Attack on Kabul: An Ominous Sign

Posted on 20. Jan, 2010 by admin in Uncategorized, War on Terror

Coalition commanders were full of praise for Afghanistan’s security forces after Taliban gunmen and suicide bombers assaulted buildings in the heart of Kabul Monday. General Stanley McChrystal, the head of NATO and US forces in Afghanistan, said the Afghan national forces should be ‘commended’ for dealing ‘effectively’ with the attack. US Brigadier General Anne Macdonald claimed the Afghan forces responded ‘very well’ while an ISAF spokesperson gushed that they had ‘rapidly’ seized the initiative.

ANP Checkpoint Outside Kabul

Don’t be blinded by the spin. Effective security is not about responding to an attack; it’s about being proactive and preventing one from happening in the first place. The Taliban have been hitting Kabul with shocking regularity in recent months. But Monday’s assault had an added dimension of brazenness. Striking within yards of the Presidential Palace while President Karzai was swearing in members of his new cabinet, the Taliban demonstrated that they can penetrate the security cordon around Kabul and – if they choose – take the fight right to the seat of government power. This does not bode well for NATO’s eventual exit from Afghanistan; a strategy which hinges on training the Afghan National Army and Police to take control of the nation’s security. If the ANA and ANP cannot stop militants from targeting the President’s doorstep, how are they going to protect the whole country?

I’ve written posts detailing how the drive to accelerate the training of Afghanistan’s security forces has led to poor vetting of recruits (see Afghan Security Forces: The Weak Link in NATO’s exit strategy Parts I & II). Monday’s street battles, I believe, vividly illustrate the fallout of this policy. It is very easy for insurgents – be they Taliban or other militants – to hit targets in Afghanistan, including well guarded ones.  The insurgents have sleepers on the streets, inside the ANA and ANP, within the government and, I have no doubt, inside the lower levels of the Afghan intelligence services. The enemies within aid and abet attacks and sometimes carry them out directly. Corruption is also having a devastating impact on Afghanistan’s security.  It is not at all unheard of for poorly paid, ideologically neutral ANP to turn a blind eye to militant activities for a fee.

Some media reports have suggested that Monday’s coordinated attack was sophisticated.  It wasn’t.  There’s nothing terribly advanced about arming a group of men with explosives, grenades and small arms and having them assault a few locations at roughly the same time. What happened Monday was however deeply symbolic. The Taliban have sent a clear message that they can strike anywhere, anytime they like.  It will take a lot more than praise for Afghanistan’s security forces to effectively counter that.

Bob Shepherd is an ex-SAS soldier and bestselling author of The Circuit. To read more posts by him, please visit www.bobshepherdauthor.com.

Afghan Security Forces: The Weak Link in NATO’s Exit Strategy

Posted on 12. Nov, 2009 by admin in War on Terror

Part 1

When NATO military officials meet in Brussels later this month, they will be asked to contribute more resources to accelerate the training and expansion of Afghan security forces. In the first of this two part series, Bob Shepherd, ex-SAS Soldier and best-selling author of The Circuit offers a sobering reality check on the efficacy of NATO’s mentoring programs and what it means for western exit strategies.

Since 2004, I’ve had occasion to see Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police training programs in action. I’ve shared live fire ranges and training areas with ANA and ANP recruits and accompanied journalists doing stories on security sector reform. What I’ve witnessed has convinced me that in its present form, NATO’s mentoring of Afghanistan’s security forces is at best woefully inadequate and at worst, dangerously short-sighted.

One problem which I’ve seen time and again with ANA training programs is poor instructor to student ratios. In order to achieve an effective training package, there should ideally be one seasoned instructor to every dozen recruits. In April this year, I watched a single NATO mentor give two hundred ANA trainees a lesson on how to strip and assemble an M 16 rifle. The recruits were sat in semi-circular rows stretching the length of the Kabul Military Training Center parade square. As some parts on the M 16 are tiny, it was clear to me that only the trainees positioned front and centre had a clue what they were being taught. The rest were talking to each other or nodding off in the hot afternoon sun. Over the years, I’ve seen identical lessons at the KMTC with the same distorted mentor/recruit ratio; the only difference was prior to 2009, the trainees worked with AK 47s.

ANA Recruits at the KMTC: Does The Instructor Have Everyone's Attention?

Live fire exercises are another area where a scarcity of NATO mentors can render a lesson pointless. I’ve watched fifty ANA recruits lying in the prone position, firing at targets which most of them missed (I could see the rounds striking the ground in front and to the side of them). The recruits received virtually no coaching during the exercise. The few NATO mentors on hand were too busy trying to keep them from hurting themselves or each other. The mentors didn’t check the targets at the end of the exercise because the tight training schedule didn’t allow it. The recruits had to be rushed off the range to make way for another group of trainees. In my view, they learned nothing aside from how to convert live rounds into empty casings.

In light of such episodes, the idea that Afghan forces will be ready to take over from NATO troops in the next few years is nothing short of absurd. Yet it remains a cornerstone of western exit strategies from Afghanistan. Next week, in Part II of this series, I’ll examine how the drive to step-up recruitment and training of ANA and ANP compromises the safety of coalition forces and risks undermining the justification for the war in Afghanistan; containing the threat from al-Qaeda.

For more blogs by Bob Shepherd visit www.bobshepherdauthor.com.