Another guest post, this one from the Raging Tory
I have never advocated the “Global Guardian” Route, but finding no worked out examples of it, thought I would have a go, alas, my attempt to get The Wonderful Staff at Think Defence to write it for me failed, so here goes.
The aim of this post is to advocate for and outline a template that if followed would have provided The Government of Afghanistan with a military force capable of maintaining order within the country, and which could be applied to other nations for a similar outcome.
Much time, effort and money has been spent to try and reform the ANA and ANP, yet despite almost a decade of work, both forces are still almost entirely useless, so badly plagued by corruption and theft as to be ineffective, if not outright counter productive.
It is my belief that the root cause of this problem is that the forces were rotten before the ISAF intervention, and for political reasons, this rot was never dealt with. Senior officers were appointed based on tribal lines, not competency lines, and used their position to rob those underneath them, not secure Afghanistan
My plan differs from that of ISAF in that an entirely new force is raised, from the ground up, trained, equipped, officered and paid by allied forces and this force is rigidly and intentional segregated from its predecessors, once created, trained and readied, the force can then be handed over to the local government as a cohesive functioning whole.
Contents
- Recruitment
- Initial Location and Training, Month One
- Military Formation and Basic Training, Months Two and Three
- Reform and Basic Training Three, Month Four, Five and Six
- Reformation and Rerolement, Months Seven, Eight and Nine
- Rerolement and Explosives Projection, Months Ten, Eleven and Twelve
- Reformation and Deployment, Months Thirteen to Eighteen
- Rest Deployment, Months Nineteen to Twenty Four
- Rest Deployment, Months Twenty Five to Thirty
Recruitment
If, after a 10 year period, we wish to hand over a force of 100,000 Men, I would advise we aim to recruit 10,000 Men per year, as the eventual likely size of the Afghan Armed forces are probably limited to around 300,000 Men, 1% of total population, I would suggest we try to recruit 30,000 men per year. These men would be recruited as Privates, whether they were a Brigadier General in the Afghan National Army or a Bandit on the Afghan National Highway and paid, by ISAF, an appropriate wage, say, $10 a day, or whatever is a “good” wage in the blasted hell hole.
Special Attention should be paid to ensuring at least some recruits represent the many and varied cultures, tribes, ethnicities and languages of Afghanistan. An army formed almost entirely of Tajiks will have little chance of maintaining order in the South, nor will one raised entirely of Pashtuns command any respect in the North.
Initial Location and Training, Month One
The 30,000 Recruits will be moved out of the country, and ideally out of the continent. A base capable of housing 30,000 soldiers and trainers in the Flyover States of the US, or the plains of Canada or the Australian Outback would be ideal, but there are many other lightly populated and isolated localities that could be used equally well. If the UK were to replicate itself on a small scale, we have vast areas in the western islands that are currently uninhabited. Just a few days ago, a 3000+ acre island was sold in it entirety. Not enough for a 30,000 strong force to train, but 3000 should be able to squeeze in.
The most important lesson for the first would be English, both spoken and written. If the recruits have been selected correctly, they will speak a variety of different languages, forcing English as the main language will create a common tongue for the forces, facilitate later training, avoid any bias within the army and for future benefits, make English the military language, and probably official language of the helped nation. Even the most strident Irish Nationalists are privately glad no attempt was made by their forebears to impose Gaelic after independence.
The Tajik Speakers would resent an official Pashto Policy and so forth.
Troops should be bunked as far as possible against linguistic grounds, and the English lessons should also coincide with Physical Training, to weed out those who are simply not capable of the exertion required, and to foster a sense of comradery, a block house is going to learn English quicker if it’s the only way they can communicate on the Rugby Field.
Military Formation and Basic Training, Months Two and Three
Once a basic understanding of English has been reached, the recruits can be “enlisted” and formed into Army Formations with the living and training areas assigned to match.
Assuming most of those recruited passed the first stage,
We would have enough for 10 Regiments.
