play itself out?

[SNLII]

Sarah Sewell is coming out with a report in a couple of days, I think, that's going to track civilian casualties and ANA- and US-initiated battles. It's so much better to sell a horseshit "strategy" when it comes from the pens of the "humanitarian" racketeers.

We'll see.

[SeSToNuM]

Training of Afghan Army? That's more I think,we can't even see their training and the rules.Its too much hard and also very rude.

[sesli sohbet]

The larger problem is the one Eikenberry always warned about when he was at the theater helm. We've paid for Karzai to build a sectarian military around sectarian outfits and warlords. So we train a largely Tajik, Uzbek or Hazara military and then use it to invest the lands of that Pathans, with all the obvious issues that crop up with central government legitimacy, the Pashtun belief that we've picked sides in a retributive civil war and Pakistani intrigues to ensure that we don't block their faves in the process of positioning Afghanistan for an even worse proxy war when we leave.

[Faulring]

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[vibram five fingers]

It became clear to us that the assessment wasn't giving a clear picture of the actual operational readiness of Afghan national security forces," Colonel Dennis Devery, deputy director of the ANSF development assistance bureau, told the Financial Times.

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