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06-12-2010, 12:45 PM
Special Forces training Afghan police units
By Sean D. Naylor - Staff writer
Posted : Saturday Jun 12, 2010 9:36:17 EDT
KABUL, Afghanistan — In an effort to reduce attrition rates in Afghan National Civil Order Police units — and improve those units’ performance ahead of the upcoming Kandahar offensive — senior military officials here have ordered U.S. special operations forces to provide additional training to 40 percent of the elite police force and to establish long-term partnerships with half the battalions they train.
To reduce the attrition that can run as high as 140 percent in a year, the special operations forces will convert the ANCOP battalions, or kandaks, to the same operational cycle that has worked to keep attrition rates low in the Afghan National Army’s Commando units, which are trained by and partnered with Special Forces.
Meanwhile, the ANCOP units trained by the special operations units are being sent to southern Afghanistan, to support the Marine operation to secure the town of Marjah in Helmand province and the upcoming set of missions — named Hamkari Baraye Kandahar, or Cooperation for Kandahar — in and around Kandahar city.
The plan for exactly how the special operations units will assist the ANCOP kandaks is evolving, said Army Brig. Gen. Scott Miller, commander of Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command-Afghanistan, which has oversight over most U.S. special operations forces here that do not belong to the secretive Joint Special Operations Command. As things stand now, special operations units will train eight ANCOP kandaks, four of which they will partner with, he said. The remaining four will partner with conventional forces. (The mission does not involve standing the kandaks up from scratch — they already exist.)
Two kandaks trained by special operators are already partnered with Marine conventional forces in Helmand, said a spokesman for NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan, the U.S.-led headquarters responsible for overseeing the training of all Afghan national security forces. (The spokesman declined to be identified.)
The remaining six units “will be deployed on a schedule yet to be determined to Kandahar province to support Hamkari,” said Col. Don Bolduc, commander of Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Afghanistan, which is subordinate to Miller’s command and which received the ANCOP mission in early April.
The Afghan National Civil Order Police consist of about 20 kandaks that fall under the Afghan National Police and its higher headquarters, the Afghan Ministry of Interior. ANCOP’s purpose is to provide a mobile force that can respond to emergencies, augment regular ANP units where and when necessary, and also fill in for ANP elements when they deploy to Kabul for “focused district development” training, which all ANP units must complete, Bolduc said.
But ANCOP has not benefited from the same care and attention that the U.S. and its partners have paid to the Afghan National Army. “A lot of focus has been placed on the ANA,” Miller said. “The ANCOP have been considered a pretty good force — they just haven’t been partnered ... and what that means is that you don’t have all the things that everybody else has as a partner: access to an American or coalition unit that can assist you with logistics [and] all the problems that come along with being a unit.”
To redress some of these shortfalls, Bolduc said he was assigning a combination of Special Forces operational detachments-alpha, or A-teams, and Marine special operations teams to the ANCOP mission. “We’ve been tasked to partner with them, to reorganize them, to train them and then to employ [them],” Bolduc said.
Bolduc’s command includes Navy SEALs and Marine special operations forces, but its largest component is made up of Special Forces, which have traditionally had the task of training foreign security forces how to counter insurgents — a mission known as “foreign internal defense.” This background made CJSOTF-A the logical force to handle the ANCOP mission, Miller said.
“Our ability to train organizations at the battalion level, organize them and then deploy with them to provide advice, assistance and support is the reason why we were selected for this mission,” Bolduc said. However, while the U.S. is providing the training, “the Afghans are fully in charge of this process,” he said.
The “pre-mission training” that the SF and Marine special ops troops are giving to the ANCOP forces consists of “a seven- to eight-day program of instruction where we give them just some basics on small unit tactics [and] traffic control points,” said Lt. Col. Donald Franklin, commander of CJSOTF-A’s Special Operations Task Force-East. “There’s obviously some shoot, move and communicate type stuff as well,” he added.
(The length of time an ANCOP unit spends in pre-mission training is driven by how soon it is scheduled to deploy, said the NTM-A spokesman. While the training for early-deploying units lasts no longer than 10 days and consists mostly of “refresher” and “sustainment” training in individual skills such as rifle marksmanship, “some units that will deploy this summer will receive much longer and more comprehensive training that will focus on collective tasks,” he said.)
