U.S. Troops Train a Different Front Line in Afghanistan

Fort Bragg, N.C.—When word came down to the 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers that they were no longer slated to deploy to Iraq—and would instead be dispatched to Afghanistan to mentor local soldiers and police—there was some grumbling.

"The word trainer was used," says Col. Brian Drinkwine, commander of the 4th Brigade of the 82nd Airborne, with a hint of distaste. Soldiers, he explains, tend to prefer fighting over tutoring other troops. "I cannot say there wasn't some initial disappointment when we learned that's what we would be doing."

That sentiment was short-lived, Drinkwine says, and not just because this training comes with the soldierly consolation that in the course of their work, the paratroopers will have ample opportunities to face a well-trained network of insurgents that is "alarming" in its effectiveness and strength, according to senior Pentagon officials. The 4th Brigade troops are braced for early attacks by enemy forces trying to create casualties and friction between Afghans and their American mentors.

In fact, U.S. officials emphasize that creating more Afghan security forces, particularly police, will be among the most difficult jobs America has yet to undertake in the country. "The single biggest problem we're going to face—I'm going to be very honest with you—is going to be the strengthening of the police," Ambassador Richard Holbrooke told a Washington think tank audience in August. "There is no question."

As the United States embarks on its ninth year of war in Afghanistan, debate rages on about whether to send more combat troops to the region, even as a record number of Americans question whether U.S. forces should be in the country at all. But on one matter, there is rapidly growing agreement among senior officials: that the greatest threat to Afghanistan today is not the Taliban or al Qaeda but, rather, the lack of government legitimacy "at every level." Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, emphasized this point during a recent trip to Capitol Hill. U.S. officials add that if the weak Afghan government is to have a chance of tamping down the violence and curbing corrupt cops and bureaucrats who are regularly shaking down and enraging everyday Afghans, the country will need a more plentiful and professional array of security forces.

This has increasingly raised a paradoxical question among U.S. officials, however, particularly in the wake of widespread fraud during the country's still-contested presidential elections: What happens when the government that U.S. troops are being sent to bolster is considered by many Afghans to be one of their biggest problems?

Rough introduction. On the eve of the 4th Brigade's deployment, Col. John Agoglia has flown in from the U.S. Counterinsurgency Training Center in Kabul to brief several dozen paratroopers at Fort Bragg about what they will face as they prepare to turn their attention from Iraq to Afghanistan. A Brooklyn native who saw his share of street brawling before earning an appointment to West Point as a college freshman, Agoglia paints a sobering and colorful picture of how the Taliban has been expanding its power.

"How do they do it?" he asks. "I'm thinking about The Sopranos. Messages sent to you to let you know that 'While you're at work, I'm watching your f - - - ing family.' That's intimidation," he says. "These guys are good at it."

Agoglia tells the troops, most of whom are on their third or fourth combat deployments, that in the south, where much of the brigade will be based, "The Taliban owns the night." He adds, to the surprise of no one in the room, "We don't."

Countering intimidation is "a whole different thing from going out there and killing Taliban," Agoglia says, pausing as some soldiers pass through the doorway beneath their division motto: "Sleep well tonight, the 82nd is on point." "You're looking at me and saying, 'S - - -, is all that my job?' Well, I don't know who f - - - ing else's job it is."

The Afghan justice system would be one logical answer, but the rule of law is, Agoglia tells them, "broken" over there. Police would be another logical answer, but they are a particular problem throughout Afghanistan. More poorly trained than Afghan soldiers, they are also the first line of defense against the insurgency and suffer casualty rates three times those of the Afghan National Army. This does not do wonders for retention; the force has an attrition rate of about 20 percent.

