Caldwellville: Named for the current commander of that NATO Training Missing-Afghanistan (NTM-A), LTG William B. Caldwell, IV. It’s like the real Afghanistan, but much, much better.
Caldwellian: Any interpretation of Afghanistan that falls in line with LTG Caldwell’s view of Afghanistan.
In Caldwellville, if you take the true Caldwellian view of things, your ideas of “independent” and “close” are in pretty much direct conflict with how the rest of the English-speaking world would define those terms.
I empathize with LTG Caldwell, I really do. He’s in command of an organization that didn’t exist just two years ago, and in true NATO fashion, he’s turned NTM-A into a machine that’s churning out Afghan police and military personnel on a previously unprecedented level. Despite the reports of ANP corruption, ANA desertions, and civil rights abuses by the ALP, LTG Caldwell has to but the best foot forward and demonstrate how successful the ANSF is in their work. Which he does regularly, despite the fact that only two Afghan Army battalion now operate independently. Well, kinda.
Those two “independent” battalions still “require U.S. support for their maintenance, logistics and medical systems,” Caldwell admitted when Pentagon reporters pressed him on Monday morning.
Maybe “independent” means something different in the Caldwellian dictionary. Because that’s not how anyone else would define an independent military effort.
Another theme from LTG Caldwell is that the ANSF is doing a bang-up job protecting the city of Kabul. I won’t dig into the rest of the country. I mean, if you can protect your capital from say, insurgents stockpiling weapons over the course of several days, and then keep those same insurgents from holding off ANP personnel for nearly 24 hours…if you can stop that, then… Wait. Right. They didn’t prevent that, weapons were brought in through the “Ring of Steel,” and for 18–20 hours, insurgents held off the cops.
Now, it’s true that no city is completely secure from an insurgent attack: Oklahoma City and New York can attest to that. And yes, it’s true that those particular insurgents on 13 September didn’t get as close as they would have liked to the targets they had in mind. Michael O’Hanlon over at the Brookings Institute makes that case in this article for Politico.
Since O’Hanlon works for a “think tank” which in my experience means: “group of people paid a lot of money to state the obvious in shiny reports,” I probably wouldn’t do much more than give his editorial a cursory glance, make a snarky remark, and get on with my life. Unfortunately, LTG Caldwell quotes O’Hanlon in Caldwell’s latest Caldwellian dispatch from Caldwellville. In his post, LTG Caldwell cites O’Hanlon in making the case that the insurgents who attacked Kabul on September 13 didn’t get as close to their targets as they intended.
As Brookings Institute senior fellow Michael O’Hanlon wrote, “The insurgents with their weapons…were not able to get truly close to their targets…[and] the Afghan forces stood and fought for their country.”
Fair enough. A few RPG rounds, lot of noise, couple of wounded, no big deal.
Which brings me to events in Kabul on the night of the 25th of September. Details are still sketchy, and it appears that an Afghan employee of the US government opened fire in the CIA compound. Not sure how much closer the insurgents can get than that.
Now, granted, this could have occurred for a variety of reasons: too much caffeine, missed a car payment, or maybe he just wasn’t happy with the cafeteria food. Or, which is also likely, this individual was connected in some way to an insurgent group, so he opened fire. All accounts indicate that casualties were minimal, so that’s a plus, but, it does beg the question:
How much closer can you get than the CIA’s HQ in Kabul?
O’Hanlon and other residents of Caldwellville (Andrew Exum, Max Boot) are likely to spin this all as another desperate act by the insurgency, a “last gasp” of a weakened organization that cannot maintain force-on-force actions when engaging the coalition. This is true. But, does it mean the insurgency is truly weak, if they are able to coordinate these kinds of attacks on a regular basis?
Each event in 2011 has shown planning, logistics, and coordination that’s fairly sophisticated. That’s jut the 2011 stuff, and the complexity arc seems to be heading upward exponentially. So the Taliban/Haqqani/Daughters of the Afghan Revolution or whoever we’re blaming for this stuff this week can’t fight us in the field. Big deal. If they can kill key leaders and attack key facilities at will, do they really need to go toe-to-toe with our combat troops? Granted, much of this is a perception piece: getting into CIA HQ and killing a random bystander doesn’t win a war. But it doesn’t make for much of a peace, either.
So we rattle along here in Caldwellville, dismissing each increasingly complex attack, decrying how close it really was, and calling on those independent battalions of ANA to guard us from all harm. Me, I’m looking for a better bunker. Something not so Caldwellian.
This post was written by...
Dan – author of 18 posts on Registan.net.