One of the biggest challenges ANCOP faces is that it has proven spectacularly unable to retain personnel. The four ANCOP brigades have annual attrition rates that range between 50.7 percent for the 1st Brigade to 140.2 percent for the 3rd Brigade, according to the NTM-A spokesman. The ANCOP units “have been overused in the past,” the NTM-A spokesman said. “That’s why the attrition is so high.”
To counter the corrosive effects of such a high attrition rate, the special ops forces are putting the ANCOP kandaks on the same “red-amber-green” cycle that has worked well over the last three years for the Commandos, said Franklin, whose troops run the Commando training program at Camp Morehead on the edge of Kabul. Under that system, a kandak’s three maneuver companies rotate between a “red” period, when they rest, refit and conduct professional development; an “amber” period devoted mainly to training; and a “green” period when they are ready to conduct operations on short notice. “It is definitely my intent to help with the retention problem,” Franklin said.
Miller also expressed confidence that putting U.S. special operations troops together with ANCOP would bring ANCOP’s attrition rates down. “We’ve seen it with other forces, whether it be Commandos or other ANA organizations, you get good partnerships going, you bring your attrition rates down and you bring your effectiveness up,” he said.
Once in Kandahar, the ANCOP kandaks’ “basic mission will be static checkpoints and population engagement within certain districts yet to be identified in order to augment the Afghan National Police at the local level for a period of time yet to be determined,” Bolduc said. “Eventually the ANCOP kandaks will return to the provinces which they came from. That’s what they were designed to do.”
Despite ANCOP’s extraordinarily high attrition rates, Miller said, the force had potential. “Our sense of ANCOP, our initial feedback, has been pretty positive,” Miller said. “They come in with some pretty good skills, a fair amount of motivation, so the initial look at the forces that we’ve done the pre-mission training with has been positive, [although] that’s anecdotal feedback at this point, but the thought process there is that we’re seeing a pretty strong core of ANSF.”
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/06/army_special_forces_afghan_police_061110w/
By Sean D. Naylor - Staff writer
Posted : Saturday Jun 12, 2010 9:36:17 EDT
KABUL, Afghanistan — In an effort to reduce attrition rates in Afghan National Civil Order Police units — and improve those units’ performance ahead of the upcoming Kandahar offensive — senior military officials here have ordered U.S. special operations forces to provide additional training to 40 percent of the elite police force and to establish long-term partnerships with half the battalions they train.
To reduce the attrition that can run as high as 140 percent in a year, the special operations forces will convert the ANCOP battalions, or kandaks, to the same operational cycle that has worked to keep attrition rates low in the Afghan National Army’s Commando units, which are trained by and partnered with Special Forces.
Meanwhile, the ANCOP units trained by the special operations units are being sent to southern Afghanistan, to support the Marine operation to secure the town of Marjah in Helmand province and the upcoming set of missions — named Hamkari Baraye Kandahar, or Cooperation for Kandahar — in and around Kandahar city.
The plan for exactly how the special operations units will assist the ANCOP kandaks is evolving, said Army Brig. Gen. Scott Miller, commander of Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command-Afghanistan, which has oversight over most U.S. special operations forces here that do not belong to the secretive Joint Special Operations Command. As things stand now, special operations units will train eight ANCOP kandaks, four of which they will partner with, he said. The remaining four will partner with conventional forces. (The mission does not involve standing the kandaks up from scratch — they already exist.)
Two kandaks trained by special operators are already partnered with Marine conventional forces in Helmand, said a spokesman for NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan, the U.S.-led headquarters responsible for overseeing the training of all Afghan national security forces. (The spokesman declined to be identified.)
The remaining six units “will be deployed on a schedule yet to be determined to Kandahar province to support Hamkari,” said Col. Don Bolduc, commander of Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Afghanistan, which is subordinate to Miller’s command and which received the ANCOP mission in early April.