This point is not lost on the soldiers of the 4th Brigade, who are braced not only for casualties among their Afghan security forces trainees but also for graft and corruption. A recent report from the Defense Department's inspector general notes that cops on the take are a particular problem within the Afghan security forces. So, too, is drug addiction. Then there is the matter of an ongoing lack of training teams, which has perilously delayed the development of the Afghan National Army and police. "Mentor and liaison teams have historically been and still are underresourced," according to the report, which went on to note that this remains the case even as the soldiers of the 4th Brigade will effectively double the number of U.S. military mentors in the country.

As part of the largest single Army unit ever given the specific mission of mentoring Afghan troops, the paratroopers will be at the center of U.S. strategy on the ground, and the Pentagon will be closely monitoring their progress. Deployed under orders from President Obama, they will largely be in place this month. Their presence, however, is the result of a request that goes back some time, to March 2007, when U.S. commanders on the ground began lobbying for 3,400 U.S. soldiers to train Afghan security forces.

It is a request that went mostly unfulfilled. Former President Bush's priority was Iraq, where U.S. trainers had their hands full, and today U.S. mentoring troops in Afghanistan remain in critically short supply.

No Bo Peeps. Before deploying, the 4th Brigade soldiers have gone through extensive training on how to deal with security force shakedowns and ineffectual local officials. It is a popular topic of discussion for troops within the brigade, Maj. Michelle Baldanza, the brigade spokesperson, says. "Just how much corruption do you tolerate?" Lt. Col. Frank Jenio, who served three tours in Iraq, says the challenge will be what to do, for example, if troops have an otherwise competent Afghan police chief "who is skimming a percentage off every contract. How many Thomas Jeffersons are there out there?"

Agoglia confirms that this point is one that the U.S. government is grappling with throughout Afghanistan. He speaks about a high-ranking Afghan government official who is also a local drug lord. "He's a corrupt bastard, but he's our corrupt bastard," Agoglia says. "This isn't Bo Peep and the sheep. After 30 years of survival, you're not going to meet too many lily-white guys." The NATO coalition "loves" this official because "he's eradicating the hell out of poppy" in the province in which he works. The problem is that he's doing that, Agoglia explains, to protect his own poppy fields, and market share, in a neighboring province.

In the face of such day-to-day corruption, one of the key aims of the new U.S. strategy being implemented by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. forces on the ground, is to begin to confront it. Doing that, Agoglia adds, is going to be essential in the coming months. The question the paratroopers here have is: How? And how long will it take?

With U.S. officials increasingly concerned that a long-patient Afghan population is on the verge of turning against the Afghan government and the troops who work in partnership with it, time is short. "We need to help Afghan security forces get some wins out there," Drinkwine, the 4th brigade commander, says. A former division one hockey goalie at West Point accustomed to blocking brutal slapshots, Drinkwine adds he is aware of the challenges of the job his soldiers are undertaking. "When I was young, I had a jeep. You could look under the hood and know what's going on, how it all works." This tour, he says, will not be like that. It will be a learning process for his soldiers.

A key role. When America launched its initial effort to train Afghan police, the job was entrusted to American contractors, many of them former law enforcement professionals who began arriving in Afghanistan between 2003 and 2004. They were tasked with training some 40,000 Afghan recruits by October 2004, in time for the country's first presidential elections. "The contractors were very much concerned about numbers," says one senior Afghan official, "to the detriment of quality." At eight training centers across the country, recruits were put through two-week training sessions—not enough, say officials, to prepare them for the dangers they faced against often better-trained Taliban insurgents. Today, the Afghan police still lag exponentially far behind the Afghan military, and the lack of Afghan security forces overall remains "absolutely our Achilles' heel," Sen. Carl Levin, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said during a recent congressional hearing.

Mindful of their constituents' skepticism about the war, there is a growing call among congressional leaders, including Levin, for the Pentagon to increase the number of Afghan security forces before sending more U.S. combat troops. Mullen noted in his own congressional testimony that success hinges on rapidly building up the Afghan Army and police. Training such forces will require more troops. "We cannot achieve these goals without recognizing that they are both manpower- and time-intensive," Mullen said. The current goal is to increase the number of Afghan security forces from roughly 68,000 to about 134,000 by 2011, with talk of a further expansion.

