Afghanistan (50 page)

The Afghan National Army

Today, the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) comprises the Afghan National Army (ANA), which includes the Air Corps and the Afghan National Police (ANP).
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The ANA was created by the coalition, who guided it throughout its formation and now its operations. The ANA is intended to be the national army of Afghanistan, with ethnic quotas being applied to both the force structure as a whole and to individual
kandaks
(battalions) to ensure that it accurately reflects the demographic makeup of the country as a whole.
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The ANA has emerged far ahead of any other Afghan government institution in terms of capability, competence, minimized corruption, and its ability to operate with ethnolinguistically diverse personnel. Since its organization, the ANA has not been defeated in action by insurgents and has not been in any battle where it has not prevailed. It has become something for Afghans to take pride in as well as a successful example of what can be accomplished for other Afghan governmental institutions through a complete overhaul. Only in the most heavily insurgent-controlled areas of the south are the ANA considered an outside, foreign, and therefore hostile force. “It is the most respected institution in the country. That it went from zero to that in five to six years is significant,” said MG Mark Milley, US Army, deputy commander of Regional Command-East in 2008.
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While the ANA’s progress has been great, further challenges remain, especially as the coalition pushes for it to quickly expand and take over the burden of ground combat operations.

In the initial years of its existence, ANA infrastructure was limited. Many of their barracks even lacked running water. A rapid buildup was not a priority; rather, the overall approach was aimed at minimizing US aid expenditure. By not anticipating that there would be another insurgency coming about any time soon, the US and its coalition partners “wasted so many years,” in the words of Rahim Wardak, Afghanistan’s defense minister.
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It was only in 2007 that the US provided greater
funding for a faster buildup of the ANA. The decision to disband the Afghan Military Forces and recreate the ANA from scratch meant that there was no opportunity to build on an existing foundation, making the buildup process even lengthier. But such a clean slate was seen by the coalition and Kabul government alike as required to break down the links with pre-2001 forces, limit ethnolinguistic divisions, and weed out corruption.

The ANA is now committed to a program of rapid expansion. In November 2008 the ANA was 79,000 strong (plus five thousand absent without leave personnel) with 78 infantry and five commando kandaks.
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By January 2009, 56 of these kandaks were assessed by ISAF as being capable of battalion-level operations. A specialist counter-narcotics infantry kandak is also being formed. In January-April 2009, an average of 83 ANA deliberate operations per week were being mounted, compared with 37 the year before.
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Five corps headquarters provided the ANA’s operational leadership: the 201st Corps in Kabul, 203rd Corps in Gardez, 205th Corps in Kandahar, 207th Corps in Herat, and 209th Corps in Mazar-e-Sharif. By 2009, there were plans to expand the ANA to over 134,000 in October 2010 and eventually 216,000 in 2014, as well as for the acquisition of additional helicopters and transport aircraft. New equipment is being provided; artillery and armored vehicles will be delivered though US and other coalition security assistance programs. The ANA’s Kalashnikov rifles are being replaced by US-designed M16 series weapons, and Soviet-era tanks will be replaced by US-designed wheeled armored vehicles. The ANA will retain some of its Soviet-designed equipment, including its helicopters.

By 2009, the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan led to further initiatives to expand the ANA and ANP. A total end-strength of 400,000 ANSF personnel was being considered in Washington. GEN Petraeus said: “I’m not going to get into numbers, but there is a pretty general assessment that number is in the ballpark, whatever you do, in facing an industrial-strength insurgency in Afghanistan.”
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He added “there are limits to how fast you can accelerate growth, especially the development of officer and non-commissioned officer leaders. . . . The ANA has gone up from under 20,000 in 2005 to over 85,000 in 2008. We need a lot more, now 90 battalions or so. . . . They will fight but have a
long way to go before they can take over security responsibility in any systematic fashion.” By the time even the 134,000 force level is reached, the ANA would have 20 brigade headquarters throughout the nation, plus a division headquarters in Kabul, alongside artillery, engineer, and Quick Reaction Force (QRF) assets. Because of the limited pool of trained and competent Afghan military leaders, this expansion remains problematic. “I don’t know how we are going to get there,” said COL Jeff Haynes, USMC, former chief advisor to the 201st Corps.
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The expansion of the ANSF is likely to have to be throttled back to meet Afghan realities rather than coalition political goals. New leaders will have to be identified among those that have proven themselves in combat without weakening those units already in the force structure.

