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By Stephen Biddle, Julia Macdonald and Ryan Baker By Stephen Biddle, Julia Macdonald and Ryan Baker May 15 at 5:00 AM

Senior Trump administration officials have proposed sending 3,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan. Their mission? Advise and assist Afghan security forces.

The Obama administrations plan was much the same. So is the U.S. strategy for Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Ukraine, Niger, Mali, Nigeria, Pakistan, Mauritania and many other locations around the world. In all these places, U.S. strategy relies on Security Force Assistance (SFA): using a small U.S. force to advise, train, equip and assist local allies to do the difficult ground fighting that Americans would rather avoid.

Theres a reason Security Force Assistance is so common. But it rarely works.

Why is SFA so widely used? The United States faces threats to interests that are real but often limited. U.S. officials feel the need to do something, but they are unwilling to send tens of thousands of Americantroops. SFAs low cost and small footprint makes it look like a cheap solution that seems appropriate to the stakes.

But results are often disappointing. The massive train-and-equip program in Iraq after 2003 yielded an army that dissolved facing Islamic State forces inthe June 2014 offensive in Mosul. SFA operationsin Afghanistan and Pakistanfared little better.

Thats no accident. As we show in our recently published paper in the Journal of Strategic Studies, the low-cost SFA strategy rarely succeeds. Only when the host nations interests align very closely with Washingtons and when the U.S. presence is both substantial and conditional can SFA really substitute for a larger U.S. troop deployment.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer on May 9 said President Trump wants to "eliminate the threats" against the U.S. in Afghanistan. (Reuters)

Why Security Force Assistance often goes to waste

The United States rarely conducts SFA missions in Switzerland or Canada because allies like these dont need it. Rather, SFA usually goes to weak states with corrupt, unrepresentative regimes whose military shortcomings gave rise to the need for assistance in the first place.

[Did U.S. aid win hearts and minds in Afghanistan? Yes and no.]

This weakness also leads to a mismatch between U.S. interests and those of SFA recipients. Americans are looking for a local partner to fight an external threat, such as the Islamic State. But local leaders are typically more concerned with threats to their own rule from other elites within their state, especially the risk of a coup detat from dissatisfied officers or militia leaders.

SFA partners thus have a strong incentive to use U.S. aid to bolster their own internal security, rather than for whatever military operations that the United Stateswants.

Host regimes therefore often look the other way when their officers sell U.S. supplies on the black market, pocket the U.S.-provided salaries of ghost soldiers, use U.S.-provided equipment to settle scores with rival groups or extort protection payments from local civilians. This kind of corruption buys the loyalty of heavily armed elites who might otherwise be rivals, and it protects the regimes internal political position. But it saps military readiness and undermines combat motivation: Why should Afghan or Iraqi soldiers risk their lives in combat for corrupt, cronyist officers who care only about lining their own pockets? The result is a military designed for internal politics, not for effectiveness against the external enemies that Americans care about.

Security Force Assistance can work, but only if the stars align and the conditions are right

In our paper, we looked at three historical examples where the United States sent significant security force assistance: Iraq from 2003-2014, El Salvador from 1979-1992, and South Korea from 1949-1953. These examples show just how hard it is to pull off SFA successfully.

[Three flawed ideas are hurting international peacekeeping]

In Iraq, the United States invested more than $25 billion on the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), deployed thousands of trainers and advisers, and by 2007 fielded more than 100,000 other U.S. troops to provide security until the ISF could take over. Yet the resulting Iraqi military collapsed in June 2014 when challenged by numerically inferior Islamic State fighters in Mosul. How could all this assistance produce so little real military power?

Heres the problem: The U.S. and Iraqi governments had two very different visions for the ISF. The United States wanted trained military technocrats who could defeat the insurgency. The Iraqi regimes of Ibrahim al-Jaafari and Nouri al-Maliki, however, saw that kind of ISF as a danger to their power, not an asset. The regime preferred a corrupt military it could control to a professionalized one it could not. All that U.S. effort thus created a military that was well-suited to Jaafaris or Malikis internal political requirements, but a very poor tool for defeating ISIS.

