Bumped due to update–Afghanistan COIN Academy

AFGHANISTAN: Teaching Counterinsurgency – Too Little, Too Late

In Counterinsurgency Class, Soldiers Think Like Taliban

KABUL, Nov 27 (IPS) – The Afghanistan Counterinsurgency Academy is a work in progress — the clamour of construction, the bulldozing of garbage and the sparse staff are all clear signs.

Built on a former Canadian military base near the bullet-ridden palace of Afghanistan’s former royal family, the COIN Academy, as it is known, is on the verge of acquiring a dining facility, a lecture hall and other services.

“The academy is still in survival mode,” U.S. army Maj. Luke Meyers, the academy’s operations chief, told IPS. “We’re trying to build this as fast as we can but it’s taking time. We’re six years behind really, to be honest. We’re glad we’ve made this step at least.”

Following pressure from top American military officials, the COIN Academy opened in April nearly six years after the invasion of Afghanistan while a counterpart school in Iraq was established in 2005. Afghanistan’s facility recently shifted to its new location on the outskirts of Kabul.
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The school aims to teach counterinsurgency practices to newly arrived Western trainers sent to embed with the Afghan security forces, as well as to coalition forces and to senior members of the Afghan military, police and intelligence services.

But is it a useful effort at this stage in the war?

The Afghan academy and the Iraq one strike me as extremely good ideas at this stage in the war. It would have been an even better idea earlier. But even now the ramshackle nature of it is indicative of a frustrating lack of seriousness on the part of the big army about training to fight these wars. COIN, says Gen Petraeus, is the ‘graduate level’ of war. It’s the Major League, the main event. Unfortunately, if the Army really believed that too then the Academy wouldn’t be run by a 26-year old captain however bright he might be (and he sounds damn clever). They’d have someone there with enough clout to bring resources. For one thing, the Academy ought to have the world’s best internet connection with access to all the libraries and expertise in the world. It’s all well and good to have facilities in theatre. But the name of the game is reach-back capability. The Academy is a great idea but it should be better resourced and connected.

Update: If you’d like to help the Academy Abu Muqawama provides an excellent way to do so:

Small Wars Journal and your blogging team here at Abu Muqawama recently commented on the formation of the new U.S. Army Counterinsurgency (COIN) Academy in Afghanistan. We were particularly interested in the Academy’s pursuit of building a first-class COIN library.

So… SWJ and AM have decided to aid in building the library with a little help from our friends. We e-mailed the COIN Academy requesting their reading list. They responded with titles of books and movies that once in hand would go a long way in establishing a world-class COIN library.

To streamline our effort we have set up the Afghanistan COIN Library page on Amazon.

It’s the holiday season. Be charitable.