Having spent time in Iraq as part of Uncle Sam's 9/11 World Tour as an infantry and civil affairs officer, Dan is currently employed in Afghanistan as a civilian. His day job is way cooler than he deserves, and while he wants (desperately) to believe in the ISAF mission, he's pretty certain that all we're doing is lapping the drain. However, there are bright spots here, and he tries to find them when he can.
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Caldwellville has an army, one that will supposedly take over in three years, that is an ineffective moving force. The ANA loses nearly 2/3 of its force each year.
from a June Brookings dog-and-pony show between Mike O’Hanlon and General Caldwell.
MR. O’HANLON: Just to clarify before you get to the other question, the big question, the big question of our troops, too. 2.3 percent a month means about 30 percent a year, right?
LTG CALDWELL: That’s correct.
MR. O’HANLON: And therefore that means that about a third of the force is leaving even when they’re not supposed to, because presumably about a third of the force is reaching the end of their tour. You’re saying in addition to that fact, one-third is leaving when they’re not even yet supposed to.
LTG CALDWELL: Right.
So the ANA loses nearly 2/3 of its force each year.
There’s no penalty for going AWOL and it’s the ‘battle-hardened’ troops that tend to leave.
LTG CALDWELL: We do see attrition predominantly in those cores that are engaged in active combat.
The ANA has trained as infantry which doesn’t have its own support such as logistics, finance, communications, human resources, intelligence, artillery, engineering, and other important functions. They’ve started to work on it.
LTG CALDWELL: We are in fact in the process now of building critical specialty and vocational skills within the army. . .To develop this potential, we are in fact in the process now of building critical specialty and vocational skills within the army and police. A modern and self-sufficient security force requires specialists like engineers, medical professionals, communications experts, maintenance and repair technicians, and many other skills to give it an enduring capacity that will last.
The people to replace the AWOL-ing infantry and to provide these new skills will come from new recruits.
LTG CALDWELL: We know through testing that of every new recruit that comes into the army and police today, only one out of ten can read and write;. .They don’t even know how to count numbers, and they can’t even write their name.
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/events/2011/0606_caldwell/20110606_afghan_army.pdf
One of the many errors we made when all this started was to entrust building the ANA to Special Forces who had been told to limit training to “good enough not good”.
One of the unfortunate characteristics of the modern “special” soldier is thinking very small scale and not really considering how an army works outside his A team. The latest high speed gangster grip delivered through the APO was vital- how third line medical will work wasn’t considered. The result were lots of rifle companies nominally commanded by Bn HQs without admin or CSS and without Afghan third or fourth line support. A sad and funny example of the lack of knowledge about the army they were trying to build was the insistence on telling every journalist that the Afghan word for battalion was Kandak. Interesting but is there not Afghan terns for platoon and company as well?
Insisting, despite separate reports from the CIA and US Army detailing the wage rates ($200 per month) that would bring suitable numbers of skilled Afghans into the security forces wages were kept down in the 30′s and desertion became endemic from day one. Since there were no contracts desertion and AWOL were not actually the right terms. Afghan troops could legally just leave and they did so in droves to be replaced by village idiots and delinquents.
At the same time 18 Abn Corps HQ decided that standard “NATO” organizations and doctrine would be used. Of course such things don’t exist and the resulting inventions ( battalions reporting to corps being an example) meant that Soviet era systems that we had manuals for in Dari and Pashtu and that the remaining Soviet trained officers (there were hundreds with advanced training from Soviet military schools) were familiar with were cast aside.
Afghan units spent hours goose stepping around KMTC under the direction of their First Sergeants- who were often selected because they had the bushiest beard- while their officers, with nothing to do, drank tea and the American SF instructors avoided things like navigation, first aid or radio procedures because it was difficult communicating with the students. Rifle shooting past 25 m was avoided because they were afraid of their students changing sides.
The idea of “senior NCOs” was foreign to Afghanistan and since making someone a “sergeant major” just because you need one is a bad idea the system we imposed on the Afghans has never worked.
The old Afghan system was to conscript soldiers at age 22. That way you got the well off just as they graduated from university to be your junior officers and the troops were more mature and stronger. That also put the onus on officers being the technical experts which made the “all knowing long in the tooth Senior NCO” non-existent. Nothing has changed but we continue to insist on pretending that a NCO corps exists.