The Salvadoran civil war, by contrast, is often seen as an SFA success story. Between 1979 and 1982, $5 billion in U.S. aid and fewer than 200 American advisers helped the Salvadoran government survive the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front insurgency. And U.S. SFA certainly was helpful. Without it, the government could well have fallen.

[The U.S. needs a new approach to counterinsurgency. Heres an idea.]

Yet a closer look reveals that the results of the U.S. investment in SFA were only modest. The Salvadoran regime shared the U.S. goal of preventing its overthrow, but the regime also wanted to preserve its internal position. Hence the regime permitted just enough military improvement to keep the FMLN from toppling the government, but never enough for the army to get proficient enough to deliver a knockout blow. As a result, the war lapsed into a long, bloody deadlock that ended only when the Cold War came to a close. The net result was a real but limited payoff for SFA.

The one major SFA success we examine Korea is the exception that proves just how hard it is to do effectively. When North Korea invaded the South in June 1950, a weak, corrupt South Korean army collapsed. For South Korean President Syngman Rhee, the threat of outside conquest by North Korea now posed a more immediate threat than internal violence. His personal interests now aligned with that of the Americans in an urgent need to defeat a strong external enemy.

The United States rapidly expanded its aid, but it also monitored its use and threatened to withdraw assistance from Korean units that didnt professionalize to U.S. standards. Since Rhee was more threatened by North Korean conquest than by a coup from within, he accepted these conditions and permitted politically risky military reforms that Iraqi and Salvadoran elites resisted. The result was major improvement in South Korean military proficiency by 1953. But the Korean case shows just how much the stars must align for SFA to work.

Sending more usually isnt the answer

U.S. officials and politicians often see SFA as engineering rather than politics: Just send enough military aid and an allys forces will improve. When SFA falls short, as it often does, this implies the aid wasnt enough and so critics call for more.

But this view misses the key fact that SFA often directly affects local politics. SFA is unlikely to work unless the U.S. invests enough to gain leverage over its local host, and puts conditions on that aid to help ensure that the partners military really does improve.

On balance, then, SFA does not really offer a free lunch. Where limited U.S. interests mean that the U.S. will not deploy large numbers of its own troops, SFA will not yield major results from minor investments. For the foreseeable future, small footprints mean small payoffs for the United States.

Stephen Biddle is professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University and adjunct senior fellow for defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Julia Macdonald is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Pennsylvanias Perry World House and an assistant professor at the University of Denver.

Ryan Baker is a PhD candidate at George Washington University.

See the rest here:
The Trump administration wants to send more military advisers to Afghanistan. Good luck with that. - Washington Post

Published Monday, May 15, 2017 10:42PM EDT Last Updated Monday, May 15, 2017 10:53PM EDT

Born in an Afghan refugee camp, Shaesta Waiz says she remembers being painfully shy and afraid of airplanes. Now, the 29-year-old is the first female certified civilian pilot from the war-torn country.

She has her sights set on becoming the youngest woman to complete a solo flight around the world, and she wants every young girl to see how she beat the odds to be able to accept such a challenge.

Weather permitting, Waiz will stop in 18 countries across five continents to complete the over 40,000 kilometre journey. She started the trip in Florida on Saturday.

I thought my role was to become a house wife and have kids. My mom had six girls, she told CTV News on Monday in Montreal. I have these moments where I take a step back, even if Im in the air, and realize this is really happening.

Through her non-profit dubbed Dream Soar, she hopes to inspire a new generation of young women to consider careers in male-dominated technical fields like aviation and raise money for a scholarship. He hopes to meet with as many youngsters as possible along her route.

When I see the young kids they are shocked to see the airplane and touch it, she said. When they actually feel something and see something. Thats when they get excited.

Waizs family fled to Richmond, Calif., at the height of the Soviet-Afghan war in 1987. She and her five sisters attended school in an underprivileged district, where she remembers not being able to finish her first novel until the tenth grade.

I was a very shy girl. I didnt have a lot of confidence in myself, she said. I didnt speak English. I grew up speaking Farsi and Pachtun at home.

