By: Vincent J. Curtis
Date: 9 Dec 10
Dateline: Forward Operating Base Rushmore, Afghanistan
Afghanistan is a putrid cesspool of corruption and poverty. What is victory going to look like in Afghanistan? In a word: ugly. It is going to look very much like what we are seeing now, but with Afghan forces gradually taking over responsibility for the tasks presently performed in the field by US forces. I say ‘responsibility’ because given what I’ve seen there is little likelihood that Afghan forces will actually do them, or if done, done with anything like the vigor and thoroughness exhibited by US forces here.
In Kabul, General Petraeus has instilled a great sense of optimism among the staff at ISAF Supreme Headquarters. Nothing but sunshine emanates from ISAF HQ. But here in the field, remote from the capital, the sense among senior Afghans is that some sort of NATO, UN, or ISAF presence will be required beyond the withdrawal date of 2014.
This presence will be necessary, first, to awe Pakistan and Iran to inhibit them from stepping up the pressure of their efforts to destabilize the Kabul regime. Secondly, westerners will be required to provide adult supervision of the Afghan forces, for there are not enough Afghans who “get it” to enforce duty and discipline upon the Afghan forces, regardless of how much training they receive. The average Afghan soldier or police may be taught, he may know what to do, but his actually doing it is an altogether different matter. Finally, since there are not enough educated and honest people in Afghanistan to go around, a western presence will be needed to administer the Afghan field forces in the matters of pay, leave, promotions, training, personnel services, and so on; services that are vital to keeping large organized forces functioning in the field.
Afghanistan has no banking system to speak of and no system of taxation by which the government gets money from the people to survive and operate. The Kabul regime gets its cash from friendly governments, not from taxation; and the pay of the Afghan forces is provided and administered directly from western governments to ensure that the money is not stolen and the soldiers and police are paid regularly. The government of Afghanistan is not going to be ready to take over administration of its forces by 2014.
FOB Rushmore lies a short, half hour convoy drive from the sprawling main base for the Currahees at FOB Sharana. Rushmore is actually in the city of Sharan, the capital city of Paktika province. A couple of heavily barricaded streets lead from a residential area of the city to the main gates of the FOB.
The security hardware here is double or triple that of FOB Sharana. Rushmore houses the main instructional schools for the Afghan Uniformed Police, the operational headquarters of their intelligence agency, the NDS; a battalion sized Quick Reaction Force of Afghan Uniformed Police, and the headquarters of the Provincial Police chief of Paktika, Afghanistan. The actual amount of security at both bases may be the same, but Rushmore is so much smaller that the layers of security are separated by dozens of yards, and there is no large secure area inside Rushmore as there is at the sprawling Sharana.
Instruction in the security and police work that the AUP are intended to perform is provided by the Headquarters & Headquarters Company, Brigade Support Troops Battalion of the 4th Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division. To get the nicknames out of the way, HHC are “The Warhawks,” the 4th BCT are “The Currahees,” and the division is of course the famous “Screaming Eagles.” The company has a number of specialized support functions, one of which is a Military Police platoon. The company is commanded by Captain Wayne L. Stiles, 44, of Syracuse, NY, and is himself an MP.
Stiles is a blend of apparent contradictions. Once a boxer, and a school teacher, a trained MP, Stiles is a devout Christian, a thoughtful, patient, and yet determined man, an avid hunter with rifle and bow, and, like many police nowadays, a skillful diplomat. He is also a leader in a fine, military sense. Stiles is a big believer in the efficacy of trust. He the sort of man well equipped to lead the Afghan horse to water and to teach it how to drink. This is Stiles’s first deployment to Afghanistan, and was on the parade the week prior to my visit when a suicide bomber attacked a graduating class of Afghan police, killing eleven AUP, wounding nine Afghans, and one US soldier.
The first Sergeant of the Company is Ryan Brassard, 32, of Hudson, New Hampshire. Brassard has done six tours in Afghanistan between 2002 and now. A devout New England Patriots fan, he too is a blend of contradictions. When he has to, he can exhibit the tough as nails, no nonsense demeanor that one associates with a sergeant-major type. Yet, like Stiles, Brassard, when he lets his guard down, is a pleasant and intelligent conversationalist. His experience in the Afghan theatre makes his opinion a factor to weigh on operational matters.
If teaching, training, and equipping were all that was necessary to create a police force that would do Afghanistan proud, you could not ask for better hands to do the molding than Stiles, Brassard, and the troops of HHC. In baseball, there is pitching, and there is catching. If the catcher can’t catch, the battery is not going to work. In Afghanistan, there is the instruction and there is the actual performance of the job.
One of the major points Stiles tries to impress upon the Afghans is security. A suicide bomber should not just be able to infiltrate through three layers of security and attack a graduating class of police. Yet, it happened, and the Afghan force responsible for maintaining security exhibited the lassitude of a boring outpost where nothing ever happens barely a week after the attack. The helmets and rifles of the guards at the main gate I saw stacked on a table in front of them, and their body armor rested against the back of their chairs. A machine gun lay unmanned and unprotected by sandbags on the roof of the guard hut. The AUP cannot seem to tolerate the slightest personal discomfort however much it might save his life. Stiles - a company commander - leads a small patrol out past the main gate, himself a living model of what he expects the AUP to be. He questions them about what they were taught but does not direct them to live up to the standard. Giving orders to Afghans does not work. They perhaps can be mentored, but not ordered.
