A sound officer corps is a necessity, and the lack thereof will instantly render a force nearly incapable of operations. An officer corps without an NCO corps is not nearly as effective. Most of the former Soviet client states sought help from us to recreate their armies in our model after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
Platoon level is too large an element to be the smallest element capable of operating as a unit.
I volunteered to go to Afghanistan to train the ANA. After arriving in-country, I was unceremoniously reallocated, along with two of my Infantry NCO brethren, to the ANP mission. My dismay was complete. I viewed the Police mission as a backwater of the war. I had come to work with an element that would help win the war, not a bunch of raggedy ANP.
It turned out to be an awesome mission. Plenty of good Infantry stuff, too. Lots of tactical advising.
It taught me a few things. It made me realize that I had missed a couple of points in COIN. The army is a mobile force that moves about and “steps on” an area for a finite period of time, and then moves from the recently pacified area to the next hot spot.
As has been pointed out, the insurgents go underground or temporarily leave when the army arrives. They may fight if they choose, but they know that the army will leave at some point; most likely, anyway.
My experience brought me to realize that where there is consistent “professional” ANP presence, there is persistent security. Where the ANP are unprofessional, corrupt, and therefore hated by the people, there is no security unless the army comes along, and only then during their occupation of an area.
We have, in our national experience, been through this before; in our own history. We actually constructed laws to keep the army from being the primary law enforcement arm of our government.
While the ANA certainly have a key role in establishing security and stomping out grass fires and forest fires, it is the ANP who will keep the fire guard going.
I was dismayed to hear yet another general officer (the commander of the 101st,) state unequivocally his belief that the Afghan National Army was the key to a successful outcome in Afghanistan.
The ANA have a key role in securing the peace within their own borders, but I will cling to my unexalted position that until the guy in the village walking about with an automatic weapon is an ANP and always an ANP, and life with the ANP in control in the village is better than life under the Taliban, there will be no lasting security.
Soldiers have the same reaction that I did to the ANP mission; it looks like a bucket of yuck to an infantryman. It’s just not sexy warrior stuff, and we all envision ourselves to be the second coming of Audie Murphy. Audie Murphy was not hanging out with the Gendarmes, he was chewing up mortal flesh with a machine gun!
We have a lot of prejudices that interfere with making good decisions, but we ignore the neighborhood peace keepers at our own peril.