Again, as far as possible, the formations should be ethnically balanced, and capability balanced, the intent is not to form a Guards Regiment, certainly not yet anyway.
A Regiment would consist of a minimal Regimental Staff, IE a Colonel, a LtCol and a Regimental Sergeant, plus Three Battalions
Each Battalion would consist of a minimal Battalion Staff, IE a Lt Col a Major and a Battalion Sergeant, plus 5 Companies.
Each Company would consist of a minimal Company Staff, IE, a Major, a Captain and a Company Sergeant, plus 5 Troops.
Each Troop would consist of Minimal Troop Staff, IE, a Captain a Lieutenant and a Sergeant, plus 5 sections.
Each Section would consist of 8 Afghan Recruits, a Lance Corporal and a Corporal.
The Officers and NCO’s all being ISAF or in the future, British
With the Formations created, recruits and embedded trainers assigned, phase two training would be rifleman training. With the nation as fractured as Afghanistan, anything that creates a shared identity must be jumped upon, and Every Man a Rifleman will be a great help in that regard.
Rewards should be provided along and within formation lines for as much as can be thought of and as frequently as possible. Best shot for the day, best uniform, best March, best run, everything and along every line, best shot within the troop, company, Army, ect. Rewards varying from cash payments, like extra days pay, to mounting honour guards and first onto new training.
Note, I’m not a soldier, so that last bit could be rubbish I picked up from reading Starship Troopers too often
The plan is heavy on ISAF Manpower, requiring 10320 embedded staff, along with additional training staff, far in excess of the current UK deployment to Afghanistan, however, the deployment is not to Afghanistan, yet anyway, and the results will be more than worth it in the end.
Reform and Basic Training Three, Month Four, Five and Six
At this point, the initial temporary formations would be reformed, to ensure that every Section has a viable Afghan to step up as the Corporal and Lance Corporal at the end of this three month period, along with ensuring sections and troops have a fair mix of abilities. Its not going to go well in the long run if all your best shots are in a single troop.
Training should continue along standard infantry lines, again, having never gone through the process, I wont speculate on what that is, but it seems to take 16-20 weeks, so throw in English lessons, and by the end of 6 months, it should be relatively complete.
Reformation and Rerolement, Months Seven, Eight and Nine
Now, we have reached a (serious) problem.
The 10,320 ISAF/NATO/British officer staff have all served a 6 month overseas term, and quite rightly, expect to go home to start there 30month work down, retraining and work up schedule.
But they make up a little over a quarter of the force, if they all leave, the Corps will fall apart.
So, what do we do? Well, the first thing is, we encourage as many to stay on as possible. Most expedient way of running that would be enhanced promotion prospects. I didn’t join the armed forces, but I did look at it, and, it may just be me, but I found my fellow applicants questions like “how often can I go home?” distinctly weird, I was far more interested in, “So, after 5 years, what Rank could I be?”.
If you do the math on joining, flying out of the country, staying out for 5 years and coming back a Major, well, your bank account looks very healthy.
The second method, is to require fewer officers and NCO’s.
Most of you have probably picked up on this already, but we have two ways to solve this. The first, is we keep 10 men sections, but go from 5 per troop, to 4, the second is, we go from 10 man section to 8, and keep 5 sections, either way, our Troop of 40 Afghan Riflemen and 10 British NCOs, can become 30 Afghan Riflemen and 30 Afghan NCO’s.
For the purposes of this already weighty tome, I will only demonstrate reducing number of sections rather than section strength.
A Regiment would consist of a minimal Regimental Staff, IE a Colonel, a LtCol and a Regimental Sergeant, plus Three Battalions
Each Battalion would consist of a minimal Battalion Staff, IE a Lt Col a Major and a Battalion Sergeant, plus 5 Companies.
Each Company would consist of a minimal Company Staff, IE, a Major, a Captain and a Company Sergeant, plus 5 Troops.
Each Troop would consist of Minimal Troop Staff, IE, a Captain, a Lieutenant and a Sergeant, plus 4 sections.
