Afghan training a challenge for US marines

[Lars77]

Run time: 03:36 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imnpuJ0DClc   Posted on YouTube: December 23, 2009 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: December 23, 2009 By DU Member: Lars77 Views on DU: 620

 
2/3rds of the Afghan police in training are illiterate. But they don't have interpreters..

[Turborama]

1. Synopsis

Training Afghanistan's security forces is a key part of the United States' withdrawal strategy. US forces can't leave until an Afghan national army and police are ready to take over.

But while top officials say the national police are improving, the marines doing the actual teaching have likened the task to directing a kindergarten class.

Al Jazeera's Clayton Swisher caught up with some of the trainers in Garmsir, a small town in southern Helmand Province, to report their experiences.

---- --- ----

If they look down on their hosts as "5 year olds" and treat them that way they are lacking some proper training themselves.

[TheEuclideanOne]

2. That really does seem like a challenge

I could not say how I would do in their shoes, but this is clearly not an easy task. On the surface, it does sound like an easy task, though. This video shows that not everything is easy as it appears on the outside. "You just train a bunch of guys how to take over your responsibilities and then you are done. Piece of cake!" I have worked in some completely unrelated jobs and it is not easy to train somebody who is college educated, speaks your language and is eager to learn. I could not imagine this.

[izquierdista]

3. The feeling must be mutual

After all, a 5 year old Afghan child can make himself understood, but these morons with guns probably can't speak 3 words.

[JohnyCanuck]

4. "In Afghanistan it is far more dangerous to be a policeman than a soldier"

Meet the Afghan Army
Is It a Figment of Washington's Imagination?
By Ann Jones September 20, 2009.

snip

As for the police, U.S.-funded training offers a similar revolving door. In Afghanistan, however, it is far more dangerous to be a policeman than a soldier. While soldiers on patrol can slip away, policemen stuck at their posts are killed almost every day. Assigned in small numbers to staff small-town police stations or highway checkpoints, they are sitting ducks for Taliban fighters. As representatives of the now thoroughly discredited government of President Hamid Karzai, the hapless police make handy symbolic targets. British commanders in Helmand province estimated that 60% of Afghan police are on drugs -- and little wonder why.

In the Pashtun provinces of southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban is strong, recruiting men for the Afghan National Police is a "problem," as an ANP commander told me. Consequently, non-Pashtun police trainees of Hazara, Tajik, Uzbek, or other ethnic backgrounds are dispatched to maintain order in Pashtun territory. They might as well paint targets on their foreheads. The police who accompanied the U.S. Marines into Helmand Province reportedly refused to leave their heavily armed mentors to take up suicidal posts in provincial villages. Some police and army soldiers, when asked by reporters, claimed to be "visiting" Helmand province only for "vacation."

Training Day

In many districts, the police recently supplemented their low pay and demonstrated allegiance to local warlords by stuffing ballot boxes for President Karzai in the presidential election. Consider that but one more indication -- like the defection of those great Islamist fundamentalist mujahidin allies the U.S. sponsored in the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s who are now fighting with the Taliban -- that no amount of American training, mentoring, or cash will determine who or what Afghans will fight for, if indeed they fight at all.

Afghans are world famous fighters, in part because they have a knack for gravitating to the winning side, and they're ready to change sides with alacrity until they get it right. Recognizing that Afghans back a winner, U.S. military strategists are now banking on a counterinsurgency strategy that seeks to "clear, hold, and build" -- that is, to stick around long enough to win the Afghans over. But it's way too late for that to work. These days, U.S. troops sticking around look ever more like a foreign occupying army and, to the Taliban, like targets.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175128/will_today_s_u_s_armed_ally_be_tomorrow_s_enemy_

[pjt7]

5. Waste of time & money

eom.

[njjdem]

6. imagine

being in that sun