Program has Afghans as first line of defense - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Program has Afghans as first line of defense

Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s decision to establish a 10,000-strong police force in villages across Afghanistan combines two initiatives launched during the past 18 months by U.S. special operations forces.

The July 14 announcement of the Local Police Force’s creation followed months of negotiation between the Afghan government and senior U.S. officials over the future of one of those initiatives: the village stability program. The initiative embeds special ops teams in carefully selected communities with the aim of delivering security — through locally recruited “community watch” forces — and development while connecting the villages to the Afghan government.

In a memo to his troops, Col. Don Bolduc, who commands the special ops task force that developed the program, said the village stability initiative will likely play an “essential” role in achieving the U.S.’s strategic military objectives in Afghanistan this summer.

Key to this success will be a multilayered information operations campaign that includes “word of mouth” at the village level and “stories by embed reporters,” among other elements, according to Bolduc’s memo, a copy of which was provided to Army Times. Information ops and strategic communications “must be applied seamlessly at the tactical, operational, strategic, and policy levels with a consistent narrative of Afghans standing up for ... themselves with a connection to [the Afghan government],” the memo says. That narrative “has the potential to shape local through strategic perceptions,” writes Bolduc, who commands Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Afghanistan.

The village stability program was one of the CJSOTF-A’s highest priorities, but met with a cautious response from the Karzai government, which was leery of the creation of any security force that fell outside its direct control.

Bolduc uses a series of sports analogies — “fourth and long,” “bottom of the ninth” and “overtime” — to convey his message that “time is short” for the village stability program to affect the war. “The context we are operating under is one of urgency,” he writes. “I want each of you to internalize this as we move through executing this approach together. You are going to feel pressure from me to move things forward in step with this context.”

At higher levels, that sense of urgency — and the perceived potential of the village stability program — was behind the emphasis that incoming International Security Assistance Force commander Gen. David Petraeus placed on the program in his meetings with Karzai.

“Since General Petraeus took command on the 4th [of July], he met with the president some nine or 10 times, and on each occasion this was discussed,” said a U.S. military spokesman July 13.

“Right from the very beginning, General Petraeus wanted to get a sense from President Karzai about what [the Afghan government’s] plans were for underwriting any of the local defense initiatives that were out there,” said a senior U.S. military official.

Initially, Karzai had not been fully briefed by his own ministers about their plans for the program, the senior U.S. military official said. “It took a couple of days of meetings just to get everybody on the same sheet of music inside the Karzai government. Then, from that point forth, it got very productive.”

By July 14 Karzai “had heard all he needed to hear and said, ‘Here’s what I want to do,’” the senior U.S. military official said.

The Local Police Force envisioned by Karzai retains the focus on village-level protection forces that was the hallmark of the village stability program, which began in Day Kundi province in August 2009. However, unlike the first village protection forces, which U.S. officials often referred to as “community watch” forces, the local police forces will not be independent, but will report to the district police chief and receive pay, uniforms and ammunition from the Afghan Interior Ministry.

But unlike the Afghan National Police, “they will not have arrest authority; that’s one of the things that President Karzai wanted to make clear,” the senior U.S. military official said. “They won’t have the same pay scale; it’ll be a lesser pay scale because obviously they’re not being asked to deploy across the country — they’re living at home. And the level of training will really be tied to their competency when they start and the needs of that village.”

The forces will be “vetted by local elders” and will include “a good cross-section” of the local population, the senior U.S. military official said. Each prospective member will be biometrically identified to reduce the chances that individuals already in trouble with the law are hired, the official added.

In most cases, the local police will be expected to use their own weapons, “but that weapon will be licensed and registered,” the senior U.S. military official said.

Karzai’s insistence that the village stability program’s locally recruited protection forces become a uniformed police force drawing pay and ammunition from his government means the program also resembles the Afghan Public Protection Program started by Special Forces in Wardak province in February 2009. But that program, which is limited to Wardak and Logar provinces and has since been handed off to conventional forces, was focused at the provincial, rather than village, level.

Published reports say that the Local Police Force could include as many as 10,000 personnel, which the senior U.S. military official said was “a fairly safe number to bank on,” adding that that number might be reached within 14 months. Such an expansion will likely exceed CJSOTF-A’s ability to support every village force with a partnered special ops team.

However, ISAF has offered Bolduc’s troops as the principal coalition force conducting the village-level partnership with and training of the local police forces, the senior U.S. military official said. “I suspect that [the Afghan government] will accept that wholeheartedly,” he said. “The SOF forces do [mentorship and partnership] better than anybody on the ground today. That’s one of their skill sets, to be able to really do this at the village level, and I suspect that kind of relationship will continue in this new program.”

However, the expanding Afghan special operations forces might take on some of the missions themselves, as might coalition conventional units, the senior U.S. military official said.

Bolduc’s troops are conducting village stability operations in 12 locations, most of which are located in southern Afghanistan and were picked to support the coalition campaigns in and around Marjah and Kandahar. CJSOTF-A had planned to expand to 25 locations, but those plans have now been set aside in favor of the Afghan government’s more ambitious goals.

Karzai’s July 14 announcement means that Bolduc’s special operations task force will move into a supporting role in the program.

“This is not going to be a CFSOCC program,” said the senior military official, referring to Bolduc’s higher headquarters, Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command-Afghanistan, commanded by Brig. Gen. Scott Miller. “This will be an [Afghan government] program [and] they will exercise some of their own capacity to be able to manage the program in addition to some of the complementary efforts that CFSOCC will be able to throw at it.”

Although the village stability program originated with his forces, the Afghan government’s takeover will have come as welcome news to Miller.

“This cannot be a CFSOCC program,” he said in an early June interview with Army Times. “We can help execute parts of it in key locations, but this has got to be a government of Afghanistan program.”

