Holy smokes! You know about the ANAP and FDD???? Yep, had a little contact with both of those. The Merry Men and I trained a bunch of ANAP, and Tag Ab was the first FDD district in the country.
I believe that the ANAP program is shut down, but there may still be a few around. They had a one year contract, basically.
One of the ANAP that we trained from Tag Ab a year ago gave up a Taliban mole in the Tag Ab ANP to me. The mole is off somewhere having another really bad day with more of the same to come.
Yes, FDD is painfully slow, but what a massive improvement in capability when they were done with it!
Tag Ab had been a district where the ANP were pinned down all day in their district center by the Taliban… just because they could. That happened the day that we arrived at Camp Dubs. Little did I know that we were going to work with the same guys. Those guys pretty much never left the house. Now they have a lot more vehicles, weapons, and better training. They actually go out and do missions. At least they did when I was there last. I think that the whole thing could be more efficiently accomplished. Thank God nobody’s asking me to explain how.
Still, the program is so painfully slow, replacing the whole district roster with ANCOP and taking everyone away for nearly three months… very elaborate, slow, and painful.
As for the rest, they have a chieu hoi type program. Come on it, renounce the Taliban and lay down your weapon, all is forgiven. Get a job.
We don’t need Kit Carsons… the ANP know the local terrain, including the human terrain. And we have terps, who are wonderful young men. They do change district police chiefs like they change underwear, though. The disgraced chief usually winds up a chief in a district in another province.
Yeah, I know.
You do have to be wary of the ANP when you first get to a new district, though. It takes time to read who might have an agenda.
To try to separate the chiefs from undue influence, the ANP chiefs do not derive their authority from or report to the governors or subgovernors. That does not mean that the governors do not exert influence. One even tried to bring forth his own candidate for chief of Tag Ab.
He had a habit of stacking his cabinet with “former” HiG. That’s to be expected, though. He was former HiG himself; part of the policy of political engagement to draw these guys into the process instead of trying to derail it.
