Afghan army far from fighting
fit By Antonio Giustozzi
Over the past few years, the Afghan
National Army (ANA) has often been presented as a
success story. This certainly holds some truth, at
least in comparison with Afghanistan's national
police, which is widely seen as a complete
failure.
The ANA is reasonably well
behaved and quite popular throughout most of
Afghanistan. Its initial difficulties in retaining
troops within the ranks seem to have been
addressed to some extent and both the desertion
and absence-without-leave (AWOL) rates are down
from the high levels of 2002-2006. AWOL rates in
particular have declined dramatically over the
past 18 months, to a relatively low 8%, from about
33% in 2006 [1].
This appears to be the
combined result of a presidential
decree
turning AWOL into a crime, a
widespread media campaign, rising unemployment and
rising food prices, which force even less than
enthusiastic recruits to stick to the ANA. The
number of infantry battalions now stands at 36,
while the army as a whole numbers 37,000 men;
still substantially short of its personnel
projections, but way above the 22,000 which it
numbered at the end of summer 2007 [2].
These relative successes have turned the
ANA into one of the pillars of the much touted
"Afghanization" strategy. The term "Afghanization"
itself is used with some ambiguity within the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led
International Security Assistance Force (ISAF),
sometimes implying a gradual withdrawal of foreign
troops; at other times it implies the gradual
shift of the weight of the fighting from the
international contingents to the Afghans. A number
of European countries seem to lean toward the
first interpretation, while Washington clearly
opts for the second [3].
Difficulties in operating
independently To the extent that
Afghanization is meant to allow a withdrawal of
foreign troops, the ANA still has several
weaknesses. The main one is its extreme dependence
on embedded trainers. Five years on, not a single
battalion has graduated from the embedded training
program, even though the original plan was for two
years. A number of battalions, perhaps as many as
12, are considered to be led by sufficiently
skilled officers capable of operating without
advisers [4].
However, as the insurgency
grew into a relatively large conflict through
2005-2007, the ANA has grown dependent on close
air support, administered through the embedded
training teams. The ANA does not have any
personnel trained to handle close air support, nor
does it seem bound to develop such skills in the
foreseeable future [5].
The fighting
tactics that ANA officers have been learning from
their trainers are largely based on American
tactics; the infantry's main task is to force the
enemy to reveal itself, allowing the air force to
wipe it out with air strikes. There is little
evidence that ANA units would be able to control
the battlefield without such air support, or that
they are learning the necessary skills.
The ability of the ANA and the Afghan
Ministry of Defense (MoD) to plan and conduct
complex operations on their own has not yet been
tested; the few autonomous operations carried out
by ANA units are simple ones, usually with backup
from foreign units and always with the embedded
trainers present [6].
Tight international
sponsoring of the ANA also means it is usually not
operating in very small units, which would be most
effective in engaging and pursuing the insurgents
in the absence of overwhelming air support.
Usually the task of engaging the insurgents in
close combat is left to the special forces of
various foreign contingents. Several ANA officers
complain about the fact that the training received
by the infantry battalions is too "conventional"
[7]. By not practicing effective counter-guerrilla
tactics, the necessary skills are not being
developed, and it will not be possible to rapidly
produce such skills in the event of a substantial
change in the involvement of foreign troops in the
war.
Another dubious aspect of
Afghanization is the limited logistical
capabilities of the ANA. Although its logistical
units are now being developed, the ANA's
difficulties in recruiting skilled staff casts
some doubts about the future efficiency of its
logistics once the foreign contingents hand over
these responsibilities to the ANA.
Ethnic
fault lines With regard to its
long-term viability, another problematic aspect of
the ANA is represented by its internal ethnic
fault lines. Since 2005, both the MoD and the
Americans have securely guarded any data about the
ethnic composition of the ANA, but there is
evidence that a genuine ethnic balance has not yet
been achieved; even more worryingly, although a
point was initially made that units would be
ethnically mixed, it is now obvious that they are
not.
