A Few Good Men

For the U.S. military, nation-building in Afghanistan begins with creating an army.

Brig. Gen. Thomas Mancino was deployed to Afghanistan in November 2003 with what he thought was a fairly straightforward mission: train the fledgling Afghan National Army. At that time, it was a collection of a few thousand mostly illiterate recruits with no experience in anything remotely resembling a Western-style professional military. Whipping those recruits into shape is vital, since the Afghan National Army is the centerpiece of the U.S.-led effort to stabilize the country and prevent its return to the ranks of failed states and terrorist hosts.

But in Afghanistan, few things are straightforward, as Mancino discovered. "We really thought we were going to go over there and train an army," he says. "But there was no army," or at least not one an American soldier would recognize. With no centralized record-keeping, no standard uniforms, no training regulations, no military doctrine, no disciplinary code, no supply system and few other trappings of post-Industrial Age militaries, Afghanistan's army faced huge hurdles.

According to a plan hammered out in Bonn, Germany, in late 2002 between United Nations members and Hamid Karzai, the U.S.-backed Afghani who was then interim president, the Afghan army was to number 70,000 by 2011. The Afghan National Army, or ANA, was to be modeled after NATO armies, with institutionalized training and education for enlisted personnel, noncommissioned officers and officers; a merit-based promotion system; and civilian control through a Ministry of Defense. In essence, the United States and its partners, primarily Britain and France, would create an entire defense sector from scratch, in a country with no central banking system, no manufacturing sector, no functioning legal code and virtually no physical infrastructure. It would be hard to overstate the challenge. "There were 12 people in the Ministry of Defense when we got there," Mancino recalls.

Despite a legendary reputation for producing brave and fierce warriors, Afghanistan's army historically has been something of an ad hoc affair. The power of virtually every governor, tribal leader and warlord is guaranteed by his own armed forces. Occasionally those forces united to fight foreign enemies; more often, they fought among themselves. While there is no official count of these militias today, researchers for the American Enterprise Institute estimate that there are at least 850 militias with about 65,000 members now operating in the country. It is within this volatile context that a U.S.-led coalition is attempting to create a disciplined and viable multiethnic army, subordinate to a national civilian authority.

For Mancino, then commander of the Oklahoma National Guard's 45th Infantry Brigade, the pressure was enormous. It was his first assignment to a combat zone in 39 years of military service. It was also the first time since the Korean War that the entire 45th, one of the Guard's most highly trained combat units, known as an "enhanced" brigade, would deploy to a combat zone. And if that wasn't enough, the assignment marked the handover of a critical mission from the active Army's 10th Mountain Division to the National Guard. The 45th, which turned over responsibility last August to the Indiana National Guard's 76th Infantry Brigade, was to pioneer the mission. "I felt a tremendous responsibility, not just personally, but for the brigade and the Guard," Mancino says.

Mentors and Trainers

He arranged for the 45th to train at Fort Carson, Colo., before deploying to Afghanistan, a fortuitous decision. Fort Carson, 6,200 feet above sea level just east of the Rocky Mountains, was ideally situated for acclimating the Oklahomans to life near Kabul, Afghanistan, which is about 5,900 feet above sea level. The unit's pre-deployment training was similar to the training Special Forces troops receive-heavy on honing land navigation, survival and weapons skills to prepare soldiers to operate in remote locations far from support units.

Mancino also began selecting senior NCOs and field-grade officers from National Guard units across the United States to form embedded training teams that would serve alongside the newly formed Afghan units for up to a year to mentor them. After 25 years of nearly continuous warfare, what many Afghans lacked in professional military training they made up for in combat experience. It was essential that the embedded teams have enough maturity and experience to gain the battle-hardened Afghans' respect. "You cannot mentor an Afghan first sergeant with a junior NCO," Mancino says. "That was critical."

At the same time, Mancino embarked upon his own crash course in Afghan history and culture and sought the advice of others with recent experience in Afghanistan. "There are real cultural challenges in dealing with Afghans. They are very proud and independent, and you need to understand that. And they have very different ways of doing things."

