A GUEST POST FROM DOUG BEATTIE MC
I know what it is like to look down the barrel of a gun held be my supposed colleagues. In 2008, my men and I were held at gunpoint by soldiers of the Afghan National Army while some of their associates turned weapons on an insurgent we had captured during a fire-fight. Seconds later the prisoner was dead, cut to pieces by 7.62 rounds from the Kalashnikovs our allies used to mete out their rough justice.
But we were incidental to proceedings. The target was the prisoner not us. We were being kept out of the way while the ANA vented their lethal fury on their true enemy. These days’ things are rather different in Helmand and beyond.
If you take a forensic look at the growing spate of Green on Blue incidents – or as ISAF now like to call them, ‘Insider Attacks’ taking into account the Afghan attacks on other Afghans that we don’t regularly hear about – you will come up with various reasons.
At the moment about 10% are directly attributed to insurgent activity, with perhaps the same number again suspected of being enemy related. But the rest are rather more mundane: cultural clashes and personal grievances for example, also the effect of events that might be taking place far beyond Afghanistan’s borders.
The release of the ‘Innocence of Muslims’ and the consequent storm of protest and outrage it unleashed is a case in point as was the accidental burning of pages of the Koran earlier this year
The tensions led to sensible precautions being taken such as the limiting of joint Coalition-Afghan patrols at local tactical level and now at the strategic level. Yet is not the step backwards some have portrayed it, instead it is the development of an ongoing campaign.
Previously a company-level risk assessment would be carried out before any military patrol which involving Afghans forces took place. This would need to be signed off by the Battle Group (Battalion). Now, on the orders of the Commander ISAF, that level of scrutiny has now been given another layer.
Now the initial assessment will still be conducted by the company and then passed up the chain of command as before for scrutiny. But now it also needs the rubber-stamping at Task Force level. A ‘no’ might arise if a major political or cultural factor was identified at national or even global level that could inflame tempers at the micro-level. Such was the case with the film.
The reality for British forces is they don’t work at Battalion level; instead they work at the company level spread out all over the central populous belt of Helmand. So in essence they will continue to partner and mentor the Afghan security forces in exactly the same way as we did previously but with more oversight by commanders with an eye for the bigger picture.
To say there have been catastrophic events in Afghanistan recently is indisputable. But as ever, context is all. Despite the picture the media are tempted to portray of a coalition crumbling, these attacks – especially where they are driven by the enemy – mark points on an evolving landscape and potentially the move from one phase of the campaign to another, just as in 2008/9 the proliferation of IEDs increased dramatically and two years later the enemy switched to the targeted assassinations of government officials
Some may find this hard to swallow, but the Coalition forces and the Afghan Army and Police have made major gains in the last couple of years and the strategy of partnering Afghan security forces is working.
We forget that half of Afghanistan is now under Government security force control. The strategy to hand over the remaining areas by district and province is still well on track and the effectiveness of the Afghan Army increases day by day.
The Afghan Police are still less developed than the Army but that may be due to their mentoring only really beginning in any coherent way in 2009 – three full years after the programme with the Afghan Army began.
Of course we need to train Afghan forces so that they can determine the fate of their own country. Selfishly, the quicker we do this then the quicker we can withdraw. And the better the Afghans are at their jobs, the easier our departure will be. We need the Afghan forces to provide time and space to allow an orderly pull out rather than a humiliating, ragged, fighting withdrawal with all the British casualties that will entail. For that reason the mentoring must continue, despite the risks.
Doug Beattie MC
Author ‘An Ordinary Soldier’ and ‘Task Force Helmand’
@ Doug Beattie MC – A very interesting post – I hope to read more – but doesn’t the incident you mention at the begining of your post, and the fact that 80-90% of “insider attacks” are not enemy related indicate the ANA have a long way to go before they are a disciplined military force?
Dare I say it, injecting some reality into the subject.
That vast swarthes of the ANA think a dressing down from an NCO from a different (or not?) ethnicity of clan requires and justifies a killing is not reassuring.
