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Afghanistan deployments.

Yep, It takes decades to train a really effective army, especially when you are dealing with conscripts. It also takes huge cadres of professionals who are dedicated to the task and don't get to piss off home at the end of a tour. I see no way in hell that we will have forces there for decades to train the ANA and lead it into battle.
There is no political or popular will for that to happen.

All the ANA will ever be is the thinnest of thin fig leaves to hide a craven rush for the exit door. Just like the ARVN were at the end of the Vietnam War in '75.

And most of them got shot, sent to gulags, imprisoned elsewhere at home or exiled. What makes you think it will be any different now? Kabul and Kandahar will be up to their rafters in blood as the Talibs get their revenge on those of their kin who were on opposing sides.

In short, politicians and higher-ranking military officers will big up the ANA as much as they can in the next five years, making great claims to their combat effectiveness and willingness to fight the Talibs and the Als, but they will be doing so with the greatest supply of crossed-fingers behind their backs, knowing that they are just waffling for the uneducated public that don't want to see their sons and daughters pissed up against a wall
in a war far away in a country of which they care to know nothing, and just want them brought home in planes seated rather than otherwise.

So, yep, units training the ANA are "lower priority".

Tam
 
TamH70 said:
Yep, It takes decades to train a really effective army, especially when you are dealing with conscripts....

So, yep, units training the ANA are "lower priority".

Tam

So the ANA is a conscript army, is it?
 
So it is a wholly disciplined, uninfiltrated by the Taliban and Al Quadea, well paid, well led, excellently trained and equipped, not influenced by a backwards looking version of a religion, un misogynistic, professional army is it?

Balls it is.

Tam
 
So would it be safe to say that entering infantry training at the end of this year or the start of the next I am all but guaranteed a trip to Afghanistan?
 
TamH70 said:
So it is a wholly disciplined, uninfiltrated by the Taliban and Al Quadea, well paid, well led, excellently trained and equipped, not influenced by a backwards looking version of a religion, un misogynistic, professional army is it?

Balls it is.

Tam

No it isn't. Which is precisely why training it properly is a HUGE priority.
 
I hate to say, Hobo-ken, that despite what I have posted seeming to the contrary, I agree with you. Turning out a well trained Afghan National Army should be a huge priority.

But it is not, I repeat not, going to happen.
With the best will in the world to the training teams out there in a place that makes a banana republic look a very model of credible democracy, doing the job to the best of their abilities, they just will not have the time or political backing to finish the job properly, turning out a legitimate armed force to even say, pre-gulf war one Iraqi standards. They certainly will not be able to turn out a force that the Afghan body politic will accept as one they can deal with.

The Afghan National Police, meanwhile, is a joke that no side takes seriously, riven by corruption, vice scandals, drug dealing and all the other evils that failed state law enforcement is riven with.

The Afghan National Army may be better but that is purely relative. All training them further will do is spend more money, more time and more training teams lives for no real useful purpose. In any case, those that do turn out semi-competent will more than likely end up in civvies as better trained Taliban or Al Quada. (I hate that word, it has more spellings than is legitimate)

Given that to be the case, and I hope I am proven wrong in the next couple or three years, the training teams should be pulled out altogether or given other jobs to do that are in the long term, less futile.

And, yeah jk82, it does look like a certainty on finishing infantry training you will get posted out to Afghanistan.

Tam
 
TamH70 said:
Besides, Taliban or no, Al Quaeda or no, every Afghan is raised on his/hers mother's milk to hate, loathe and detest any foreign influence in their country, and cannot wait for our and the other NATO troops committed there to * off back home.

That is absolute sociological tripe which is bandied around the media like some sort of fact. It's nonsense. Completely glossing over the deep ethnological divide of the Afghan people but they someone manage to "come together" to drive off the foreigners? It's horse shit.

Much like the other Afghan myth - that they have never been conquered or it's the graveyard of empires. Nonsense carted out when journalists have nothing to add or need to sensationalise.

The truth is must Afghans want ISAF, they want security, they hate the Taliban / Narcotics smuggling yoke they are under.

They just don't want us dropping 500 pounders on their farms and families.

Simple in theory. Simple in execution? Leave that up to Patreaus now. He wrote the manual (literally :D ).

Edit to add : Al Qaeda has one spelling in regards to the military, the same spelling which is accepted across every single English speaking publication and news outlet unless they are trying to be clever with literal translations. Of which Al Qaeda has none.
 
A little light reading on Afghanistan and it´s military history- Afghanistan a Military history History from Alexander The Great to The War against the Taliban by Stephen Tanner
Britain in Afghanistan The 1st afghan War 1839-42 and the 2nd Afghan War 1878-80 both by Archibald Forbes
Britain´s past historical involvement with Afghanistan hasn´t been that great,
 

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