Her first flight at age 18 was terrifying, she recalls. But once she felt the thrust kick in and the wheels leave the tarmac, she says she knew her future was in the skies.

A lot of people in aviation have this moment when they discover it. Its so magical. Its amazing, she said.

Waiz enrolled at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and started dreaming about a round-the-world trip. She eventually worked up the courage to knock on the door of aviation legend Jerrie Mock, the first women to fly solo around the world in 1964. The pair spoke for three hours.

The one thing she did say is the airplane does not know if you are a boy or girl. Its a machine. It reacts to how competent you are as a pilot. That gave me a lot of confidence, Waiz said.

Unlike Mocks 1953 Cessna 180, her Beechcraft Bonanza A36 is packed advanced avionics to help keep her safe along the 90-day journey.

While Waiz now feels at home in the cockpit, she says she will never forget the obstacles she had to topple to get there.

I often tell kids, sometimes your biggest fear in life can be your passion, but you will never know unless you go out there and face it, she said.

With a report by CTVs Quebec Bureau Chief Genevieve Beauchemin

Link:
Afghanistan-born woman on solo flight around the world - CTV News

ELIZABETH, N.J. It has been two months since the flight landed at Newark Liberty International Airport, delivering Abdul to a country that had promised him safety.

But the 25-year-old Afghan, holding a visa that allowed him to move to the United States after five years of serving the U.S. government in Afghanistan, has never officially set foot on U.S. soil. Instead, he stepped off the plane into a bewildering journey through U.S. immigration detention, during which he was stripped of his visa and placed in a holding facility for illegal immigrants without ever being told why.

Advocates say Abdul is the first known person to have his Afghan Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) revoked upon arrival to the United States but is among a few recipients of that visa to face a heightened level of scrutiny and to be held in detention since President Trump promised to tighten the nations borders.

Because the special visas are reserved for those who have risked their lives to help the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan, program advocates say Abduls detention sends a troubling message to others who might consider helping the U.S. military at a time when the Trump administration is weighing an expanded military role in Afghanistan.

I dont understand why Im being held here as a prisoner when I served the American government, Abdul said in a recent interview through an interpreter at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center just outside the airport here.

[Afghan visa program extended despite pushback from immigration foes]

After Abduls trip from Kabul on March 13, U.S. border officials denied him entry, kept him in an airport hallway for nearly two days, initially denied him access to a lawyer and had him sign a document that he couldnt understand, he said. The document stated that Abdul had been stripped of his visa.

U.S. officials have provided no reason for denying Abdul entry. A rough transcript of his interview, as prepared by border officials, includes no questions or answers pertaining to a national security threat or criminality, instead hinting at a miscommunication about bureaucratic aspects of his visa.

ICE, which denied Abduls parole from its facility last month on the basis of his visa having been revoked, told him in a letter that the agency is currently investigating the basis of that revocation.

Abdul has a theory: I think that its because Im from a Muslim country, and Im a Muslim.

Abdul, who agreed to speak with The Washington Post on condition that his last name not be used because he fears the Taliban could take revenge on his family, landed in the United States two days before Trumps revised travel ban on citizens of six majority-Muslim countries which did not include Afghanistan was set to go into effect. Federal judges have since suspended the ban.

But civil rights advocates say Trumps position sent a message to U.S. border authorities, who they say have increasingly singled out Muslims for additional scrutiny.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim advocacy group, says it documented a significant increase in complaints of harassment involving U.S. border agents treatment of Muslims during Trumps first 100 days in office, rising from 17 during the same period last year to 193 this year.

The volume and intensity of these stops and encounters seem to be of a different type than what weve seen previously, said Johnathan Smith, the legal director of Muslim Advocates, another civil rights advocacy group, noting heightened questioning based on their perceived religion or national origin, and requests for social media passwords and electronics access.

Abduls lawyers Jason Scott Camilo and Farrin Anello along with the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey -- and advocates from the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) say Abdul is a casualty of that profiling. And while he appears to be the first SIV-holder to have lost his visa upon arrival, several others have experienced lengthy airport detentions in the past few months; one family with small children was held at Los Angeles International Airport for four days and was nearly deported before a judge intervened.