Each Section would consist of 8 Afghan Riflemen, an Afghan Lance Corporal and an Afghan Corporal.
The remaining Officers and NCO’s all being ISAF or in the future, British
This gives a total Strength of 32,820, 24,000 Afghan Riflemen, 3,000 Afghan Lances, 3,000 Afghan Corporals and 2820 assorted British NCO’s and Officers.
If any of the Regimental Colonels wants to retire or just go home, we have a Regimental Lt Colonel “understudying” each of them who can be promoted into the role, each Regimental Lt Col has three Battalion Lt Cols under them, who have a Battalion Major under them, who have 5 Company Majors under them, who have a Troop Captain understudying them, who in turn has a Troop Lt under them. So filling gaps shouldn’t be a problem, and much the same applies to the NCO’s, wherein there is actually a larger pool to choose from, there are no one to one replacements, the smallest being 1:3 Regimental Sergeant Majors to Battalion Sergeant Majors.
Training should concentrate on adding special and heavy weapons to the sections, a Designated Marksman’s Rifle and a Machine gun of some sort, I’m not going to have a calibre debate, but given the likely funding available to the force in the long term, standardisation has to be the way, be that 7.62, 5.56 or something in between, or even off to one side.
Rerolement and Explosives Projection, Months Ten, Eleven and Twelve
The final stage of the Training should look to add explosives projection to the formation. Again, given the long term budget available, its pointless discussing such wonders and Javelin and GMLRs. Its far more realistic to hope that each company can field a couple of 81mm Mortars or a couple of anti armour rockets. Obviously both will be carried within each Battalion.
The force is unlikely to come up against anything that can shrug off hits from such weapons, certainly not in the short term.
And given that at the end of this period, the Attached Advisors are going to be due another return home, it would be best if we started looking for Afghans to fill the Troop Sergeant and Troop Lieutenant roles, and assuming these are to be pulled from the Afghan NCO Roles, Afghan Riflemen to fills those vacant positions, and started mentoring them appropriately.
Reformation and Deployment, Months Thirteen to Eighteen
Again, all of our embedded forces are due to return for their workdown/training/workup cycle. And again, we will need to convince a majority of them to stay. And again, my plan remains, promote to fill vacancies, transfer tasks to the Afghans and reform the Regiment, this time with 4 troops to a Company, not 5.
A Regiment would consist of a minimal Regimental Staff, IE a Colonel, a LtCol and a Regimental Sergeant, plus Three Battalions
Each Battalion would consist of a minimal Battalion Staff, IE a Lt Col a Major and a Battalion Sergeant, plus 5 Companies.
Each Company would consist of a minimal Company Staff, IE, a Major, a Captain and a Company Sergeant, plus 4 Troops.
Each Troop would consist of Minimal Troop Staff, IE, a Captain an Afghan Lieutenant and an Afghan Sergeant, plus 4 sections.
Each Section would consist of 8 Afghan Riflemen, an Afghan Lance Corporal and an Afghan Corporal.
The remaining Officers and NCO’s all being ISAF or in the future, British
This gives a total Strength of 26,370, 19,200 Afghan Riflemen, 2,400 Afghan Lances, 2,400 Afghan Corporals, 600 Afghan Sergeants, 600 Afghan Lieutenants and 1170 assorted British NCO’s and Officers.
Astute readers will have noticed I’ve failed to place 4,800 Afghan Riflemen, well, not exactly, they will no longer be part of the First Afghan Army Corps, they stay behind, and provide the bulk of the NCO’s for the Second Afghan Army Corps, which should by now have been recruited, and be on its way to the training ground, as the First Corps is rotated to Afghanistan, or from wherever it hails if this is actually used in the future.
The newly reformed force is deployed to Afghanistan, somewhere where there is likely to be some action, but not into a meat grinder.
It doesn’t have to be deployed as a Corps, but I wouldn’t want to break it down any further than a Regiment. If we want the ANA to fight on its own, it cant be a force of companies raised to bolster NATO Battalions, NATO Battalions should be bolstering ANA Regiments.