Tajiks are still overrepresented,
particularly in the officer corps. According to
one estimate, 70% of the battalion commanders are
Tajiks [8]. This figure is in stark contrast with
the Afghan army of the pre-war period, where the
overwhelming majority of field officers were
Pashtuns and ethnic minorities were mainly
relegated to logistics and administration.
Recruitment to the army is not going well
in a number of Pashtun regions affected by the
insurgency, mainly because of a campaign of
intimidation carried out by insurgents against the
families of soldiers, which discourages potential
recruits from joining and has forced a number of
soldiers not to re-enlist. The situation is
compounded by the habit of the MoD to deploy only
predominantly Tajik units to the war zones of the
south and southeast, presumably to avoid the risk
of "fraternization" and to enhance the cohesion of
the units. As a result, very few Pashtuns are
fighting against the insurgency within the ranks
of the ANA.
Although friction between ANA
units and the local population or even between ANA
and locally recruited police is reported, there is
no evidence that this is a driving factor in the
insurgency. However, such friction and the fact
that many soldiers and officers do not speak
Pashto must certainly limit the cooperation that
these units are able to enlist locally,
particularly in remote rural areas. Even the few
Pashtuns who serve in these units are usually not
from the region where they are deployed, but from
other Pashtun-populated regions. Therefore, they
lack local knowledge, even if they can understand
the language spoken by the villagers.
These characteristics of the ANA units
deployed in the south, southeast and east are
compounded by the unreliability and
ineffectiveness of the police, which in principle
should contribute local knowledge to the
counter-insurgency effort. Locally recruited
police forces are more often than not militias in
disguise, which fight for their own agenda and are
locked in local rivalries. These forces do not
effectively cooperate with the ANA and are not
reliable sources of information [9].
Perhaps more relevant in the long term is
the risk of ethnic tension compromising the unity
of the ANA, once foreign troops have been
withdrawn or their presence substantially reduced.
Given battalions which are largely ethnically
homogeneous and with many within the officer corps
having a background in ethnically-based political
factions, the stage seems set for serious trouble
in the event of a foreign withdrawal. Moreover,
the army, whose size is now planned at 80,000 but
may grow further, is already unaffordable for the
revenue-stripped Afghan state and will one day
have to be downsized, raising the prospect of
serious disgruntlement among officers.
Conclusion At
some point ISAF will have to allow the ANA to be
tested on the battlefield in conditions resembling
those which it will meet in the event of a
withdrawal of foreign forces. Apart from being a
test of Afghanization, such a trial - if
successfully passed - would also enhance the
credibility of the ANA and the legitimacy of the
government, as well as increase the leverage of
Kabul in any negotiations with the Taliban.
The test could, for example, consist of
leaving the ANA alone to manage a province or
region without external support. The fact that
such a test has not been attempted yet in more
than six years of international tutoring might
reflect a relative lack of confidence in the
capabilities of the ANA, or the fear of the
political consequences of a failure.
Notes 1.
Stars and Stripes, Mideast edition, May 8, 2007;
Video Teleconference with Major General Robert W.
Cone - Commander of CSTC-A (Combined Security
Transition Command – Afghanistan), March 26,
2008. 2. American Forces Press Service, April
7. 3. Author's personal communications with
diplomats in Kabul, April 2008. 4. A.
Giustozzi, "Reconstructing the Defense Sector,"
Chapter in Deconstructing the Afghan Security
Sector, LIT Verlag Security, 2008; A.
Giustozzi, "Auxiliary force or national army?
Afghanistan's ANA and the counter-insurgency
effort, 2002-2006," Small Wars and Insurgencies,
18(1), March 2007, pp 45-67. 5. Author's
personal communication with a senior American
officer and a NATO diplomat, Kabul, April
2008. 6. Author's personal communication with
British army officers and journalists, London,
November 2007; personal communication with
military attache, Kabul, October 2007. 7.
Author's personal communication with military
attache, Kabul, April 2008. 8. Author's
personal communication with UN official, Kabul,
April 2008. 9. Author's personal communication
with British, Dutch and American officers and
diplomats, 2007-2008; personal communication with
senior Ministry of the Interior official, Kabul,
October 2007.
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