[This family got U.S. visas after risking their lives for America. Then immigration officials tried to deport them.]

What does it say if you served for years, you go through this whole, long process, and then you finally get here and we put you in jail? said Becca Heller, IRAPs director.

More than 40,000 Afghans have benefited from the SIV program since Congress created it in 2007. Successful applicants for the visas must show that they have worked for the United States for at least two years and that they face an ongoing serious threat in their home country.

Thousands of Afghans have put themselves, and their families, at risk to help our soldiers and diplomats accomplish the U.S. mission and return home safely, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), a proponent of the program, said in a statement this month after Congress agreed to include an additional 2,500 visas in this years budget.

But other lawmakers who have pushed for stricter immigration laws have long tried to curtail the program, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions, arguing that the visas are costly and applicants deserve deeper scrutiny. Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) said he supports giving immigration relief to Afghans who served the U.S. government. Having said that, there must be reasonable limits on these programs, including ensuring the proper vetting of applicants to reduce any abuses of the system, he said.

A beating, a bomb and a way out

Abdul was 9 when the United States military arrived in Afghanistan. His family, ethnic Tajiks from a village outside Kabul, had already moved in an effort to escape the Talibans violence. When Abdul was 19, a friend helped him land a job as a waiter in the dining hall on a U.S. military base. He was later promoted to become a cashier at the U.S. Embassy.

But in 2014, the Taliban warned people in his village that harm would come to anyone who worked for the Americans. As Abdul was returning home from work one day, two men pulled up on motorcycles and beat him with a cable in the street. After a close call with a roadside bomb in 2015, his boss, a former U.S. soldier and government contractor, provided him with temporary housing on the U.S. base and helped him apply for a visa.

It was dangerous for me to be in Afghanistan, so they were happy for me to be safe, Abdul said of his co-workers when he got the visa.

Abduls arrival at Newark quickly turned into an ordeal. On his second night in detention, Abdul said two border agents told him that his visa had not been accepted, and they asked him to sign a sworn statement acknowledging that fact. I didnt know what it was, but I signed it, he said.

The interview transcript, reviewed by The Post, gives no indication of why or when Abduls visa was revoked.

Abduls lawyers have questioned the documents accuracy and validity, given his limited understanding of English. Authorities, for example noted that Abdul speaks Pashto when he actually speaks Dari, and they appeared to believe that Abdul planned to stay with his former boss and sponsor, Marion Leon Goins, in Ohio, though a resettlement agency had arranged housing for him elsewhere in the state a disparity that could have played a role in the outcome.

Mr. Goins indicated that he was unaware of your arrival to the United States, why would this be the case if you intend to reside with him? the officer asked, according to the transcript.

Goins told The Post that his conversation with border authorities went very differently.

They asked me: Did I sponsor him to come over? And I told him, Yeah, Goins said. And they told me that they were going to release him.

Immigration authorities scheduled Abdul for removal from the United States on a flight the following night. A federal judge, responding to an appeal from Abduls lawyers, blocked his deportation. He now has a court hearing scheduled for Wednesday.

Department of Homeland Security and State Department officials told lawmakers during a recent House Homeland Security Committee hearing that their agencies conduct meticulous vetting of visa applicants, a process that continues up to and through a visa-holders arrival. A Customs and Border Protection spokesman told The Post that interviews with passengers upon arrival also are critical aspects of that process: We rely upon the judgment of our individual CBP officers to use their discretion as to the extent of examination necessary.

Excerpt from:
He was promised he could live in the US after serving in Afghanistan. But they never let him in. - Washington Post

COLCHESTER, Vt. -

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford says he hopes to send support to Afghan Security forces.

Dunford was in Vermont this weekend to give the commencement address at the St. Michael's College Graduation. While speaking with reporters after the ceremony, Dunford addressed concerns over the situation in Afghanistan. Dunford says Afghan security forces have suffered more casualties than anticipated over the past year. He says backing out or reducing their presence isn't an option.