Rest Deployment, Months Nineteen to Twenty Four
Its time for another reformation and again, we will need to convince a majority of the embedded to stay. And again, my plan remains, promote to fill vacancies, transfer tasks to the Afghans and reform the Regiment, this time with 4 Companies to a Battalion, not 5.
A Regiment would consist of a minimal Regimental Staff, IE a Colonel, a LtCol and a Regimental Sergeant, plus Three Battalions
Each Battalion would consist of a minimal Battalion Staff, IE a Lt Col a Major and a Battalion Sergeant, plus 4 Companies.
Each Company would consist of a minimal Company Staff, IE, a Major, an Afghan Captain and an Afghan Company Sergeant, plus 4 Troops.
Each Troop would consist of Minimal Troop Staff, IE, an Afghan Troop Captain an Afghan Lieutenant and an Afghan Sergeant, plus 4 sections.
Each Section would consist of 8 Afghan Riflemen, an Afghan Lance Corporal and an Afghan Corporal.
The remaining Officers and NCO’s all being ISAF or in the future, British
This gives a total Strength of 21,120, 15,360 Afghan Riflemen, 1,920 Afghan Lances, 1,920 Afghan Corporals, 480 Afghan Troop Sergeants, 120 Afghan Company Sergeants, 480 Afghan Lieutenants, 480 Afghan Troop Captains, 120 Afghan Company Captains and 240 assorted British NCO’s and Officers.
Again, somewhere along the line, we have lost 4,200 Afghans, a few of these will no doubt be casualties, the rest, well,
We can either repeat my earlier trick of staffing a newly formed Corps with Afghan not ISAF Lances and Corporals, although this would require two training camps running concurrently, as the first camp wont be forming a third corps until the end of Month 24.
The Second Option, would be to being “supporting Arms” formation, so engineers, perhaps Artillery ect.
The Third Option, would be an Officers College. A Company Captain following the Company Major around would no doubt learn a lot, but you cant learn everything “on the job”
The Fourth, and probably worst option, is to allow them to transfer into an already established Corps, so an Afghan Troop Lieutenant from the first Corps who applied for but didn’t get one of the newly vacant Troop or Company Posts, could transfer to such a post in the second Corps. This may however create a “newcomer” dynamic, and of course, is a block on promoting from with the second Corps.
Deployment should be somewhere relatively quite to allow mistakes from the last deployment to be worked on until corrected. Although there’s no reason if a major push is planned, they can’t take a reserve roll within it.
Rest Deployment, Months Twenty Five to Thirty
Another Reformation, same drill as before, this time forming a Regiment Around Two Battalions not three
A Regiment would consist of a minimal Regimental Staff, IE a Colonel, a LtCol and a Regimental Sergeant, plus Two Battalions
Each Battalion would consist of a minimal Battalion Staff, IE a Lt Col an Afghan Battalion Major and an Afghan Battalion Sergeant, plus 4 Companies.
Each Company would consist of a minimal Company Staff, IE, an Afghan Major, an Afghan Captain and an Afghan Company Sergeant, plus 4 Troops.
Each Troop would consist of Minimal Troop Staff, IE, an Afghan Troop Captain an Afghan Lieutenant and an Afghan Sergeant, plus 4 sections.
Each Section would consist of 8 Afghan Riflemen, an Afghan Lance Corporal and an Afghan Corporal.
The remaining Officers and NCO’s all being ISAF or in the future, British
This gives a total Strength of 14,090, 10,240 Afghan Riflemen, 1,280 Afghan Lances, 1,280 Afghan Corporals, 320 Afghan Troop Sergeants, 80 Afghan Company Sergeants, 20 Afghan Battalion Sergeants, 320 Afghan Lieutenants, 320 Afghan Troop Captains, 80 Afghan Company Captains, 80 Afghan Company Majors, 80 Afghan Battalion Majors and 50 assorted British NCO’s and Officers.
