Civilians in Helmand: An Update

[...] an eye on.  Meanwhile, Spencer Ackerman, who I also look to at times like these is writing, is looking into the same problem: The two State Department and USAID officials now in Helmand have been there for [...]

[...] Spencer Ackerman points out that this military assault is the largest Marine operation since Vietnam. He also points out that there are very meager civilian resources accompanying the assault forces, which probably isn’t great. But I’d point out that even if there were an equal number of civilians compared to military personnel, it wouldn’t matter much for the purposes of counterinsurgency because none of our people can speak the language. As of April 2009, [A]ccording to an official at the State Department’s Bureau of Human Resources, the United States has turned out a total of only 18 Foreign Service officers who can speak Pashto, and only two of them are now serving in Afghanistan – both apparently in Kabul. [...]

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Spencer, can you ask them how many speak the lingo? The last I saw any data, the State Department’s Bureau of Human Resources has turned out a total of only 18 Foreign Service officers who can speak Pashto, and only two of them are now serving in Afghanistan – both apparently in Kabul.

Regards, Steve

Wow! So it seems that the Dept of State continues to fail at its job. The ridiculously small DoS effort in Iraq in 2004 and 2006 when I was serving in combat deployments there was a joke. It seems from your update, that the DoS still doesn't get it. The DoS is needed most in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, not in cush embassies that have been established for decades. What amazes me is that the federal government (as a whole) fails to understand that the military piece of OIF and OEF is only about 1/3 of the total solution. Had the DoS been more involved in Iraq (more boots on the ground) from the beginning, it would have gone much smoother. Looks like the DoS is going to fuck it up again in Afghanistan….unbelievable. I'm sure some pencil-necked DoS bureaucrat is going to come up with some policy-based excuse to counter my argument like, “We only need 1 DoS person for every 100,000 Afghanis”. Bottomline: A DoS officer should be the one primarily engaging with the elders in each Afghan village, not the military officer. The DoS and on-scene military commander should work closely with each other, but the DoS must be the lead in our efforts in Afghanistan, not the military. Yes, the military will take care of the security issues, and exterminating active taliban threats, but it should not be the focus of effort. What is interesting to note, all of the military commanders in Afghanistan are saying, “We're focused on the Afghan people, not the taliban.” This is obviously the correct mentality and concept of operations. We had to re-learn in Iraq that the only way to achieve our endstate is to focus on the people and not the insurgents. By focusing on the people, we can turn them against the insurgents. By turning the local people against the insurgents, we eliminate the areas in which the insurgents can sustain themselves and conduct operations. By focusing on the insurgents, we just play an endless game of “whack-a-mole”, as we did in Iraq from 2003 to 2007. Since we have established that our focus is on the local people, ask yourself, “Which organization is best suited to deal with a foreign people, and their myriad of requirements and concerns?” Hmmmm…could it be the Department of State?

[...] Spencer Ackerman points out that this military assault is the largest Marine operation since Vietnam. He also points out that there are very meager civilian resources accompanying the assault forces, which probably isn’t great. But I’d point out that even if there were an equal number of civilians compared to military personnel, it wouldn’t matter much for the purposes of counterinsurgency because none of our people can speak the language. As of April 2009, [A]ccording to an official at the State Department’s Bureau of Human Resources, the United States has turned out a total of only 18 Foreign Service officers who can speak Pashto, and only two of them are now serving in Afghanistan – both apparently in Kabul. [...]

[...] probably operating with less than 80 USAID and State Department personnel (estimates are based on this old article) .  These civilians are tasked to spread development assistance over an area of almost 60,000 [...]