Your title “redefines independent” says it all. Words are important. The definition of an independent unit in Afghanistan is based on a rating table AND definition agreed upon by ISAF and the Afghan Ministry of Defense. It is not to imply that they can do everything well. It means they no longer need their “partners” in their day to day activities. That they are an effective (not necessarily efficient) fighting force. It is a way to measure progress in order to slowly let them take on more and more responsibility as they mature. It allows them to act independently without their coalition partner unit calling the shots, but what does remain is the relationship which they can lean onwhen they need or want advice. What do you suggest is a better definition for units that are moving away from reliance on their partner units? And remember it has to be a definition that the Afghan Army will embrace and accept? As for me, you can obviously count me in as a Caldwellian.
My issue with LTG Caldwell overall is that using a word like “independent,” but then basically saying that the only thing that unit can do is, well, maybe fight, means that unit is not independent. Given that logistics and support are a much larger part of any war than actual combat, it’s crucial that the ANA in this case be able to execute those kinds of tasks before we start pulling the plug in 2014. Which, I’m not so sure that we’ll be able to do.
I’ve yet to see any kind of evidence that the ANA are an effective fighting force when operating on their own, either. In any engagement where there have been claims of ANA success, this has always occurred in “partnered” operations with pretty significant ISAF engagement.
If NTM-A was honest about the struggles being faced, rather than constantly trying to spin what’s happening into a more positive light than really exists, I think the whole engagement with the public and press would be more successful. That doesn’t mean you’re not going to have those that will deny progress regardless, but projecting something that doesn’t actually exist fully is disingenuous at best.
“when they need or want advice”
By anyone’s definition that doesn’t include air, medical, engineers, medical, commo, maintenance, artillery, etc.
Infantry battalions in any service aren’t truly independent. They require the support listed above from support services in their field forces.
But the ANA for the foreseeable future and beyond is different — it will have a dependence on US support forces.
Afghans can’t do that other stuff, they can barely shoot a rifle. Therein lies the rub. Therein lies the lack of independence.
So the ISAF answer is to define independent as a rifle unit getting through “their day to day activities” independently. These “day to day activities” obviously don’t include combat with its additional support requirements for artillery, air, commo, medical, maintenance, transportation, etc. which will have to come from US units.
So the ANA kandak is not independent from anything except when it’s in garrison, which may be the intent.
To an outsider an “independent” battalion would have all the bits and pieces of a US infantry battalion. It would capable of independent operations. In ISAFSTAN it could mean dependent, partly trained or armed mob.
1st ANA battalion was formed in 2002. Nine years to field a light infantry battalion. Roughly 50% longer than US participation in both world wars combined. If I needed a partner unit after nearly a decade rather than looking for a term that helps my self esteem I’d simply be ashamed.
How are you supposed to win a war with an army which do not have penalties for desertion?
The problem really is a combination of the approach we’ve taken to training these forces, and their employment.
First, The ANSF have grown too fast. You can’t train solid NCOs and Captains and Majors if you are constantly increasing the size of the force.
Second, there are too many doctrines. We’ve taken Afghans with a mix of guerrilla and Soviet backgrounds, and (at least a few years ago) had the Americans train the privates, the British train the NCOs, the French train the officers, and the Canadians bring them all together to, well, start over at the section level because no one can agree on how to conduct the attack.
Third, we’ve taught them to be like us: dependent on lavish logistical and fires support, risk averse in dealing with the IED threat, and unprepared to close with the enemy until helicopters are overhead.
Fourth, the Corps don’t rotate around the country. If you’re stuck in the south or the east you face an indefinite number of years of continual combat until you are killed, with no break for training or to properly incorporate battlefield replacements. Under those circumstances, I’d desert pretty quickly too. On the other hand, if you’re in the north you get to train, and train, and train. Anecdotaly, a fair number of deserters from the south/east have re-enlisted in the north, which somewhat mitigates the problem, but doesn’t fix the problem.
Fifth, pay was a problem when it was done by cash. Now, where it’s handled electronically there are less reasons for AWOL (‘I had to cross the country to give my pay to my family’) and fewer opportunities for commanders to skim the paychest.
Finally, the current structure is completely unaffordable for the Afghan government.
Perhaps a better approach would have been to create a single paramilitary internal defense force – something like the Carabinieri. No separate ANA, ANP or ABP – just one uniformly armed and equipped force with powers of arrest, common rules of engagement, common chain of command, common logistical system etc. The problem there, though, is that western armies have no idea how to structure, train and mentor such a force, and it’s too late to change course, so I suppose we go back to COA 3: loudly declare all is well, victorious even, as we back our way out the door.
You’re obvious not a Caldwellian, to tell the truth.
Dan_Smock, suspect you understand much more than you are letting on, and writing partly to vent, and partly to entertain.
In 1986, about one in ten army divisions in the former USSR had operational readiness level 1. Which is the standard you are judging the ANSF on.
