Video: U.S. troops try in vain to train Afghan soldiers
posted at 8:43 pm on December 16, 2009 by Allahpundit
It’s nine months old and comes straight from the darkest heart of liberal Britain, a.k.a. the Guardian, but I’m giving it to you anyway because it’s new to me, completely engrossing, and jibes with a story by a major publication that I read just last week.
Even the best Afghan units lack training, discipline and adequate reinforcements. In one new unit in Baghlan Province, soldiers have been found cowering ditches rather than fight. Others routinely steal U.S.-supplied fuel, equipment and weapons. And a few are suspected of collaborating with the Taliban against the Americans.
“I do not feel I am a mentor here,” said Capt. Jason Douthwaite, a logistics officer with the 73rd Troop Command of the Ohio National Guard who has tried to stop rampant pilfering by the Afghan soldiers his unit is training. “I feel like I am an investigating officer. It’s not, ‘Let me teach you your job.’ It’s more like, ‘How much did you steal from the American government today?’”…
During a Taliban ambush, gunfire was coming at the Americans and their Afghan counterparts from three sides. But the Afghan National Army soldiers of the 209 Corps, 2nd Brigade, 3rd Kandak (battalion), fresh out of training in Kabul, were not ready for a fight.
So after returning initial fire, the Afghan soldiers simply lay in a ditch, refusing to budge.
“They don’t have the basics, so they lay down,” said Capt. Michael Bell, who is one of a team of U.S. and Hungarian mentors tasked with making this young kandak battle-ready. “I ran around for an hour trying to get them to shoot, getting fired on. I couldn’t get them to shoot their weapons.”
Which publication was it, you ask. The Times? The Nation? Try Stars and Stripes — and the article only gets worse from there. Question for our military readers who’ve served in Kabul: Has your experience been this discouraging? It blows my mind that these recruits come from the same population as an effective guerrilla force like the Taliban, although a possible explanation for that is mentioned in the clip. No wonder, either, that Gates demanded that the pace of withdrawal be entirely conditions-based. After watching this, Hitchens’s idea of bringing in India instead of handing off to Kabul looks even better than before. Content warning.
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I also think we have never understood their motivations very well. There was all this talk once about how we would catch Bin Laden and his friends by offering bounties… They wouldn’t be able to pass up all that money.
Funny they didn’t take it. They are loyal and proud. We don’t understand them at all!
petunia on December 17, 2009 at 12:58 AM
And the French used to teach for seventy years that Vietnamese were too unmanly to make good soldiers. And that is what the Japanese thought about the Filipinos, for a few years. And a British colonel once excused the poor performance of his Burmese troops against the Japanese Army with the statement “Asiatics make poor soldiers”.
You don’t need mechanics. You don’t need guys who will quit after five years and become model citizen voters. You don’t need people who may take college courses and become mustang officers. You need men who will follow you into the wilderness for days and kill who you tell them to kill, because you gave the order. That’s a simpler proposition and takes a skill set we apparently have drilled out of our young officers.
Colonial armies solved that by segregating the daily routine of men into groups of the same base loyalty…regiment if possible, company or platoon if need be…and then preaching and drilling an idealistic faith in identity with the ARMY, so that they could fight alongside “foriegn” tribes without strong emotions.
Chris_Balsz on December 17, 2009 at 1:08 AM
It seems like we are going to need a lot more than 2 years if we are truly going to fix anything in Afghanistan. More like 2 decades. We basically need to take the young and train them up to be the leadership. Is it possible to Americanize a city there and turn it into a permanent base?
WisCon on December 17, 2009 at 1:09 AM
Afganis don’t fight like western armies.
Afganis destroy western armies.
It has been like this for at least 1,000 years.
bnelson44 on December 17, 2009 at 1:20 AM
Best quote of the video:
“I give a f–k about your chai.”
BirdEye on December 17, 2009 at 1:57 AM
Makes me wonder how the heck the Afghanis ever beat the Russians…?
Urban Infidel on December 17, 2009 at 7:02 AM
With U.S help.
5u93rm4n on December 17, 2009 at 7:20 AM
Not to worry, Obama will have every Afghan trained and fighting by July 2011 when the US troops leave.
albill on December 17, 2009 at 7:40 AM
Anyone see similarities to Vietnam. When we first got they were hard to train too. There were VC in every platoon but when we left they held their own until Congress cut the money and supplies from them. I think we will leave when Obama says because he has no interest in winning.
old war horse on December 17, 2009 at 8:46 AM
If Obama signs this Friday people should called republican house officials to start impeachment immediately for Treason!!!!
