Chivers takes on SFA in Afghanistan

CJ Chivers has done some outstanding reporting from Afghanistan lately, most notably his series of stories from the Korengal valley (but also on weapons accountability in the Afghan Security Forces). Now he takes on the subject of security force assistance, outlining the problems that American mentors face — both institutional and situational — in trying to stand up a capable Afghan force.

What makes this piece better than most of the media analysis on mentorship and training teams is that Chivers spent his twenties as a Marine infantry officer. You can’t miss the disdain in his tone when he describes a poor Afghan officer sheltering himself in a latrine while his men are mortared, or in this sentiment:

On patrols observed by The Times this year, many Afghan soldiers wore their equipment, remained alert, walked with weapons ready and moved by bounds across dangerous ground. These are not difficult tasks, but on patrols in past years Afghans often neglected them.

Anyway, read this piece. (And check out all the multimedia on the Times website associated with the Chivers stories — there are some amazing photos.) I’m looking forward to the thoughts of Blue and other experts on this subject.

SecArmy nominee today?

Trying out a blog post via BlackBerry, so we’ll see how this turns out.

Politico reports the following:

“President Obama today will appoint Rep. John McHugh (R-NY) as Secretary of the Army, according to an administration official.”

I’ll go ahead and note that I know basically nothing about McHugh except that he’s the ranking member on House Armed Services and Ft. Drum (home of the 10th Mountain Division) is in his district, though I’m sure this is going to be covered pretty extensively by other people today.

Sitting through a really interesting briefing by a dude from State Pol-Mil bureau about Foreign Military Finance and the 1206 program, so hopefully that will spur me to write a little bit this week and examine the way we’re building military and CT capabilities in partner nations.