The Afghan National Civil Order Police consist of about 20 kandaks that fall under the Afghan National Police and its higher headquarters, the Afghan Ministry of Interior. ANCOP’s purpose is to provide a mobile force that can respond to emergencies, augment regular ANP units where and when necessary, and also fill in for ANP elements when they deploy to Kabul for “focused district development” training, which all ANP units must complete, Bolduc said.
But ANCOP has not benefited from the same care and attention that the U.S. and its partners have paid to the Afghan National Army. “A lot of focus has been placed on the ANA,” Miller said. “The ANCOP have been considered a pretty good force — they just haven’t been partnered ... and what that means is that you don’t have all the things that everybody else has as a partner: access to an American or coalition unit that can assist you with logistics [and] all the problems that come along with being a unit.”
To redress some of these shortfalls, Bolduc said he was assigning a combination of Special Forces operational detachments-alpha, or A-teams, and Marine special operations teams to the ANCOP mission. “We’ve been tasked to partner with them, to reorganize them, to train them and then to employ [them],” Bolduc said.
Bolduc’s command includes Navy SEALs and Marine special operations forces, but its largest component is made up of Special Forces, which have traditionally had the task of training foreign security forces how to counter insurgents — a mission known as “foreign internal defense.” This background made CJSOTF-A the logical force to handle the ANCOP mission, Miller said.
“Our ability to train organizations at the battalion level, organize them and then deploy with them to provide advice, assistance and support is the reason why we were selected for this mission,” Bolduc said. However, while the U.S. is providing the training, “the Afghans are fully in charge of this process,” he said.
The “pre-mission training” that the SF and Marine special ops troops are giving to the ANCOP forces consists of “a seven- to eight-day program of instruction where we give them just some basics on small unit tactics [and] traffic control points,” said Lt. Col. Donald Franklin, commander of CJSOTF-A’s Special Operations Task Force-East. “There’s obviously some shoot, move and communicate type stuff as well,” he added.
(The length of time an ANCOP unit spends in pre-mission training is driven by how soon it is scheduled to deploy, said the NTM-A spokesman. While the training for early-deploying units lasts no longer than 10 days and consists mostly of “refresher” and “sustainment” training in individual skills such as rifle marksmanship, “some units that will deploy this summer will receive much longer and more comprehensive training that will focus on collective tasks,” he said.)
One of the biggest challenges ANCOP faces is that it has proven spectacularly unable to retain personnel. The four ANCOP brigades have annual attrition rates that range between 50.7 percent for the 1st Brigade to 140.2 percent for the 3rd Brigade, according to the NTM-A spokesman. The ANCOP units “have been overused in the past,” the NTM-A spokesman said. “That’s why the attrition is so high.”
To counter the corrosive effects of such a high attrition rate, the special ops forces are putting the ANCOP kandaks on the same “red-amber-green” cycle that has worked well over the last three years for the Commandos, said Franklin, whose troops run the Commando training program at Camp Morehead on the edge of Kabul. Under that system, a kandak’s three maneuver companies rotate between a “red” period, when they rest, refit and conduct professional development; an “amber” period devoted mainly to training; and a “green” period when they are ready to conduct operations on short notice. “It is definitely my intent to help with the retention problem,” Franklin said.
Miller also expressed confidence that putting U.S. special operations troops together with ANCOP would bring ANCOP’s attrition rates down. “We’ve seen it with other forces, whether it be Commandos or other ANA organizations, you get good partnerships going, you bring your attrition rates down and you bring your effectiveness up,” he said.
Once in Kandahar, the ANCOP kandaks’ “basic mission will be static checkpoints and population engagement within certain districts yet to be identified in order to augment the Afghan National Police at the local level for a period of time yet to be determined,” Bolduc said. “Eventually the ANCOP kandaks will return to the provinces which they came from. That’s what they were designed to do.”
Despite ANCOP’s extraordinarily high attrition rates, Miller said, the force had potential. “Our sense of ANCOP, our initial feedback, has been pretty positive,” Miller said. “They come in with some pretty good skills, a fair amount of motivation, so the initial look at the forces that we’ve done the pre-mission training with has been positive, [although] that’s anecdotal feedback at this point, but the thought process there is that we’re seeing a pretty strong core of ANSF.”
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/06/army_special_forces_afghan_police_061110w/