"That's where the attackers planned and executed from the attack on 9/11, and there's about 18 or 19 extremist groups in that region who have indicated they have the desire -- if not currently the capability -- to attack the west, and so our job is to keep pressure on them and preclude that from happening," he said.

General Dunford says he'll be meeting with the President in the next few weeks to discuss future plans, where he will present a range of options to the President for a response, including the different numbers of additional troops that may be needed.

See the article here:
Joint Chiefs Chair weighing options in Afghanistan - WCAX

Washington - Hanging in a corridor outside the Pentagon press office, a blow-up of a Time magazine cover shows a weary US soldier drawing deeply on his cigarette. Barbed wire and snowy foothills loom behind him.

The headline: "How Not to Lose in Afghanistan." The date: April 20 2009.

More than eight years later, the Pentagon finds itself in the same quandary.

Again.

This time round, it is President Donald Trump looking for answers, just as Barack Obama and George W Bush did before him.

Having given Afghanistan little more than a passing mention as President, he is now being forced to confront the issue by a grim drumbeat of bad news and warnings from his generals.

Almost any year from its turbulent recent past can serve as a showcase for Afghanistan's dire predicament.

Take 2016, which marked 15 years since the US-led invasion. Nearly 11 500 Afghan civilians were killed or wounded, according to the United Nations.

Adding to the carnage, local officials say, the Taliban and other insurgent groups killed about 7 000 Afghan security force members - many of whom had been trained and supported by US and Nato experts.

Dan Coats, Trump's director of national intelligence, hammered home the depressing point last week, warning that the political and security situation will "almost certainly" continue to worsen.

"Meanwhile, we assess that the Taliban is likely to continue to make gains, especially in rural areas," he said.

Trump, who campaigned on an "America First" platform and a pledge to reduce US overseas involvement, must now decide whether to approve expected requests from the military's top brass to send thousands more US troops back to Afghanistan.

Administration advisers are reportedly urging him to approve about 3 000 to 5 000 additional troops, adding to the 8 400 already there.

The president is expected to make the decision this month, and Pentagon chief Jim Mattis said his own recommendation would come "very shortly".

'Change something'

US troop levels peaked at around 100 000 under Obama, who later embarked on a steady drawdown aiming to completely end America's combat role in the country.

The United States and Nato handed security responsibility over to Afghan forces at the start of 2015, but the outcome has been brutal.

Local troops have been slain in their thousands, corruption remains endemic and as the Taliban continues to gain ground, even US commanders concede the situation is a stalemate at best.

"Unless we change something... the situation will continue to deteriorate and we'll lose all the gains that we've invested in over the last several years," Defence Intelligence Agency chief General Vincent Stewart told lawmakers.

However, a new troop commitment would stir resentment in America, which has seen about 2 400 troops killed in Afghanistan since 2001 and another 20 000 wounded.

Plus the US government has already spent around $1 trillion on fighting and rebuilding, much of which has been squandered on wasteful projects.

Trump is expected to announce a decision while he travels to Nato in Brussels and a G7 summit in Sicily later this month.

He will need to outline a coherent Afghanistan policy and explain how a few thousand extra troops will win - or at least not lose - there, when 100 000 troops could not.

"What we will have at the end of this next few weeks here is an opportunity for a much more effective strategy for the problem set in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the region broadly," said Trump's national security adviser, HR McMaster.

Administration officials acknowledge military gains can succeed only if reforms take place in the heart of the Kabul government.

Mattis this week sounded an optimistic tone on the country's current leaders, President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah.

Officials say the government is working to root out the corruption and bad governance that defined Hamid Karzai's decade in power.

They are "committed to working in a responsive way with their citizens, and therein lies the path forward", Mattis said.

"When a government wins the affection, the respect and the support of their people, then no enemy can stand against them."

Nato currently has about 13 500 soldiers in Afghanistan, including the Americans.

They do not typically fight the Taliban, serving a "train and advise" role for the local forces instead.

Extra troops could free up Western advisers to get closer to the fight. While that would help them gain better battlefield understanding, it would also put them at greater risk.

But Americans have little appetite for more deaths in a war that many view as unwinnable and would rather forget.

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US weighs more troops for Afghanistan - News24