Nor is that “only” 20% of such killings are by Taliban sympathisers within the ANA.
If we were to ask “how many ANA soldiers have been intentionaly killed in the field by other ANA soldiers in the last three years?”
And then followed up with “how many years must you go back for the UK to have the same number of intentional killings”
What would the answer be?
“We forget that half of Afghanistan is now under Government security force control. The strategy to hand over the remaining areas by district and province is still well on track and the effectiveness of the Afghan Army increases day by day.”
Except of course, even at its absolute peak, the Taliban controlled only 90% of the country, and even then, its hold was very weak over most areas.
Enough to force a show of loyalty, but the various tribal groups were very very quick to slaughter the local Taliban administration once US intervention crushed their main strengths and so removed the threat of retaliation.
That half of the country is under the Mayor of Kabuls dominion is nothing good, historicaly, its pretty normal.
And that should set alarm bells ringing.
Trillion sof dollars, thousands of lives, and we’ve reached less than the last padishah.
It wont of course.
Because I’m probably the only one who has even heard of the Kalakani rebellion, but for those who havent, he was a quasui religious figure, who overthrew the westernised King, and closed schools for girls.
Sound familiar?
How about, Kalakani was eventualy overthrown, but his replacement was unable to introduce education for women?
No?
Oh well.
“the ANA have a long way to go before they are a disciplined military force?”
The ANA do not have to meet and will never meet the definition of a western disciplined force. You cannot bolt plate western institutions onto a very different culture. All they have to do is be more efficient than a low level, fragmented “insurgency” the most of which will stay at home as soon as we leave anyway.
The attacks are going up because we’re working closer than ever with these ANA units. Trying to impose western ways of thinking on them just won’t work. They’re maddening and they’re inefficient and they are quite poor soldiers over all – but they’re going up against people who are by and large in exactly the same category.
As a society we’re obsessed with model answers and perfection and satisfyingly complete closures on issues. The real world does not work like that, certainly not when we are templating our cultural norms and expectations on a third world army.
The ANA, overall, are good enough to do what they need to do. We really have no logical or rational business expecting them to look and act like us.
Accept that although the path is rocky, frustrating, fuzzy, imperfect and unsatisfying it is in the right direction.
@Phil – I accept your point but surely a basic requirement is they should be fighting the enemy, not each other? And the killing of prisioners should not be tolerated, if not for moral reasons then for the lose of information.
“I accept your point but surely a basic requirement is they should be fighting the enemy, not each other?”
To be frank theirs is simply an extreme form of the inter and intra service violence we see in the West. It is not as bad by any means as it once was but I could point to several operations in the last few hundred years that saw intense inter and intra service conflict which had nothing but a sad and miserable repercussions. And dare I point out that fragging has been seen in western armies too until quite recently?
The overwhelming majority of Afghan soldiers crack on without shooting each other in their slow, ponderous, inefficient but better than nothing and most of the enemy way. Some of them go postal which is not surprising given the raw material available in Afghanistan. I’m not trying to brush the problem under the carpet but just trying to put out some perspective.
As for killing prisoners, 2012 is very different from how things were in 2008. I’ve said many times on here that we didn’t start this fight properly until 2009.
“killing prisoners”
We must acknowledge progress here. Don’t forget we are dealing with peoples who played buzkashi with the severed heads of prisoners.
In fairness the ANA sound a lot like the Omani Firqats from the early 70′s – a bit shit, but much better than what they’re fighting against.
Among the choice operating methods of the Firqats were such delights as; having a big sit down in a circle to vote for a new leader each time an operation began, occassional armed stand offs with their British mentors, and sometimes taking the odd day off… in the middle of an active operation.
Ultimately though they were better trained and more determined than the insurgents in Oman, and they eventually won the day, carrying on even afer Britain formerly withdrew. They were hardly a model of military organisation, discipline and proficiency, but then neither were the enemy.
Doug, thanks for the guest post, and as they like to on this side of the Atlantic, thank you for your service to your country.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/us-militarys-rapid-expansion-in-afghanistan-called-into-question-8219628.html