Jun 22, 2011

Afghan National Army and Air Force – Anticipation and Apprehensions

A new Ground Forces Command (GFC) Implementation Directive was initiated at the Afghan Ministry of Defense by senior Afghan and coalition officers May 24. The intent of the directive is to facilitate transfer of operational control of much of the Afghan National Army to the Afghanistan’s Ground Forces Command.  The creation of the Ground Forces Command (GFC) and issuing an Implementation Directive are important steps in the transition. While the details of the directive have not been outlined for obvious reasons, this is a landmark event in the overall process of transition. There is likely to be some apprehension over the manner of implementation per se as there would be much opposition not just from the Taliban but the central and the local government as the Afghan Parliament has also become active in taking the Ministry of Defence to task over poor security in the country. However on the whole the move is in the right direction and augurs well for progress in transition ensuring establishment of measurable benchmarks.

The efficiency and effectiveness of the Afghan Army and the Police is increasingly coming up for debate after a series of incidents starting with attack on defence ministry in Kabul. With the date for transition of security in the first set of locations fast approaching there are concerns whether the Afghan National Army and the Police would be able to take over security in these areas. These have increased over the past few days because of a number of incidents including multiple attacks by the Taliban, the jail break in Kandahar and the fratricidal attacks on NATO soldiers by Afghan soldiers and policemen in some cases. Therefore a number of questions are being asked about the efficiency and effectiveness of the police which are no doubt justified for only numbers do not necessarily make for security capacity. Nevertheless the first set of locations are reasonably secure including Kabul where most of the security is by the Afghans but there would be a requirement for a back up by NATO in close support, which is possibly the model that would best work. NATO command seems to believe that Afghan forces have the potential to take security lead by the end of 2014.

With the overall increase desired in security capacity of Afghan National Army and Air Force a lot of new equipment is being inducted with the Air Force already equipped with a fleet of transport helicopters which are doing an excellent service in rescue and relief. Russia will also provide another 21 Mi-17V5 multipurpose helicopters to Afghanistan.  This should provide the necessary boost to defence of the country as Afghans are demanding that they have some conventional capability as well. The Afghan Air Force and Army were well equipped when the Soviets left Afghanistan but could not survive due to financial collapse of the Soviet Union. Whereas equipment is being mustered from various sources, there is a concern that the Afghan forces may not  be able to maintain the same unless they have adequate resources, therefore how budgeting for the Afghan Army and Air force is to be done remains to be seen.

There is no doubt that the ANA has a long way to go for developing a comprehensive capability which can be effective across the whole country  not restricted to pockets of efficiency say in Kabul or in other areas where there is limited threat by the Taliban. The road map being followed at present is focus on numbers and thus there may be some shortcomings in effectiveness per se. The challenge is similar in the Afghan National Police where also there is lack of supervision and accountability at the grass roots.