He is out of his jurisdiction to sign such a document without 2/3 of senate to approve! Therefore his actions will be treason and subject to impeachment under Article III in the constitution.
xler8bmw on December 17, 2009 at 9:03 AM
Sorry wrong thread!
xler8bmw on December 17, 2009 at 9:04 AM
Not at all! You can put that comment anywhere you like: it applies to every subject! I admire your enthusiasm!
GTR640 on December 17, 2009 at 9:22 AM
The comments about the North being more organized are valid.
There really is no “Afghan” culture. The country should be considered a grouping of several sub-countries. A quick thumbnail reveals about seven different and distinct areas.
1. Kabul area
2. Eastern province – Ghazni, etc. Close ties to Pakistan
3. Southern – Kandahar. Desert region, historic trading ties with Pakistan and Iran
4. Western – Herat: Basically consider themselves a different region than the rest of the country due to the mountain ranges that block travel to the east and their very close ties to Iran. (Huge amount of Iranian financial influence.)
5. North West – Primary economic means is through trading with Turkmenistan. (Smuggling is common.)
6. North – Culturaly see themselves as seperate from the rest of Afghanistan – resisted the Taliban influence
7. North East – cultural ties with Tajikistan. Trade is hampered due to the mountainous terrain
With that said, the troops I dealt with were primarily in the Kabul area and they weren’t half bad. Think of the basic training recruits in Afghanistan from this perspective – set the clock back to about 1918. You’re a Kansas farmboy whose farm has no electricity or running water. You sign up for the Army and head to Fort Benning, Georgia where you see all kinds of things for the first time. You get sent to France and your unit gets hit for the first time. Do you valiantly jump over the barbed wire and close with the enemy? Or do you hunker down in the trench? The goat farmer from the interior of Afghanistan is quite similar.
keyboarddude on December 17, 2009 at 9:30 AM
As discouraging as this looks (and I literally am discouraged and sad from watching this vid), I doubt this is representative. As the Afghani commander explains in the vid, these guys are the rejects. They’ve been kicked out of their own villages for being … the village idiots. No wonder, then, that they are so unmotivated.
This video is brought to you by the Guardian, btw, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they are promoting the most depressing piece of footage they can find.
I am sure you can find “soldiers” of this quality in any army. I know they exist in the IDF, and I know they exist in the American military too.
What we need to see is some footage of normal Afghani soldiers. There’s gotta be at least some success stories, right?
AlexB on December 17, 2009 at 9:48 AM
The commandos do just fine.
hawkdriver on December 17, 2009 at 10:07 AM
Since the US helped the Afghani’s against the Russian invasion, are the Russian’s helping the Taliban against the US now? Where are the Taliban weapons coming from? Does Obama know? Does he even think to ask?
PappaMac on December 17, 2009 at 10:34 AM
Holy cow, that is the most depressing thing I’ve seen in a long time.
t.ferg on December 17, 2009 at 10:43 AM
There is no greater retrograde force in the world than Islam.
We train our soldiers (the best in the world) in a matter of weeks.
We can’t even stand up Afghans or Iraqis after training them for years.
Islam culturally retards everything it touches.
HadithHarry on December 17, 2009 at 11:08 AM
That “SURGE” strategy is looking smarter every day. Now there are going to be even more supplies for them to steal until 2011. God I am going to love posting “I told you so” on every afghanistan post from here on out. Hey maybe we should reference the docs take on the Chimera again, it seems to explain afghanistan pretty well. Our past failures show we need to spend ever more money and lives to “clear, hold, build” Afghanistan. For all the hawks that are desperatley attached to this war please read George Will’s take.http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/will090109.php3
snoopicus on December 17, 2009 at 11:17 AM
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/will110409.php3
another good one by will
snoopicus on December 17, 2009 at 11:20 AM
Marines wearing MultiCam?
pseudonominus on December 17, 2009 at 11:56 AM
Its the “woodland” version of their digital uniforms. They have two versions – the other is desert brown digital.
keyboarddude on December 17, 2009 at 12:22 PM
Wow, calling for us to kneel to Al Qaeda in the name of our dead troops. Who knew George Will was such a scumbag?
