The Adviser’s Dilemma: Endemic Challenges and Unrealized Opportunities in the Training Mission in Afghanistan
Adam Maisel | May 17, 2017
As the Trump Administration prepares to roll out its Afghanistan policy, much remains unclear on one of the most critical functions: advising of Afghan defense and security personnel. Though preliminary plans recommended to the president call for an increase of between 3,000 and 5,000 US troops and loosening of Obama-era restrictions on military advisers’ proximity to the frontlines, little has been said to address the incoherence of advising efforts across the country.
Between 2014 and 2017, I spent a total of twenty months deployed to Afghanistan—much of the time in a direct advising capacity to Afghan security forces. Teaching and mentoring field-grade intelligence officers and senior NCOs in the Afghan National Army, I was often asked questions I didn’t have the answers to. “When will the United States come back to help us?” and “Will we win?” In a sense, the United States and NATO have failed them. This is not for a lack of effort. I have seen exceptional men and women instruct and advise in Afghanistan, achieving tangible results at the brigade level and below. Where we have failed is in the incoherence and inability to translate tactical advising successes into strategic ones. Our overall policies in Afghanistan have been amorphous and shifting for over fifteen years and have been aptly described by Vanda Felbab-Brown as “largely a sequence of reflexive reactions in search of a strategy.” And where this dysfunction and disconnected policy has manifested itself most is within the advising mission, one of the most critical efforts by NATO forces, yet consistently marginalized in execution.
https://mwi.usma.edu/advisers-dilemma-endemic-challenges-unrealized-opportunities-training-mission-afghanistan/