Even developed countries have found that the rapid expansion of armed forces is difficult to accomplish, even given practically unlimited resources. For the Afghans, with too few literates willing to fight and with the ANSF dependent on foreign security assistance for training, equipment, and funding, they may have to look again at other measures, such as militia or self-defense groups. Conscription may have to be considered as an alternative to the current all-volunteer forces, although this would potentially have negative political and stability impacts if Pushtuns were conscripted to fight fellow Pushtuns or educated Afghans were unwilling to serve in uniform.

ANA expansion plans to date do not include forces, weapons, or capabilities that would be able to take on Pakistan’s army. Under current plans, Afghanistan will not receive weapons such as surface-to-air missiles or anti-tank weapons from the US or any other source. This expansion has also stretched available training resources, which were strained to begin with. While ANA expansion is a coalition-wide effort, ISAF forces have often failed to provide required resources. As of November 2008, they had provided only 42 out of 103 ISAF OMLTs (operational mentor and liaison teams) that, along with the comparable 12–20 man US Embedded Training Teams (ETTs), are integral to ANA units, training them in garrison and operating as part of them in the field. Many OMLTs are limited by national caveats and so cannot accompany ANA units on some missions, while the smaller armed forces providing
OMLTs lack the US military’s depth of resources. There has also been a long-standing shortage of Afghanistan-trained advisors and trainers that can operate in the field alongside ANA officers. The Combined Security Training Command-Afghanistan (CSTC-A) has an ANSF-wide training function, and in November 2009 this was consolidated as part of the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan (NTM-A). This action was intended to encourage other coalition members to increase their participation in the training mission.
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Yet the shortage of advisors and trainers remains. One of the reasons why US GEN McChrystal requested US and coalition reinforcements in 2009 was to provide additional advisors and trainers to enable the ANSF to expand and be able to take over a greater burden of combat operations in the future.

The ANSF took over security in Kabul starting in August 2008. This shift in responsibility away from the coalition has been relatively successful. Even with the increase in insurgency-related violence, “the security services are doing better, and discover more threats,” according to Dominic Medley, UNAMA spokesman.
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The ANSF operations have not been limited to Kabul. In 2008, BG James C. McGonville, deputy commander of Regional Command-East, confirmed that: “Most operations in Regional Command-East are being lead by the ANA.”
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While Afghans are willing to watch others fight the insurgency for them, when made to take responsibility and when trustworthy Afghan commanders can be promoted and retained regardless of patronage, the ANSF can be effective.

To facilitate coordination with coalition forces, the ANSF has established Operations Coordination Commands (OCCs), six regional (OCC-Rs) co-located with the ISAF Regional Commands and in Kabul and 34 provincial (OCC-Ps), located in each provincial capital. These are coordination rather than command centers. There is no ANSF national command post, and the separate ANA, ANP and intelligence chains of command remain intact.

In recent years, expansion of the ANSF has been seen as the most important investment toward reversing the trends of a more powerful and widespread insurgency. While much is expected from the ANA, it still faces substantial limitations as demands for rapid expansion have
stretched its limited trained cadres thin and it must rely on foreign resources to sustain a rapid buildup. Indeed, the ANA is not sustainable without foreign assistance before 2024, even given optimistic economic projections.
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In 2008–10 the ANA was still heavily dependent on foreign forces for funding, fuel, air support, casualty evacuation, and indirect fire support. Technical arms, artillery, and the ANA’s Air Corps have all lagged behind in development. Widespread absence without leave and desertion remains a problem. In some areas of Afghanistan, especially in the south, ANA units are seen as outsiders by many Pushtuns who have not embraced the army’s multiethnic composition as consistent with the Pushtun vision of the future of Afghanistan. Having an army better developed than the civilian elements of government has, in other countries, most notably Pakistan, led to the military seizing power. While the ANA’s American and coalition creators have tried to mold it as a non-political force, this might not endure a reduction in the aid it depends on to function.