Again, I’ve cut nearly 7000 Afghans, and again, the best place for them would be the NCO and officer positions of the Newly formed 3rd (or 5th) Corps, or an officer school, I assume someones spotted that by Month 48, an Aghan who joined on day one as a private is going to be a Colonel.
Since I’m already on Page 7, I wont show the next couple of steps. Let me just add this is it for Reforming the unit, it will remain a Corps 10 Regiments, each of sections Battalions, of 4 companies of 4 troops of 4 sections. The 50 remaining British Officers should by the end of this or the next tour be replaceable and traditions created, newly recruited riflemen simply join the regiment directly.
After 10 years, we’d have recruited 10 (or more, or less) Corps, each with a nominal strength of over 14,000, who would be well trained, well equipped, well paid and rather loyal to, well, us, since we’re paying the wages. If the State has reached the point where it can tax its citizens enough to pay this force, we can hand it over, lock stock and barrel, and if its not, well, assuming my earlier guess of £10 a day was a fair wage, well, we the wage bill for this army is not going to be hugely above half a billion pounds a year, even if it’s a billion pounds a year, well, its cheaper than what we’re currently doing.
And I’d wager it’s a damned site more effective.
Recruitment: Your idea on recruitment is how the ANA started off; ethnically balanced, and no previous militia ties. Then the need for manpower grew and grew and grew…
The problem with this concept is it ignores the political reality. Unless the country in question is under a UN Mandate adminstered by non-native personnel (think of (then) Palestine or Iraq under the British Mandate in the mid 20th century) it is not going to happen in most of the countries where we would need to impose stability.
No political elite is going to want to see the establishment of a force that will damage or challenge their ability to rule.
The police force and army of a country will generally reflect the composition of the ruling elite.
USSR – predominantly officered by Russians.
Iraq – now a Shia dominated Police and Army (but under Saddam a Sunni dominated security force system…)
Syria – Allawites
Libya – tribes with close links to Gadaffi’s tribe.
Rwanda – was Tutu now Hutu.
It is difficult to break out from this – but possible. A good example is Sierra Leone.
Some other random thoughts:
The problem of giving indirect fire weapons to troops is you have to make sure that either you have your finger on their triggers, or that there are very robust battle space management procedures to stop them using the ‘big sky’ theory when lobbing even mortar rounds around while NATO or the UK is flying air assets around. That is why generally the provision of indirect fire means follows on considerably behind direct fire means and after a tolerable C2 mechanism has been established.
Why Army first and not police? Personally I would do it the other way round – it is likely to be more effective in the long run in stabilisation scenarios.
The use of Loan Service used to be very effective – lots of adventurous British, French and Prussian officers with various Indian armies in the 18th century, and Brits, South Africans and Aussies with Middle East armies in the mid 20th century.
Your initial training piece with the language sounded fine; how long does the French Foreign Legion take to train up a rifleman? This includes French as well; it would be a handy comparator.
i remember reading an earlier version of this, its reads well, and I can well see the attraction of such a system where nation building is required without absorbing all expeditionary capability in a britain sized country.
cheer.
External training sites aren’t anything new. Many Iraqi NCOs, the officer corps and police training teams were trained up in Jordan; I think the Egyptians played a training role too.
However, the wholescale removal of military training to a Western host nation comes across as quite imperialistic – particularly when you then include language training and also the insertion of a British hierarchy of NCOs, WOs and commissioned officers to run the foreign grunts.
For countries like us, that face accusations of imperialism and colonialism whenever we involve ourselves in the affairs of an Arab or Muslim state, this would be a terrible set-up and a PR failure on a global scale.
It’s a system that also seems to include and retain a broad range of British responsibility for these forces, and therefore any and every cluster-f’ck, massacre, accident and atrocity they manage to achieve while under British command.
Jedi – “the attraction of such a system where nation building is required…”. If we should have learnt anything from our recent history, it’s that we should avoid nation building like the plague.
@ BB – “If we should have learnt anything from our recent history, it’s that we should avoid nation building like the plague.”