How’s your AQ-proof bunker coming, snoopicus? The one you’re building to stop the next terror attack from crisping you. Got room for 305 million people?
I thought we agreed the impossible commitment was playing defense for a whole continent against the lunatic fringe of a world religion. When did that become reasonable compared to destroying a guerrilla movement in Central Asia?
Chris_Balsz on December 17, 2009 at 1:17 PM
What’s good about it? Just like his Cut & Run from Iraq column and his Cut & Run from Afghanistan column the bow-tied baseball fan has ZERO qualifications to make an assessment of battlefield strategy. His only positive suggestion…
…is essentially an endorsement of Joe Biden’s Magic Ninja strategy. This battleplan only works from an armchair in a well appointed den.
Considering Will’s opinion as meaningful on this issue requires a suspension of disbelief. I’ll stick with Petraeus and McChrystal.
rcl on December 17, 2009 at 2:14 PM
And how exactly are you qualified to make such a statement? I am not inclined to do so, but surely you realize that about 30 seconds worth of Google seaches and you can find a many generals that have supported or advocated many strategies.
That is what we are doing, only we are trying to protect southern Asia instead of North America.
Perhaps, but thinking we will turn Afghanistan into a self sufficient country in less than 2 or 3 decades is as well. Please just answer this, what do you think will happen in the next 9 years that wasn’t tried in the previous 9.
snoopicus on December 17, 2009 at 2:38 PM
Dude seriously? I don’t live in perpetual fear of AQ attack. Take a chill pill manbearpig isn’t going to get you from Afghanistan. Just remember the last 2 big terror incidents have involved natives, Nadal Hassan and Samadi.
Last point, do you think it would have been impossible for the 19 hijackers to get box cutters without controlling Afghanistan? I can grab them from Wal Mart. Do you really need to control Afghanistan to find 4 flights to hijack? I could do it with Expedia. Oh and they took their flight lessons in San Diego. I could probably do that without controlling Afghanistan. If you think Afghanistan is a prerequisite for AQ before they can attack us you are an idiot. Pulling the majority of our troops out of Afghanistan doesn’t mean we give up fighting AQ, it means we quit propping up Karzai with our blood and treasure. Also isn’t your argument sort of moot since both AQ and the Taliban have more agents in the Pakistani Intelligence Service than are in Afghanistan and Pakistan doesn’t actually want to fight them?
snoopicus on December 17, 2009 at 2:48 PM
It also requires a suspension of disbelief to believe that the clowns that make up the Afghan army will ever be competent enough for us to actually hand over security.
snoopicus on December 17, 2009 at 2:56 PM
Iran
BadBrad on December 17, 2009 at 3:15 PM
Sure looked like Multicam to me…
BadBrad on December 17, 2009 at 3:18 PM
Stolen US military gear also
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/11/10-4
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/world/asia/20ammo.html?_r=1&hp
snoopicus on December 17, 2009 at 3:24 PM
Correction on last post. Lots of the US weapons they have are being supplied by turncoat afghan soldiers. They get gear from us to sell to the Taliban and they probably collect a weekly check from both sides.
snoopicus on December 17, 2009 at 3:26 PM
They may be afraid or maybe they are actually working with or are sympathetic to the Taliban.
SGinNC on December 17, 2009 at 3:27 PM
It does not blow my mind, Allah. Firing on fellow Muslims is prohibited in the Qur’an. AND these Afghani soldiers obviously feel that the Taliban soldiers are more authentically Muslim than themselves. They are too far “backwards” to begin to see there’s a better way to live.
{^_^}
herself on December 17, 2009 at 3:28 PM
you think?
snoopicus on December 17, 2009 at 3:32 PM
Big attacks? What the hell do you call 9/11?
And the Japanese 2nd Fleet could have sailed to Pearl Harbor from Truk Atoll not Kyushu, therefore, we didn’t need to bother smashing past Truk! QED.
It means we give up on ending their ability to strike the United States, however long we do too little.
We’re a nation of 305 million with a $14 trillion economy fighting a nation of 30 million with a $23 billion economy, and you say we can’t manage it without a fighting alliance with Pakistan??
Chris_Balsz on December 17, 2009 at 4:03 PM
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