bobdina
06-26-2010, 11:43 AM
MarSOC helps train elite Afghan police
Afghan units to aid in Marjah and Kandahar
By Sean D. Naylor - Staff writer
Posted : Saturday Jun 26, 2010 11:27:49 EDT
KABUL, Afghanistan — Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command is helping prepare elite Afghan police units to support conventional Marine forces operating in Helmand province.
The effort to train Afghan National Civil Order Police units is modeled after programs that have successfully lowered attrition rates among the Afghan National Army’s commando units. Those units have been trained by and partnered with U.S. Special Forces in an effort to professionalize them. Meanwhile, ANCOP units have suffered attrition rates as high as 140 percent per year.
The plan for 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, 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 up the kandaks 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 Army 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 consists 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 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 Army 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 Army 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.
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 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.
Despite ANCOP’s extraordinarily high attrition rates, Miller said, the force has 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.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2010/06/marine_spec_ops_062610w/
Afghan units to aid in Marjah and Kandahar
By Sean D. Naylor - Staff writer
Posted : Saturday Jun 26, 2010 11:27:49 EDT
KABUL, Afghanistan — Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command is helping prepare elite Afghan police units to support conventional Marine forces operating in Helmand province.
The effort to train Afghan National Civil Order Police units is modeled after programs that have successfully lowered attrition rates among the Afghan National Army’s commando units. Those units have been trained by and partnered with U.S. Special Forces in an effort to professionalize them. Meanwhile, ANCOP units have suffered attrition rates as high as 140 percent per year.
The plan for 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, 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 up the kandaks 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 Army 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 consists 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 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 Army 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 Army 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.
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 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.
Despite ANCOP’s extraordinarily high attrition rates, Miller said, the force has 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.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2010/06/marine_spec_ops_062610w/