Very much agreed, but it is what we signed up for ten years ago. That we might we we had more realistic ambitions does not change the desire to have realised better policy to realise the ambitions we did have.
Jedi, “the dead are happy, for they have no desire”. So said someone or other, some time ago.
This is a lovely exercise in fantasy. Much thought put into it, but not backed up by much idea of how things actually are.
It works wonderfully in a vacuum, in fact, sorry, no, it doesn’t even work in those circumstances.
Such a strategy was already implemented in Iraq with disasterous consequences. The problem with disbanding the exisitng Army and Police is that you inevitably turn them against the occipation force giving insurgents easy access to both trained men and equiptment. Especially explosives and 155mm shells used for IED’s. That being said Afghanistan was a very different situation to Iraq as there was very little in the way of a ANA or Police to begin with.
I don’t think it will ever be possible to change the corruption of the ANA and police in a hell hole like Afghanistan. It is just the way they are and a bunch of white boys speding billions aint going to change anything. Better off just leaving them to their own devices and making sure they don’t destabalise others.
Instead of hudge ground forces trying to build schools it would be far cheaper and simpalr to work with ward lords as we did in the early days with nothing more than a few special forces and aircraft we can permanently destabalise the Taliban. Make them fight our kind of war for decades. Eventually even the Taliban will tire. We should remember that the Taliban were defeated in such a way in a matter of weeks in 2001 before the first division had even fully deployed to Afghanistan.
Lesson Number One of working with the ANA/ANP.
They are NOT a 21st century western army. Nor will it ever be possible to turn it into one whilst its society effectively remains in the 18th century.
Not even by isolating large numbers of Afghan recruits who come with empty hard drives ready for reprogramming in English and transferring them into a training facility that has appeared from nowhere from which they emerge model soldiers into a new model army which operates in a political and social and security vacuum – probably against the old ANA now very much enemies.
They are an 18th century army, there is petty corruption, there is poor leadership, there is abuse, there is poor logistic habits, poor maintenance of equipment, desertion, astounding and blatant lying and plenty of fighting spirit. They are all this because it reflects the society from which they come and the society in which they will operate in.
They are a terrible army, but they are fighting an equally terrible enemy. We must recognise this and stop trying to turn them into a western army and wanting them to do things our way. They just will not do it.
It must be ISAF supported by the ANA/ANP/ALP that breaks the insurgency, with the ALP/ANP/ANA trying to maintain some sort of security. This is because breaking the insurgency needs a nuanced approach that the Afghan are just not capable of or even, by and large, capable of even conceiving of.
Afghanistan is not winnable on the battlefield.
The ANA/ANP are mere enablers, the real effort needs to go into education and infrastructure and the ALP.
18th century? I think you are over by about 900 years.
Nope because standing armies were very rare in those times.
The Afghans are not as backward as many think. A lot of their behaviour is down to their inability to read, and their environment, which obviously is a big driver in forming societies and their culture.
Phil said “whilst its society effectively remains in the 18th century. ”
Afghan society rates early medieval at best. And I never said they were backward. Medieval society was ordered and civil.
Question;
Which of the following do people feel would work best?
a) A large Afghan army with minimal training or
b) A much, much smaller army, hand picked to a degree, designed to be more like Commandos
Why does it rate medieval? Really it’s neither, it is a product of its environment and it varies around the country depending on the local environment.
In any case, the ANA is not a western force and yet we think that they are incompetent unless they operate as we do. We need to move from this paradigm and stop mirror imaging our modus operandi onto them.
As a team ISAF and the ANA are very potent indeed and it is whilst we can operate together that we stand the biggest chance of breaking this insurgency.
Large Afghan army with minimal training. You need boots on the ground. The locals will be distinctly unimpressed with Afghan commando’s kicking up a fuss for a while and buggering off.
The reality is we need the whole spectrum of forces, ISAF, ANA, ANP and ALP but with a considerable effort directed at local government organisation, eduction, education, eduction, education and locally delivered infrastructure.
