Showing up and Scaling up the ANA

By Dave Anderson:

The current "serious person" minimal escalation plan for Afghanistan is "stand them up so we can stand them down" training and expanding the Afghan national security forces. The plan would double the Afghan government forces in the next few years. Sounds reasonable on first blush but there are a couple of problems. The first is leadership, and the second is actually getting enough people to show up.

Here is retired Col. Jeff Haynes on the leadership or the lack thereof in the ANA:

Most experts typically call for the rapid expansion of the ANA, believing that a larger Afghan army will increase capacity leading to the ANA assuming an ever greater responsibility for the security of Afghanistan. That is naïve. The rapid expansion of the ANA will likely undermine the fragile success that has been achieved to date. It will also set back not hasten its assumption of the lead role in defeating a resurgent Taliban. Unfortunately, too many of the people who are developing Afghan security strategy have never worked with the ANA and do not have a clear understanding of their strengths and weaknesses.

The reality is that ANA effectiveness is already suffering because of an inadequate number of competent leaders and staff officers from the kandak (battalion) through the Corps level. Growing the army too fast will only exacerbate this leadership deficit....

As of Sept. 09, ANA troop strength was approximately 93,000 with approved growth set to reach 134,000 by Dec. 2011. Based upon the ISAF September assessment, ISAF and CTSC-A are requesting the ANA reach 134,000 by Oct. 2010. This unsustainable growth rate will exacerbate the current dearth of ANA quality leaders and is highly unlikely to result in an increase in ANA operational capacity and effectiveness. A larger Army does not equate to a more effective army.

So there are not enough decent officers or non-commissioned officers to effectively lead the ANA right now. And what about the men of the all-volunteer force? Are they showing up? Gareth Porters looks into that question and finds mass turnover is a common event:

an administration source, who insisted on speaking without attribution because of the sensitivity of the subject, confirmed to Inter Press Service (IPS) that 25% has been used as the turnover rate for the ANA in internal discussions, and that it is regarded by some officials as a serious problem....

high rate of turnover in the ANA, driven by extremely high rates of desertion, spells trouble for the strategy that US President Barack Obama has reportedly decided on, which is said to include the dispatch of thousands of additional US military trainers to rapidly increase the size of the ANA...

the rate of turnover in the ANA is accelerating rather than slowing down. That acceleration could increase further, as the number of troops whose three-year enlistment contracts end rises rapidly in the next couple of years...

The impact of the 25% combat troop turnover rate on the ANA is actually more acute than it would appear, because of the high absenteeism rate in the ANA. A Government Accountability Office report revealed that, as of February 2008, out of 32,000 combat troops on the rolls, only 26,000 were available for duty - a 19% absenteeism rate....

So the current enlistees are either not showing up or getting out as quickly as they can and are led by officers and NCOs that are incompetent or competent but non-numerous. And this is with an "volunteer" force where the motivation to fight should be the highest. Doubling the ANA may not be the panacea the "reasonable serious people" believe it to be.