The culture of corruption that affects all Afghanistan has not spared the ANA, although it is probably the least corrupt Afghan government institution. This is due in large part to its financial autonomy, being largely funded by US and other coalition donors with funds that go directly to it.
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Afghan politics and patronage relations continue to shape high-level command appointments, keeping the incompetent employed and frustrating their more-competent subordinates. Throughout the ANA’s command structure, the importance of traditional Afghan patronage relationships is often at odds with the need for a functioning chain of command that does not always line up with old loyalties. At senior levels, many ANA officers have achieved commands due to patronage rather than competence, making the entire organization at risk for continued nepotism. “It took me nine months to get an incompetent and criminal ANA brigade commander fired, and it would not have happened if I had not threatened to pull out the advisory teams,” COL Haynes recalled. The lack of willingness to accept individual accountability, encouraged by both traditional Afghan practices and lingering Soviet training, remains strong. One experienced Afghan journalist believed that, under pressure, it would
dissolve and that it could fracture along ethnolinguistic lines: “It is a myth that the ANA is professional and competent.” Yet it remains that the ANA is doing better than most Afghan governmental institutions. Progress has been made, but is likely, in the future, to be as slow and frustrating as all progress is in Afghanistan. Relying on the ANSF for too much or speeding its expansion puts at risk what has been gained so far and has the potential to undercut the chance to fix its limitations.

Historically, Afghan armies have fragmented under pressure, their soldiers deserting with their weapons to defend their homes alongside their kin. Afghan soldiers fought, but not as an army, against the British in the Second Afghanistan War and against the Soviets after their 1979 invasion, but rather as part of a people in arms, with little or no national or central command or direction. The challenge for the ANA is to quickly create a force that will not fragment if faced with the challenge of assuming the primary security responsibility for Afghanistan. This is likely to require more competent Afghan leaders, more coalition trainers, more resources, and more time than current US and coalition plans project.

Rapid expansion has the potential to undermine ANA capability and so it must be done with care. Counter-insurgency is a war of low-level command, not a few highly professional generals. The Soviets found that, in Afghanistan, the professionalism of their generals mattered less than the inadequacies of their captains, lieutenants, and NCOs. Rapid ANA expansion has stretched the limited supply of these critical Afghan leaders thin indeed. Insistence on ethnic quotas, while important in many other ways, and age limits that keep out most veterans of the war against the Soviets and even the civil wars in ground combat units (the Air Corps is still made of primarily of Soviet-trained aircrew), have reduced the combat leadership pool still further. A reliance on a professional NCO corps on the model of the US and UK armed forces has been difficult to introduce. As in so many other areas, competent Afghans tend to be hired away by NGOs or contractors that can pay much higher salaries and gives them employment away from insurgent landmines and ambushes.

At the unit level, the combination of the Soviet-era distrust of initiative and the traditional Afghan reluctance to accept individual responsibility
has hindered the emergence of functional leadership. These same factors undercut all Afghan organizations and the ANSF, with the help of its coalition trainers and advisors, has done more than any other to overcome them, but they still remain strong. This has prevented them from having true “ownership” of the security situation even when they have taken the military responsibility, as in Kabul, and allowed them to continue to avoid accepting responsibility for the circumstances in their own country. This last especially applies to the ANA’s leaders. Only if their honor (and that of their kin) is at stake will they not be fighting a “limited liability” war against an enemy that respects no such limits. Threatening to disengage and leave them to face the enemy alone is no answer—it did not work for the Soviets—but a long-term commitment to Afghanistan is only going to be credible if it becomes apparent that the Afghans rather than foreigners can and will be able to handle the bulk of the conflict.