Agrarian, pre-industrial, clan based, heavily influenced by religion……
Either way, its not a western society. Not outside Kabul anyway. And its army is not a western army. So it should not be judged to those standards. It is much more like an 18th century British army, poor raw material, illiterate, poor maintenance of weapons and equipment beyond personal weapons, poor logistics, corrupt, severely weakened by desertion and often brutal discipline, which paradoxically, is also incredibly lax.
It has a very hard time understanding or embedding into itself drills and skills – it has a hard time doing this because such things are alien to their culture and their experience.
The British Army in the 1700s was poor? Dude I hope you take a breath while you swap feet.
Yeah, the peacetime British army in the 1700s was poor.
But you didn’t say that. We were talking about the Afghan army which is at war. So of course by inference I thought you meant the British Army (at war) was poor.
Beyond Marlborough and a few other isolated actions I think the wartime army was poor too. But. That would be too deviant a path to take since the author has troubled to write about the ANA.
You should beat yourself to death with a copy of Professor Richard Holmes’ “Redcoat” and then come and ask forgiveness. My flabber is truly ghasted.
I thought you killed any discussion of the thread with your first post. My bad.
Please beat yourself about the head with Corelli Barnetts history of the Army.
I think the ideas expressed in the article are unrealistic but always happy to discuss since that’s the fun part. And I’m sure the author can defend his points.
Very intersting
Callum
There little point accepting political realities if they lead to defeat.
Do we need the current elite?
I didnt say it out loud, but there no reason the Afghanistan Company Army cant displace them.
At the end of the day, without massive continuos ISAF support, Karzai is dead.
When we pull out, he will lose Afghanistan, village by village, city by city, province by province, until he is back behind his trenches fighting as the Northern Alliance.
Pandering to the current lot has cost us the war.
Indirect fire does come with its own problems, but this is a general template, air support may not exist, and in the not too distant future, wont exist in Afghanistan either.
Why the Army?
Afghanistan doesnt have a police force.
The ANP are a Gendarme, they dont investigate stolen goats or arbitrate boundary disputes. Do they?
The Afghanistan Company Armys first task would likely be securing the road network anyway.
The FFL takes 15 weeks, but 99% of the FFL enlistees will be literate in at least their own language and will have had some degree of education.
Thats unlikely to be the case in Afghanistan.
The training is extremely slow, but that was deliberate, I want them out of contact with “their” people, long enough for The ACA to become their family.
Brian
I think nation building is a bad idea, but, if we are going to attempt it, I think its important to attempt it in a manner that carries some hope of success in the long term.
No doubt, the second the recruits are out of the country, the Taliban would have been insisting we had murdered them and sold their organs to Jews, so?
It might be a PR disaster for a year, and then the ACA comes home, is clearly alive, and kick the Taliban, proven liars, in the balls.
About the only unifying force Pakistan has is, The Army, maybe Afghans wont get behind “our brave boys” but theres **** all else they might back.
Phil
Happy for anyone to make any suggestions.
Martin
It wasnt my intent to disband the ANA or ANP, although to my knowledge, neither existed, several years into the program, it would probably be important to put them through it, but with the usual proviso, I dont care if your a Marshall today, tomorrow your a recruit.
Again, I think the type of war being fought in Afghanistan is ill conceived, but that doesnt mean there isnt a better way to carry out a bad idea.
Phil
The ANA are not a western army, I dont claim they are. Nor do I claim much of what you say is not the case, it is.
That is why we would not rely on a training facility, “appearing from no where”, we would build one. Its not difficult to pitch a few thousand tents, we can make the recruits do it.
Where would there be petty corruption?
Would an English Lance Corporal steal the recruits wages?
Why would there be poor leadership?
Unless it already occurs in the British Army, why would British Majors transfering over suddenly become crap?
Afghanistan also rarely has a standing army, the ANA is nominaly a standing army, but most of its members chuff off home come harvest time, and Taliban are entirely seasonal.
Inability to read is a problem, my plan intends to teach large numbers of them to do so.
Appologies for the delay posting, dog ate internet cable…..