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With the replacement of General Stanley McChrystal as head of US forces in Afghanistan by his commanding officer, General David Petraeus, the fallout from McChrystal’s multiple failures continues. McChrystal has subsequently announced his intention to retire from the military, but today’s Washington Post reports on an investigation by the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, exposing the grim reality behind the failed efforts by McChrystal and his team in "training" Afghan forces.
The image below was posted on the ISAFMedia Flickr stream on June 27:
The caption provided reads:
Special Forces Soldiers trained over 300 Afghanistan Civil Order Police Soldiers on zeroing their AK-47 rifles, gave a refresher course on Entry Control Points, and instructed the soldiers on proper search procedures. (Photo by Tech. Sgt. Carmen Cheney)
Yet, as the Washington Post reports on the inspector general report:
The U.S. military has systematically overstated or failed to adequately measure the capabilities of Afghan security forces, whose performance is key to the Obama administration’s exit strategy for the war, according to a new government audit.
/snip/
The report’s principal focus is the rating system used since 2005 to measure the extent to which individual Afghan security units are capable of fighting on their own. According to U.S. figures at the end of March, only 23 percent of the Afghan army and 12 percent of the police drew top ratings.
The system, which counted the quantity of troops and equipment rather than quality of effort, was deeply flawed, the report said, and the number of capable units was probably lower. In one top-rated police district, it noted, 53 officers had been authorized and 23 had been trained, but only six officers were found to be present. Another district had 10 vehicles provided by the U.S. government, but only three drivers.
Note that in this diary I wrote shortly after Petraeus was chosen to replace McChyrstal, I pointed out Petraeus’ history with failed training attempts in Iraq and how the MoveOn ad controversy diverted attention away from those failures and his history of gaming the numbers on training. With the release of this report and its discussion by the Washington Post as well as in Petraeus’ confirmation hearings, it would appear that Petraeus will have someone double-checking his math this time around. So, even though US forces in Afghanistan will continue to make claims on training of Afghans, as evidenced by the photo above, there will be efforts to check into the basis of these claims. Whenever the next Afghanistan strategy review is undertaken, whether it is as scheduled in December or before that, it will be extremely important that accurate data be presented rather than the spin for which Petraeus and McChrystal are known.
10 Comments
Tribal conflicts, warlordism, high levels of illiteracy, low motivation, language problems between trainers and trainees, lack of a stable organizational structure, it was always a given that the military’s projections for training Afghan security forces were wildly unrealistic. And let’s face it they have had 9 years to dink around with Afghanistan and they still haven’t made any progress. Lying about Afghanistan is integral to any Administration or military discussion. Just look at how Obama has walked back his 2011 drawdown so that it is one in name only.
My fear is that Petraeus will repeat what he did in Iraq: suppression of the press so casualties and atrocities go unreported; free fire zones to suppress civilians and insurgents; buying off rival groups; and waiting for the silence that comes from killing everyone. Today I read that the new general is reevaluating the strategy of saving civilian lives by not calling in air strikes which use large bombs as in the Garani massacre. Watch out! This is the Collateralmurder.org death producer.
What I anticipate are more widows, orphans, lost lives; more refugees; more journalists under attack; more detainees in prisons; more private contractors; drones; a murderous, pointless struggle.
Agreed. Much of McChrystal’s marauding was following the plan of Petraeus, so we are at risk of all the same bad business continuing.
Recalling the two boys standing in the pile of rubble….a photograph from an earlier post in 2010. Someone should warn them.
I agree. There is no difference between the USA’s administration and the chickenhawk neocons on policy. Petraeus is and will cover up the situation in asia, fudge the numbers, and whitewash the problems.
Thank god for Firedoglake.com. I’d be flamed on that dailykos thing for this.
Considering how our trillion dollar a year military is failing over there perhaps we should be paying the Iraqis and Afghanis to train our military.
The President promised to stop the out-sourcing.
So there’s that.
Jim: I was too late to comment on the post about Petraeus replacing McChrystal, but this fragment of a quote from there is so important:
Currently, it seems as if so much of American life is being militarized, from travel to local police forces, from peaceful demonstrations to security checks in schools and most public places. This is not the country I was raised (in a military family) to believe was the best place on this earth to live.
My father was pretty conservative. Yet, I remember him saying how important our code of justice is… that it’s better some guilty men & women go free, than that innocent ones be imprisoned. What happened to that quaint notion? Tossed out of the car window onto the shoulder of the highway, I guess… like so much litter.
Having grown up in a military family, I cannot think of even one good reason for militarizing what still remains of civilian life. The military exists within its own bubble, the kind of bubble where great Americans are always generals or admirals, never poets or writers or artists.
Let me get this straight : We- the baddest military giant on the planet- have been trying and failing for 9 years now to conquer a ragtag band of fanatics.
Now we’re trying and “failing” to train these same people to be an army and a police force.
As long as we stay, they get billions in $$, services, uniforms, and weaponry. As long as they “fail” to become trained professionals, we keep training and arming them. Some of these trainees have undergone several rounds of training, but still show up again with no uniform or weapon.
It seems the most incredible arrogance on our part for us to think we are training them, while they are just collecting any goodies they can while they wait for us to run out of money and go home.
Was it Saladin that told Richard Lionheart “You will eventually go home. This IS our home”
Let me get this straight. We need to cut social security for the “small people” and fight and promote a narcotic regime that sends our aid$$$ to bank accounts in Dubai?????
Can we get access to all foreign bank accounts? That would be so revealing. Surely, no politicaly connected Americans or their Foundations are involved?