Yet a looming question among U.S. officials is what happens when financing for the training and equipping of Afghan security forces one day diminishes or dries up. If the Afghan government, with its limited budget, cannot then sustain payments to its sizable assembly of soldiers and police, will they go freelance? And could this be the catalyst for civil war?

There remain considerable concerns, too, about what kind of police force troops should be training: paramilitary forces modeled on the Italian carabinieri, community police. Policy experts point out that lofty goals for the police, including basic criminal investigative work, are often unrealistic. lliteracy is the norm within the Afghan security forces. Roughly 75 percent of police cannot read or write, by U.S. State Department estimates. It is one of the reasons, in addition to widespread graft, that Afghan police departments are chronically short of supplies: Many police chiefs are simply unable to fill out the forms requesting them. What's more, relaying information to judges and lawyers, U.S. officials add, is often next to impossible for Afghan police. "How can you function if you can't effectively communicate evidence to prosecutors?" wonders one senior State Department official.

Shadow government. In the absence of the rule of law, the Taliban have stepped in, racking up supporters with their swift if unnuanced dispensation of justice. The Taliban's shadow system is extensive, Agoglia explains, and includes some remarkable examples of effective governance, such as the regular serving of subpoenas. Disregard one, "and you get a night letter nailed to your door as a warning. If you don't show up a second time, they kill you,"Agoglia tells the paratroopers. "That," he says, "is intimidation. It is also rule of law."

Agoglia cites the scarcity of jails as well, noting that in Iraq, U.S. forces have been holding some 20,000 detainees. "In Afghanistan, on any given day, we have 650. We haven't had the capacity, the troop density, to handle this." When Afghan offenders are brought up on charges, they can often bribe their way out of them by paying off the judges, Agoglia adds, angering local Afghans who feel deprived of recompense.

The arrival of the 4th Brigade, Pentagon officials hope, will help to bring the rule of law to some previously ungoverned areas. Agoglia encourages the soldiers to get involved in vetting local tribal chiefs, for example, to see who among them might show a talent for mediating conflict. But to do this, the soldiers will have to call upon skills that are more traditionally the realm of State or Justice department officials. The soldiers, who get little help from other U.S. government partner agencies, are game but well aware that such work is not their forte. For this reason, the notion of a civilian surge, a much-heralded piece of the Obama administration's plan, has become a punch line for many soldiers, who occasionally accompany the term with their own air quotes as they cite the dearth of specialists in desperately needed fields like justice and agriculture.

Agoglia reassures the paratroopers that they can make a difference, and he reminds them that there are a number of threats that face the Afghans they are being sent to both protect and train. "It could be the Taliban, al Qaeda; it could be tribal and ethnic tensions," he says. "There's a civil war simmering right beneath the surface." There are also going to be dangers to them, he adds, reminding the troops that they will need to keep a clear head. "It's not real f - - - ing hard to make a mistake and kill someone with the pressure of having your ass handed to you in an ambush." It's a lesson they will need to impart to their Afghan security force trainees as well. "When is killing the bad guy not worth the risk to innocent civilians? You've got to be prepared to think about that," he says.

Back in Washington, the clock continues to tick. The latest polls show that some 55 percent of Americans no longer support U.S. efforts in Afghanistan. Sen. Lindsey Graham took time to drive this point home with Mullen during his recent trip to Capitol Hill. "Do you understand you've got one more shot back home?" he asked Mullen. "Do you understand that?" The nation's top military officer assured the senator that he did. From the high and violent desert plains of Kandahar, Drinkwine says that his soldiers do as well. "We understand the gravity of the situation. We have the awesome responsibility of building a capable force at a critical time in Afghanistan." It is a force that must last, he adds, "long after we leave."

• See photos of the Afghan election.