The politicians opposing Support of Our General have suggested that we should instead recruit and build a massive Afghan Army overnight. Fortunately, the US Army and Our Allies have been training the Afghan Army long enough to know the challenges of such a task. The program began in 2002 with 19th Special Forces Group setting up the initial training of the origins of the Afghan National Army.
While the Iraq Army reached a point in 2006 where its rapid growth had proved counter-productive and required a complete overhaul, by 2007 it was back on track improving in both quality and quantity at a rapid rate. Augmenting the growth in the Iraqi Police and Army were the Sons of Iraq. But the success in building Iraqi security quickly has lessons in both the wrong and right way. And there is a major difference in the availability of the quality of recruits.
The average Iraqi is educated while the average Afghan is illiterate.
The most likely shortcut to be taken when quantity becomes the focus of a rapid build up is the vetting process. Conducting background checks during a war is never an easy undertaking, but Afghanistan with Tribal loyalties, mountainous terrain, uncharted villages, and lack of proper roads makes it particularly difficult and time consuming in Afghanistan, moreso than in Iraq, even at the height of the war there.
The biggest challenge to training the Afghan Security Forces though is pure ignorance. Afghans are smart and stubborn, but illiteracy is the norm. While in the US, 75% of potential recruits are turned away for a lack of ability to meet basic requirements, including education, few Afghans can even sign their own name and some recruits don't speak a language known to their trainers, not Pashtu, not Dari, not Uzbek.
What does education have to do with training Troops? Well, it is proven that the higher the education level of a trainee, the more they can learn more rapidly. Still, that is based on the differences in junior high vs. high school vs. college level education. The average Afghan recruit can't read their own name. This puts a severe handicap on training Afghans quickly.
I have not seen any programs that look to overcome the problem of illiteracy in the Afghan Army and that is not likely to change with an emphasis on quantity of troops in uniform. It is easy to discount the need for literacy when you need Soldiers fighting the enemy immediately, but a little basic education will make training advanced infantry techniques a lot easier.
A challenge in Afghanistan is overcoming cultures of corruption and human rights abuses, not to mention civil rights abuses. The people of Afghanistan have been on the receiving end of these norms for so long that when they put the uniform on, they simply expect that it is their turn to be on the benefits side of it.
You can write field manuals and regulations on basics of Human Rights, Civil Rights, and Standards of Conduct all day long, but if your target audience (Afghan Soldiers) can't recognize their own name in print, expecting them to understand your manuals is an exercise in futulity.
The Coalition Forces and Afghan Government should take time to consider the value of a basic education being a benefit of service in the Afghan Security Forces. Such a program could include a pre-Basic course and a continuing education program at their assigned posts. The goal of such a program would initially be basic literacy and though it would slow the entry into their initial units of Soldiers and Policemen, it would pay great dividends in how quickly they could learn to become quality defenders of Democracy and Freedom.
Such a program would likely be a better recruitment tool than increased wages, even while improving the quality of the force and speed of future training tremendously. Imagine the value of an Afghan Warrior actually being able to read written messages delivered by runners or the powerpoint slides used in training marksmanship or mapreading.
The need for such a program is counterintuitive to the urgency of needing Troops in Combat, but the importance of it is significant. Unfortunately, the political climate in the US may be such that the 5 meter target of a massive recruiting program may loom too large to see the 30 meter target that continues to hamstring the efforts to overcome corruption.
The US Military recognizes the importance of education. That's why it includes requirements for a HS Diploma or GED for entrance, along with an aptitude test, and then places continuing education including separate categories for military education, leadership training, and civilian education, as promotion criteria. This has not diminshed while Our Troops have fought two wars with many being in combat zones as often as not. If the US Military so thoroughly places value on higher education, it should be a no brainer that Afghan Soldiers would need basic literacy.
But sometimes the obvious is not so easy to see. And too often the body politic puts demands on Military Commanders that have a negative impact on moving forward in the best direction. While politicians have routinely told us that various spending bills were required with such urgency that they didn't have time to read them over the last 18 months, when lives were on the line, they demonstrated no urgency and in fact great resistance to sending trained and capable re-inforcements while calling for faster recruitment of illiterate Afghans to serve.
There are serious questions that must be asked when hundreds of billions of dollars of new debt on frivolous spending are pushed through Congress with urgency while the party in power waits 3 months to decide whether to honor the request for re-inforcements by the General they sent to implement the "strategy" they completed in March 2009. There are serious questions to be asked when they attempt to increase government spending by trillions of dollars while decreasing the Military budget and Combat Pay during war and suggesting a "war tax."
Where is the urgency when lives are on the line? Where is the importance placed on literacy from a Nation that places such high value on higher education? It's time to take a step back, evaluate the big picture, evaluate the entire battlefield and all resources. I have more faith in the capabilities of General McChrystal, with his decades of experience and training, to do so with objectivity, than a bunch of politicians sitting in the comforts of their offices and an intent desire to maintain their positions of power and prestige.
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