Afghan training mission losing ground, fated to fail
In its most recent semiannual report to Congress on the Afghan war, the Pentagon expressed ebullient enthusiasm for the Afghan Defense Ministry’s battle against “widespread corruption.”
Minister of Defense Abdul Rahim Wardak, the report boasted, “has personally taken ownership of anticorruption reforms within the Ministry of Defense and is fighting to make” his ministry “an example for the rest of Afghanistan.”
That was in the spring. This month, Wardak was forced to resign after the Afghan parliament voted to dismiss him because of widespread corruption in his ministry.
The U.S. military is packing to leave Afghanistan — pulling up airfields, tearing down bases, disassembling Humvees for transport. Over the next few weeks, 23,000 troops will fly home, leaving 68,000 troops who will stay until 2014.
The looming question, though, is: After 11 years, more than 2,000 U.S. military fatalities and at least $1 trillion in expenses, what are the United States and NATO leaving behind?
The answer is bleak: Afghan security forces totally incapable of operating on their own, as the U.S. military quietly acknowledges. And a government so corrupt and ineffectual that, as the Army said in that report to Congress, it “bolsters insurgent messaging.” In others words, great PR for the Taliban.
Since 2002, the United States has spent $43 billion to train the Afghan military and police. It plans to spend $11.2 billion more this year, and the military has requested another $5.8 billion for 2013.
Meantime, military trainers, almost on the sly, changed the rules. Since training began, they have measured their success by counting the number of newly trained Afghan units capable of fighting without any assistance from NATO forces.
Well, now the training mission acknowledges that none of the Afghan forces are ready to fight on their own. The highest rating for trained Afghan forces today is “independent — with advisers.” In other words, Afghan units that can fight effectively only if U.S. or other NATO troops come along. And today, the military reports, only 7 percent of Afghan army units are capable The highest rating for trained Afghan forces today is “independent — with advisers.” In other words, Afghan units that can fight effectively only if U.S. or other NATO troops come along. The military reports only 7 percent of Afghan army units are capable even of that. even of that.
That’s just one in a nest of problems. Another big one is illiteracy. More than two years ago, just after Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV took command of the NATO training mission, he noted that “overall literacy” among Afghan military and police stood “at about 14 percent.”
Why is that important? How can an illiterate policeman read a license plate, the general asked. How can a soldier fill out a form, read an equipment manual or “calculate trajectory for field artillery?”
Two years later, the special inspector general for Afghan reconstruction, in a recent report, said the literacy rate of Afghan security forces “as a whole is 11 percent.”
In almost every measurable way, the training mission is losing ground. In a 2010 status report, the mission said it lacked trained, competent men to serve as noncommissioned officers — an essential need for any military. The report cited “a shortage of approximately 10,500 noncommissioned officers.”
But in its report to Congress this spring, the Pentagon said the Afghan army is now short 10,600 NCOs.
And then there’s the so-called attrition problem, soldiers who simply don’t show up. Most are deserters. That has forced NATO trainers to change the rules once again. Previously, if 85 percent of a unit’s personnel showed up for duty, that was deemed sufficient. Now, the military says, it’s willing to accept “not less than 75 percent” of authorized levels. What does all of this mean? During the early 1980s, when the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan, “significant Soviet funding went” to train Afghan soldiers and police fighting antigovernment forces, the International Crisis Group reported. Just like now, however, Russians “were unable to stem desertions in the military,” forcing Moscow to send 105,000 more of its own troops. Eventually, of course, the Soviet Union was forced to withdraw, and the Afghan military immediately began to dissolve.
I wonder, though, if the Soviet Union encountered still another serious problem that NATO faces now. A few days ago, an Afghan police officer invited three U.S. Marines to share a predawn Ramadan meal. After they sat down, he pulled out a pistol and shot them, the third so-called green-on-blue killing in a week. So far this year, Afghan trainees have killed 34 Western troops in 25 attacks. In all of 2011, 35 NATO soldiers died in 21 attacks.
Aren’t we in the same position as the Soviet Union 30 years ago — pursuing a Sisyphean task, inescapably destined to fail? Joel Brinkley, a professor of journalism at Stanford University, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former foreign correspondent for the New York Times. Send your feedback to us through our online form at sfgate.com/chronicle/submissions/#1