BG Karimi’s ANA Training Command and BG Karimi’s ANP Training Command have been severely under resourced from the start. At end state they will have a fraction of the training seats the Iraqi Security Forces had in late 2006. The entire ANSF can only generate 600 4 year college graduates a year. About 90% of all ANSF officers only get 20 weeks of education. Eighty some percent of ANA NCOs only get 60 days or less of NCO training. All because of a severe lack of funding.
How can the ANPTC and ANATC [with a combined long term steady state budget of less than $1 billion per year] quickly field a fully independent 347 K size force? Whenever an ANSF unit gets near level 1, its best cadre [officers and NCOs] are stolen to seed other ANSF units. The current ANPTC and ANATC budgets can probably at best support a 100 to 150 K level 1 force in the very long run. [And that is support, not build to such a force.] Caldwell, Petraeus, McChrystal and others fought to fund the ANPTC and ANATC over the long run. They lost. For example, 20 out of 33 ANP training centers are being shut down. ANPTC and ANATC are getting half the training seats they would ideally prefer.
Instead of fielding a capable independent small ANSF, they have chosen to field a lower quality 347 K force that will necessarily depend heavily on international combat enablers over the long run.
Why even mention the number of readiness level 1 ANSF units, since by design the Afghan MoD and Afghan MoI will not allow units to hit that level?
Don Bacon,
ANP has an attrition rate of 1.4%/month which is slightly below target.
ANA had an attrition rate of 2.3% although that might have come down. About 2/3rds of ANA enlisted sign up at the end of their 3 year tours. That accounts for about 11% of the ANA leaving every year because their contract ends. Or 0.9% per month. 2.3% ‘attrition’ includes ANA soldiers to return late from vacation. The late arrivals from vacation are recorded under ‘retention.’ Actual attrition adjusted for retention is about 0.5% less or 1.8%.
Adding 0.9% leaving because their tours are up to 1.9% yields 2.7% for the ANA. This is the approximate number of ANA that leave every month for one reason or another. A number that has been falling.
This 2.7% number isn’t the most important number for the ANA. Much more important is the rate at which ANA officers and ANA NCOs leave the ANA. Ditto for Afghan MoI forces.
I haven’t been able to get this number out of NTM-A, Afghan MoD and Afghan MoI. No one to my knowledge has been able to estimate this from the outside.
Dan_Smock, we don’t agree on the attack on Kabul. The response from the ANSF on the ground was very rapid and good. Better than the ISAF response. The ANSF had identified the enemy locations and cordened them off within 20 minutes. The ANSF also did a good job taking down the Sirajuddin Haqqani linked fighters. The concerning aspect is how the ANSF were not sufficently guarding the half built structure (where construction had been halted), and how some ANSF were bribed to let illegal materials in. [The ANSF are often bribed to turn a blind eye to drugs, weapons for organized crime, weapons for neo Northern Alliance plus.] It is possible the corrupt ANSF didn’t know they were dealing with Pakistani Army ISI backed Siraj Haqqani folks when they took the bribes.
According to General Caldwell, the ANA has taken in about 8,000 recruits monthly for the last two years, or close to 190,000 recruits to be trained and made literate. During this same period, according to Caldwell, the ANA grew from 95,000 to 170,000, or 75,000. That’s a gain of one soldier for every 2.5 enlisted and trained.
The problem is that too many of the soldiers don’t want to soldier any longer. In the first six months of this year, according to NATO, 24,590 soldiers, or 14% of the force, an annual rate of 28%, walked off the job. In June alone, more than 5,000 soldiers deserted, nearly 3 percent of the force, or a 36% annualized rate.
“The army has got to figure out how to get their attrition down,” said Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, who oversees NATO’s efforts to build up the Afghan security forces.
– The army has got to figure it out. I like that. Shows leadership. Caldwell’s the man.
Don Bacon, could you share data points you are getting from NTM-A, Afghan MoD and Afghan MoI?
The ANA adds about 6 thousand recruits a month. The Afghan MoI adds another 2 or 3 thousand recruits a month. About 9 K total ANSF [MoD + MoI + NDS] added a month.
NDS publishes detailed monthly attrition and reenlistment data on the ANSF. You might want to look over NTM-A spreadsheets yourself and model them going forward.
One reason ANA attrition was 2.3% [1.8% minus 'retention' or late arrivals of ANA from vacation] is because the international community refuses to provide ANATC the funding for follow on training and education for actively serving ANA.
