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The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) released a damning report last week on the U.S. military’s ongoing training program for Afghan security forces. According to the Washington Post, the Pentagon has vastly exaggerated its success in creating Afghan military and police units, does not have an adequate system for measuring their capabilities, and lacks sufficient trainers for the program’s goals. As in Iraq, so in Afghanistan: creating a capable, independent Afghan security force is supposedly essential for our “exit strategy.”
Of course, the report itself is so much more damning than what has been published in newspapers. Let me offer three personal highlights …
(1) The Department of Defense (DOD) misled Congress by assigning grades to units that were not even being mentored or assessed (p. 14):
[I]n some reports to Congress, DOD reported capability ratings for more police units than had actually been assessed. Units that had not been assessed were reported by DOD at the CM-4 level [i.e. the lowest level]. In biannual reports to Congress, prior to April 2010, Defense reported capability ratings for as many as 559 ANP units. However, as of March 2010, only 229 police units were being directly mentored or partnered and assessed using the CM system, according to IJC [International Security Assistance Force Joint Command] reports. IJC and NTM-A/CSTC-A [NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan/Combined Security Transition Command - Afghanistan] officials agreed that the charts included in DOD’s June 2009 and October 2009 reports to Congress on Progress toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan included CM ratings for units that had not been assessed.
The Pentagon effectively inflated the size of the total Afghan police forces by 144 percent. Someone please inform Brookings scholar Michael O’Hanlon.
(2) The IJC has assigned the highest grade (CM-1) to units that barely function.
Take, for example, Baghlan-e Jadid: In March 2010, IJC reported the highest rating for the Baghlan-e Jadid police unit in the northeast Afghanistan. The grade indicates that the force has graduated the program and is capable of functioning on its own. The unit completed its training in June 2009.
In February 2010, a month before the reported grade, the SIGAR inspection team requested a visit to Baghlan-e Jadid. But their request was denied (p.13):
U.S. police mentors working in Regional Command North stated that they could not support our request because the police district was “not secure.” We also consulted IJC officials who said that the district was “overrun with insurgents.” One IJC official … added that in his opinion the Baghlan-e Jadid police force had “withered away to the point that it barely functions.” Another U.S. military official, operating from within RC-North said, “I doubt CM1. Most of their police officers do not even have uniforms, nor has the majority received basic training, either.”
Yes, Baghlan-e Jadid’s police received the IJC’s seal of approval a month after an IJC official opined that the force had all but disappeared.
(3) Many of the newly minted Afghan security forces spend their days getting high. More than 50 percent of “policemen” in Ghazni and Paktika Provinces are using. Some units spend all day, every day toking in the “department”:
According to several officials with responsibility of ANSF development, an extreme case of drug abuse had occurred at an ANC unit of about 100 personnel based at Nimla Gardens, Nangarhar Province. There, according to eye witness accounts from U.S. military personnel, ANCOP personnel were openly using marijuana and were unwilling to conduct operations or even leave their compound.
I don’t know if I’d hold it against them. They’re merely following the role model of President Karzai himself.