Although ANA training has evolved considerably over the past two years as the relationships among U.S. trainers, coalition partners, Afghan leaders and the ANA itself have matured, the embedded training teams begun with the 45th under Mancino have proved indispensable, says Lt. Col. Michael Pettigrew, a planner in the Office of Military Cooperation-Afghanistan.

Recruiting stations across Afghanistan serve as the initial entry point for would-be soldiers. Local recruiting officials vet the recruits. In the beginning, an over-reliance on Tajiks from the former Northern Alliance tribes alienated the powerful southern Pashtuns and other tribes, so recruitment now is carefully managed to ensure equal representation from Afghanistan's diverse tribal and ethnic groups. Attrition, initially estimated to be about 50 percent (although for various reasons that was a hard number to pin down), has dropped precipitously. Since December 2003, Pettigrew estimates the attrition rate has hovered around 1.2 percent.

Early on, gathering accurate data was especially difficult, Mancino says. For one thing, there was no automated personnel system. More significant were myriad weaknesses in other sectors of the national infrastructure that affected ANA development. For example, when troops were given leave after their initial training, they often disappeared for weeks. The reasons say much about the challenges facing the country. With no central banking system, troops were paid in cash, which they then needed to hand-deliver to their families as there was no other reliable way to get the money home. And getting home was another matter. In a country with no public transportation and only the most rudimentary road system, troops typically hitchhiked part way and walked the rest. Depending on where they lived, that could take several days or even longer. The return trip was equally challenging. In addition, soldiers often stayed home much longer than their leave allowed in order to help with family business, as cultural norms required.

"I was constantly being asked for numbers. Everyone wanted to know how many people were in the Afghan National Army," Mancino says. At any given time, it was impossible to know whether soldiers not present were AWOL or just stuck on the family farm. "It was extremely difficult to apply Western standards," Mancino says. "You just had to accept that."

Once recruits are vetted in the provincial recruiting stations, they are sent to the Kabul Military Training Center, where they receive physical examinations, uniforms and general orientation before beginning a six-week basic training course. Recruit training is conducted primarily by U.S. military personnel and contractors, while the British train noncommissioned officers and the French train officers. Noncommissioned officers and officers generally are nominated by field commanders and officials in the Ministry of Defense. After the initial six weeks, troops are organized into battalions to continue with more advanced training, which culminates in a field exercise designed to test the battalion's prowess on the battlefield.

Sixteen-member embedded training teams live and work alongside the officers and senior NCOs of each newly formed Afghan battalion for about a year after the unit, called a "kandak," is created. "The [training teams] are critical," says Pettigrew. "They provide operational advice, logistical and administrative support and help fill the gaps with contracting." According to Pettigrew and others, the ANA has developed far more quickly than anyone expected.

The kandaks, each with about 800 recruits, NCOs and officers, undergo extensive training aimed at developing tactical proficiency and fostering unit cohesion. Once the units are certified and fielded, they are assigned to a regional command, where they continue to train and polish their skills. Eventually, the regional commands will grow to 3,000-man brigades. Some kandaks already have participated alongside coalition troops in military operations against al Qaeda and Taliban remnants in the last year. By early March, more than 21,000 soldiers had been assigned to operational units or headquarters positions in the ANA, and 13 kandaks were deployed. Under the current schedule, the ANA will meet the goals established in Bonn by 2007, four years early.

Boys Club

The cultural challenges for U.S. trainers (and no doubt for the Afghans they are training) manifest themselves in surprising ways. When U.S. troops tried to impose American uniform standards, which prohibit wearing pencils or pens on the outside of shirt pockets, they were continually thwarted. In Afghanistan, where illiteracy is more than 90 percent, a pencil-adorned shirt is a soldier's subversive way of flaunting his ability to read and write. Once U.S. troops understood the reason, pencils were allowed, Mancino says. Somewhat more vexing was the trail of destroyed sinks U.S. officials found in barracks built for ANA troops. It turned out that the Afghans were standing on the sinks to wash their feet before prayers. The solution: install foot baths. It was a little harder to break the Afghan kitchen staff of the habit of bathing their feet in the cooking pots, Mancino says.