Through a “terp,” Sitles points out to them that General Dowlat Khan, the commander of the Paktika province police, has his compound within the base that these four jokers are supposed to protect, and he might not like being attacked on his own base by the Taliban. The four lower their heads but are otherwise unmoved to improve.
Rushmore also houses a battalion sized Quick Reaction Force of AUP, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Haroom. Stiles visited Haroom in his quarters to present him with a poster in praise of the work his men have done. Haroom is a large man in his late fifties or early sixties. His lower teeth are all of gold. Dignified and phlegmatic, his men eye him intensely. In talking with Stiles through the terp, Haroom is non-committal and unenergetic. There is no evidence of the merit by which he attained his position; perhaps it has something to do with his tribal status.
The head of the Afghan National Police in Paktika province is Brigadier General Dowlat Khan, and is Haroom’s boss. Dowlat Khan is an entirely different proposition from Haroom. Dowlat Khan is energetic and charismatic. A constant stream of visitors come in and out of his office for decisions. He spends a lot of his time out of his office inspecting and speaking to his men. A photograph of his giving a speech to the people of the province sits on his desk. He seems to understand that the role of police in a civil society is to protect the people and not oppress them. His American counterpart, the Commanding Officer of 4th BSTB, is Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Beckman, 43, of Hampton, IL. He rates Khan as “effective.” Kahn gave me a personal interview, and I rank him as one of the Afghans who “gets it.”
Khan believes that while his police will be able to bear most of the burden of policing the countryside and keeping Taliban and bandits at bay, Afghanistan is surrounded by countries that sponsor and support insurgent activity in Afghanistan, and a small NATO/ISAF presence would be helpful at keeping the power balanced. He told me he is not comfortable with a complete western withdrawal after 2014. He argues, albeit self-servingly, that freedom from terrorism in the world is dependent upon keeping the Taliban and al Qaeda out of Afghanistan, and that is the reason why some western forces need to stay after 2014.
Beckman is also pessimistic that the AUP will be able on their own to carry the whole burden of security after 2014. Not only are there profound training issues that will take time to resolve and overcome, but due to the acute shortage of educated people, the personal Administration of the police forces, essential for developing a mature and stable force, is lacking and will continue to lack until Afghanistan is able to raise the general literacy level of the country.
In Kushamond and in Rushmore the same story seems to recur. Here and there are individual Afghans who are “switched on” and “get it.” However, there is a general lassitude among the population as a whole, and this lack of grip permeates into the police forces and government agencies of Afghanistan. “Inshallah” The will of Allah is the excuse for every failure.
Here and there are individual Afghans who inspire hope in westerners that this war will end with an Afghanistan that can stand on its own and begin to progress again. To those who have worked and fought and shared danger with these individuals it would be heartbreaking to see them go down in a defeat to the Taliban. But personal emotions and romanticism cannot impair the judgment concerning what is best for America.
The soldiers I have seen in Afghanistan are among the finest people America has to give. They are here because their country sent them here. They are here fighting for the cause of America, and some of them died here for the cause of America. That they fought and died here is because America and Americans needed to be defended and protected, and it was only by chance that the battlefield was here. And there are men like Stiles prepared to stay here for as along as necessary to prevent another 9/11 in America.
We owe it to them, those who fought and those who died, to do what is best for America in the widest sense. In cooperation with its allies and the Afghan government, the plan is to begin a military drawdown in 2011, passing the burden along to the forces of Afghanistan. By 2014, even the training mission will be over and the entire burden of maintaining their constitution and system of government will be carried by Afghans. That is a reasonable schedule from the point of view of America and its allies. “The prospect of hanging in two weeks concentrates the mind wonderfully” said Benjamin Franklin. No foreign power was around to nursemaid the American constitutional government, and it is not unfair to expect an ancient people like those in Afghanistan to be able to look after their own affairs. Some help against foreign intervention is not unreasonable to ask for, or provide.
Four different sources gave me their estimate that no more than 500 Taliban were in Paktika province, which has a population of about 400,000.
The Taliban taking over Paktika province, and indeed Afghanistan, would be like a small but violent motorcycle gang taking over governance of the city of Buffalo. Yet, conditions in the countryside here make that prospect not unreasonable, however bad, indeed farcical, for the country such results would bring. Most of the people just don’t care. It seems that Americans care more about keeping the Taliban out of Afghanistan than Afghans do. No amount of money or development can win the “heats and minds” of the Afghan people: the money is stolen and development is “inshallah” – to be enjoyed while it lasts.
It would be a loss of face for America for the Taliban to move back in after American forces leave. That may be a prospect America has to face and account for in the years beyond 2014.
Afghanistan does not need another surge of combat forces. What it needs is a surge of accountants, engineers, intelligence and special forces operators.
-30-
Vincent J. Curtis is a free lance writer who has previously reported on the War on Terrorism from Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He was recently embedded in Task Force Currahee, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, in Paktika province, Afghanistan.
Versions of this post appeared in The Buffalo News and the Syracuse Post-Standard early in 2011.
No comments:
Post a Comment