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.

News flash: ETTs have a really hard job

This video, courtesy of Christian Bleuer at Ghosts of Alexander, helps to illustrate exactly how difficult it is to be an Embedded Tactical Trainer in Afghanistan. Some language NSFW.

Brookings Stability Operations event

This afternoon I attended a panel discussion held at the Brookings Institution that focused on the new Army field manual for stability operations, FM 3-07. The discussion was moderated by Janine Davidson, and the panel was composed of Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (and former president of the Center for a New American Security) Michele Flournoy, Brookings Director of Foreign Policy Studies and reputedly soon-to-be-announced U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Carlos Pascual, and LTG William Caldwell, commander of the Army’s Combined Arms Center.

UPDATE: CSPAN has the video up here. My question is around the 1:22 mark if you’re interested. My voice doesn’t sound like that in real life, I promise.

I might write more on this later, but for now I’ll just post what I wrote in the comments section at Abu Muqawama regarding the question I asked USD Flournoy: