By Steve Hynd
Brandon Friedman notes a New York Times article:
NAWA, Afghanistan -- One week after several battalions of Marines swept through the Helmand River valley, military commanders appear increasingly concerned about a lack of Afghan forces in the field.
"What I need is more Afghans," said Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, commander of the Marine expeditionary brigade in Helmand Province. He accompanied the top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, during a visit with troops at Patrol Base Jaker here on Monday.
As I said over at the SWJ site, this would be stunning, frankly, if the Afghan forces don't materialize. After all this talk of doing things differently after eight years, after all the talk of "putting an Afghan face" on it, after all the hoopla surrounding McChrystal's appointment and the "new" COIN strategy, we send 4,000 troops into a Taliban-held area without a full complement of Afghan forces?
The trouble is, even when Afghan security forces are present they often create more problems than they solve. I mentioned the other day that Afghan villagers in Helmland fear their police more than the Taliban. Now U.S. Marines are having problems too.
As about 150 Marines and Afghan soldiers approached the police headquarters in the Helmand River town of Aynak, the police fired four gunshots at the combined force. No larger fight broke out, but once inside the headquarters the Marines found a raggedy force in a decrepit mud-brick compound that the police used as an open-pit toilet.
The meeting was tense. Some police were smoking pot. Others loaded their guns in a threatening manner near the Marines.
That's after eight years of "when they stand up, we can stand down". Policemen are now getting eight weeks of training meant to cure them of their behaviour, but when they're only earning $150 a month. (Nor can the Afghans even afford that measly stipend on their own.) Thus police officers are suplementing their incomes with bribes, drug smuggling and petty larceny...and well, brigands will be brigands.Do we really want to stay another decade just to turn them into well trained brigands?
The Independent's cartoon today is as good a stratergy as the current one:
Amazing isn't it that "our" guys, be they ARVN or the Afghan police are so much more likely to be corrupt than the guys on the "other" side. Perhaps it is because those who work for/with foreign armies of occupation are generally less likely to be upstanding folks than those fighting against the occupation.
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