The entire ANA only has 4 K NCO training seats. Mostly for 60 day NCO training courses. The Turkish run Ghazi Military Training center trains ANA NCOs for 14-18 weeks each. It is being expanded to 1,400 training seats. Every NCO course should be at least as long as the GMTC. In my view every NCO course should be at least 6 months long. But that would require more funding.
Training ANSF isn’t that expensive.
The ANATC, ANPTC and NDS training commands could have 120,000 training seats at any given time with a $3 billion/year budget. Or $25 thousand per year per ANSF training seat. Such a training budget would rapidly defeat the Taliban and surge the human capital, private sector, and GIRoA tax revenues of Afghanistan.
General Caldwell, DOD interview, Sep 26, 2011:
“This past month in September, we had over 8,000 young men decide to join the Afghan National Army. And that’s not something that just happened this month; it’s been going on since December of 2009, where we’ve had more than ample recruits every single month volunteering to join and become a part of the Afghan National Army. . .They’re coming in at 8,000 a month. . .we took an army that was about 95,000 two years ago; today it’s about 170,000
http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=4888
Washington Post, Sep 1, 2011
More Afghan soldiers deserting the army
KABUL — At least one in seven Afghan soldiers walked off the job during the first six months of this year, a worsening trend at a time when Afghan and U.S. officials are trying to shift the burden of fighting the Taliban to Afghan security forces.
Between January and June, 24,590 soldiers walked off the job, compared with 11,423 who left in the same period last year, according to NATO statistics. In June alone, more than 5,000 soldiers deserted, nearly 3 percent of the force, which now has about 170,000 soldiers, significantly more than a year ago.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia-pacific/more-afghan-soldiers-deserting-the-army/2011/08/31/gIQABxFTvJ_story.html
bonus — recent news report, Oct 1, 2011
Afghan interpreters race for US visas as exit looms
The United States admitted it is grappling with a surge of visa applications from interpreters and other Afghans. A US government official speaking on condition of anonymity said 850 Afghan interpreters who worked with the US armed forces or the embassy in Kabul had received special immigration visas as of mid-July, the latest figures available.
http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/01/afghan-interpreters-race-for-us-visas-as-exit-looms.html
There is no point training people who won’t fight. It’s foolish to train people who will switch sides.
The money for this adventure is drying up. It’s unlikely the current funding will not decrease. If the ANSF hasn’t been trained enough with the billions we’ve spent already there is little hope.
BTW how long is the Taliban NCO course?
TB NCO training packages are available, complete with ISI prefaces, are scattered around northern Pakistan and in Karachi. Course duration is dependent on weather – cloud cover and wind levels in particular. Serials when there’s particularly good flying weather run shorter by cutting out the human rights lectures.
But then, the TB guys are less of a concern to us strategically. A better question concerns AQ leadership and their training. Since they tend to select highly motivated, tough, risk-taking members (the European jihadis tend to be scorned for being soft), often with either extensive combat experience and/or degrees in engineering, science or law; and since the group is self financing (make war support war), they can tailor their training and operations a little differently.
Let’s return to those days of yore, when we had Caldwellville without Caldwell.
U.S. General Sees Afghans Gains in 3 Years
Published: April 21, 2008
KABUL, Afghanistan — The Afghan Army and police forces should be able to secure most of Afghanistan by 2011, allowing international forces to start withdrawing, the American commander of the NATO-led force in Afghanistan, Gen. Dan K. McNeill, said Sunday.
“By about 2011 there is going to be some pretty good capacity in the Afghan National Army,” he said in an interview in the Kabul headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force.
“It will take them a few more years to get their air transport and air support platforms online, but they should be covering a lot of battle space by some time in 2011, in my view,” he said.
By then, barring any cataclysm, the countries contributing troops to the international force could look at whether such a large international force was still desirable, General McNeill said. “I think you begin to get to a juncture and say, ‘Probably not, maybe we should be starting to change the way this force works,’ ” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/21/world/asia/21afghan.html?ex=1366430400&en=2f92555dfcd0052d&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
“Command Optimism” is endemic in the US military. It’s mandatory for promotion above major. Everything is outstanding. Everyone is above average. Things are going great.
Making it worse is the inability to understand that people outside the military are able to identify nonsense and aren’t tied by fears for career that is almost universal among generals. I suspect years of being surrounded by sycophants and one’s own tendency to toady leads to the belief that saying something makes it true enough.
Our recent fiascos have been worsened by the notion that a tour or part thereof makes one an “expert” on the AO- regardless of how large it is. A graduate degree(s) in an unrelated field is also held to be a qualification although how so is never explained.
“I didn’t fire him [General MacArthur] because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that’s not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three quarters of them would be in jail.” — Harry Truman