Afghan mentoring – a few quotes that chill

I’ve been reading the document Rory Stewart MP was referring to when he challenged William Hague in the Foreign Affairs Select Committee yesterday about why he referred to green-on-blue/fratricidal/Afghan National Security Force attacks against Isaf as “Taliban” attacks. 

Rory Stewart said there was evidence that perhaps three quarters of such attacks were not committed by people with links to the Taliban but may have happened because of a collapse in relations between the individuals being trained and the force that is responsible for the training.

For those of you, like me, catching up with this, the report for the US military based on interviews with ANSF and Isaf personnel, was written last year. Here are some quotes from it: 

“One group (the ANSF) generally sees the other (the US and some other Isaf forces) as a bunch of violent, reckless, intrusive, arrogant, self-serving, profane, infidel bullies hiding behind high technology; and the other group (the US etc) generally views the former as a bunch of cowardly, incompetent, obtuse, thieving, complacent, lazy, pot-smoking, treacherous and murderous radicals. Such is the state of progress in the current ‘partnering’ program.” (p54)

The report starts by saying: “US soldiers’ … views of ANSF, particularly of the ANA, were … collected; they were extremely negative. They reported pervasive illicit drug use, massive thievery, personal instability, dishonesty, no integrity, incompetence, unsafe weapons handling, corrupt officers, no real NCO corps, covert alliances/informal treaties with insurgents, high Awol rates, bad morale, laziness, repulsive hygiene and the torture of dogs.” (p3)

From the Afghans’ point of view:

“Factors that fuelled the most animosity included US convoys not allowing traffic to pass, reportedly indiscriminant return US fire that causes civilian casualties, naively using flawed intelligence sources, US Forces conducting night raidslhome searches, violating female privacy during searches, US road blocks, publicly searching/disarming ANSF members as an SOP when they enter bases, and past massacres of civilians by US Forces (ie the Wedding Party Massacre, the Shinwar Massacre etc.).

Other issues that led to altercations or near~altercations (including many self-reported near-fratricidal incidents) included urinating in public, their cursing at, insulting and being rude and vulgar to ANSF members, and unnecessarily shooting animals. They found many US Soldiers to be extremely arrogant, bullying, unwilling to listen to their advice, and were often seen as lacking concern for civilian and ANSF safety during combat.”

There’s a curious and dark symmetry between Afghans complaining that the US forces kill animals too readily while the US think the Afghans spend too much time sadistically torturing dogs for pleasure. 

Here’s one former ANSF trainer’s response to ISAF’s instruction to stop training at the company level would have serious inplications. The former trainer writes:

“As a former mentor to the ANSF, I can attest that the bulk of their effective operations occur at the company level and below. Thus, Isaf cannot hope to build effective and competent ANSF forces without first ensuring that the Afghan Army and Police can function independent of Isaf mentorship at the company level.

“If the ANSF were an American football team, Isaf just announced that they will cease training the players (most of whom have never played football) and focus entirely on training the coaching staff, with the expectation that the team will win the Superbowl this year.”

The Defence Secretary, Philip Hammond, of course spent yesterday saying that the arrangements for UK forces’ partnering and mentoring were “substantially unchanged.”  But if the US is changing its approach to training hasn’t something fundamentally changed about the mission?