“We’re executing an idea locally and tactically right now,” Miller said. “Until we get it to a point where it has national-level backing — national being the government of Afghanistan — I think that you’re only going to go so far.”

There is no major concern at ISAF headquarters about the program’s expansion, the senior U.S. military official said. “We think the combined efforts of ISAF and [the Afghan government] can support a program of that scale over the next couple of years,” he said, adding that one way to enable the expansion might be for some of Bolduc’s special ops troops to conduct a “train the trainer” campaign aimed at Afghan and coalition security forces, who would then move into villages that CJSOTF-A lacks the force structure to support.

The local police forces are only intended as a stopgap measure, according to U.S. sources. “There’s no intent to keep this program long-term,” the senior U.S. military official said.

The combination of the continued growth of the Afghan National Police and the Afghan National Army, along with hope for a decline in violence, should reduce the requirements for village-level security forces, he said. “This is probably in the order of a two-to-five-year program,” he said.

The local police will differ from other Afghan national security forces in several ways. For a start, the local police will be “very local in nature,” Miller said. “You don’t want it to be expeditionary,” meaning that the village protection forces should not be able to project power, he added.

“We have to avoid the tendency to overbuild,” Miller said. “We don’t need to create a SWAT team. We’re talking about people that would be able to defend their village, provide early warning, and that’s the level of training we need to work with them on. Give them enough to survive, but avoid the tendency to overbuild.”

Another rationale behind paying the local defenders less than their counterparts in the Afghan national security forces is to persuade some of them to join those national-level organizations. “The idea being that, if they wanted to better themselves economically, then they can join the ANSF,” Miller said.

“That’s definitely a by-product” of the local police scheme, the senior U.S. military official said, “especially when you get to the situation where you’re going back to the village and saying, ‘You know what, this program’s no longer needed in your village, we’re going to downsize ... ’ Now you look at those individuals and say, ‘OK, the cream of the crop, let’s bring you aboard and augment your training and put a regular [ANP or ANA] uniform on you.’”

Bolduc stressed that development was as important as security in the village stability concept.

“It’s the people coming together ... protecting themselves from a threat,” he said in an interview with Army Times. “And what we bring them is the development. And once they see that development and they work hard to fix their irrigation system or they work hard to fix their clinic or their school or whatever it happens to be, they now have a vested interest in protecting it, and they do protect it.”

Marine Lt. Col. Jeff Tuggle, who commands Special Operations Task Force-West, which falls under Bolduc’s headquarters, cited the Zerkho valley in Herat province as an example of the village stability program’s potential. The valley “was a known enemy safe haven and transit point,” said Tuggle. U.S. special ops troops had actually moved out of a fire base there that was “constantly ... getting attacked.” So he put two special ops teams into a “seam” between two tribes to establish what Bolduc refers to as a village stability “platform.”

The teams “moved into the village instead of building a FOB [forward operating base],” he said, taking advantage of the Pashtun locals’ Pashtunwali code “where we protect you, you protect us.” Since the teams moved in, there have been no roadside-bomb attacks, locals have pointed out at least two arms caches of insurgent materiel and, in one case, the local “community watch” force warned the special ops troops of approaching insurgents, who were then attacked and defeated by the special operators. “We killed a few,” Tuggle said.

The village stability program’s benefits to the locals were clear, according to Tuggle. “You see families out in their yards and in their fields more often,” he said. “You see tribes that haven’t talked ... coming to the shura and solving problems within the village.” In addition, economic development means fewer locals have to travel to nearby Iran for work, Tuggle added.

“The security situation since Special Forces moved into Zerkho valley is getting much better,” district governor Lal Mohammed told Miller in a June meeting attended by Army Times. “I appreciate their presence in the Zerkho valley — it’s a very dangerous area.”

Tuggle estimated that between five and 10 additional villages had asked to be included in the program after seeing its benefits.

(The interviews with Bolduc, Miller and Tuggle were conducted in May and June, but were embargoed until Karzai made his decision on the future of the village stability program.)

Miller has invested tremendous political capital in resourcing the village stability program and persuading more senior leaders of its value, but he nevertheless wants to keep expectations in check. “It’s not a silver bullet and I don’t claim it to be a silver bullet,” he said. “It’s another cumulative effect and it complements some of the other things that are being done.” Among the “other things” he cited were “resolving the political issues in Kandahar ... [and] the insurgent intimidation in the cities.”

The village stability program and the efforts to establish ANA Commando and Special Forces units together form CJSOTF-A’s highest priorities, which Bolduc acknowledges is a far cry from a few years ago, when CJSOTF-A was more focused on “kinetic” operations to capture and kill insurgents.

“Special operations forces had an enemy-focused approach to how we conducted operations,” Bolduc said. “As a battalion commander for two rotations, did we do population-centric operations? We sure did. But I was focused on the enemy. The enemy was a viable threat that operated in the rural areas very effectively and we went after them. My theory at the time was pressure, pursue, punish. My three Ps now: presence, patience and persistence.”

What drove the change was the “population-centric” counterinsurgency strategy articulated by the previous ISAF commander, Gen. Stan McChrystal, and ISAF Joint Command head Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez, Bolduc said.

Although a sense of urgency pervades everything special operations forces do in Afghanistan, Bolduc said his troops are settling in for the long haul. The village stability program is “a very long-term approach,” he said, noting that “as an organization we’re planning on being here for a long time.”

CJSOTF-A has lost 123 troops in Afghanistan, and Bolduc’s men are determined that their lives not be given in vain.

“I don’t like to lose,” a Special Forces company sergeant major said. “I’ve got too many friends I’ve lost, too many memorials I’ve been to — it’d better be for a winning cause.”