"Another issue we faced was that we viewed time differently. If we called for a formation at 8 a.m., generally by about 8:45 or 9 we'd have everyone there. That drove our German colleagues crazy," Mancino says. Soldier discipline was also an issue. Afghans generally answered troop misconduct with beatings. "We tried to offer constructive alternatives," Mancino says. "At first, we recommended they withhold pay as a means of punishment, as we do in the U.S. Army. But that idea was rejected because it was viewed as punishing a soldier's family, who would suffer more than the soldier. We then suggested that offending soldiers be assigned extra duties. That suggestion was better received."

The most challenging issue for Western trainers was the Afghan view of women, Mancino says. "It's a very male-dominated, oppressive society as far as women go. We did not allow any female soldiers to mentor Afghans, but [female soldiers] did work with Afghans and even supervise Afghans," Mancino says. He recalls one spunky American female soldier who was in charge of a supply center. She gained attention-and ultimately respect-when she fired two male workers who weren't doing their jobs. "They understood a female in charge," he says, but a female mentor would have been a cultural step too far. Also, it was essential that American soldiers understand the Afghans' views, even if they didn't share them. "An American soldier could easily undo months of hard work if he were to touch an Afghan woman," even innocuously, he says.

Cultural differences also have tactical consequences, he says. Afghan culture so highly values bravery and sacrifice that a major challenge has been to curb their impulse to always charge directly into enemy fire on the battlefield, says Mancino. Now a special assistant to the director of the Army National Guard, he spends much of his time traveling around the United States helping troops prepare for the Afghanistan mission. Afghans' tremendous respect for American soldiers makes most of them open to American ways of doing things, he says. Nonetheless, he cautions Americans to go with the understanding that "it's their country and their army. They will do things we don't do."

High Stakes

The challenges facing Afghanistan are mind-boggling to most Westerners. While establishing an army and its requisite infrastructure is vital, it's far from the only critical issue facing the country. Most pressing is the fact that Afghanistan is the world's leading producer of both heroin and opium. The International Monetary Fund estimates that the drug trade accounts for about 60 percent of Afghanistan's economy.

Ambassador Maureen Quinn, the State Department's Afghanistan coordinator, told the House Committee on International Relations in March that drug cultivation and trafficking foster corruption at all levels of government. That would be a significant problem for any government's institutions, but for Afghanistan's embryonic judicial and legal system, it is potentially overwhelming.

The post-Taliban era represents an unprecedented opportunity for both Afghanistan and the West. Exhausted by nearly three decades of war, most Afghans are ready for peace. Those who have spent time in Afghanistan are guardedly optimistic about the country's future. For Pettigrew, formerly the defense attaché to Bangladesh, the opportunity to be involved in creating the national army has been immensely gratifying. "Actually seeing things you've planned come to fruition is most rewarding. These institutions we're creating will live on for decades. That's the key to success here-institutionalizing these changes," he says.

"The kandaks are in high demand. One of our biggest challenges is we need to allow them to mature and gel," says Pettigrew. He worries that because they are popular with the public, Afghan troops might be put in operations before they are ready. That popularity and the culture and language affinity they bring to military operations make them especially attractive to coalition troops still tracking al Qaeda and fighting the remnants of a Taliban insurgency.

What's at stake is best described in the ANA's own strategy document, produced last year by the staff of Afghan Defense Minister Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak: "A trained, well-equipped and professional army will reduce the threat from terrorists, defend against insurgency, will free the regions from undisciplined and abusive militias, and will secure the country's borders against foreign foes . . . Fielding a national army that is disciplined, honest, valorous, transparent and accountable to the duly elected central government is the first and foremost step in creating a stable Afghanistan."