Adviser: Iraq approach likely in Afghanistan

[unhappycamper]

Source: Army Times

Adviser: Iraq approach likely in Afghanistan
By Sean D. Naylor - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Jul 23, 2008 7:12:29 EDT

An adviser to incoming U.S. Central Command boss Gen. David Petraeus predicts that the general will seek to re-create his Iraqi success in Afghanistan, using many of the same methods that appear to have turned the tide in Iraq over the last 18 months.

“It can be safely assumed that he will apply many of the lessons learned from Iraq to what has until recently been a forgotten war” in Afghanistan, retired Lt. Col. John Nagl told a packed audience at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. Nagl, who retired this year to become a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, was speaking as part of a panel on “Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare,” held to promote a book of the same name edited by two of the other panelists, Daniel Marston, a research fellow at the Strategic and Defense Studies Center at the Australian National University, and Carter Malkasian, director of the Center for Naval Analyses’ Stability and Development Program.

Nagl, who is headed to Iraq July 25 to advise Petraeus and who co-authored the Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual produced under the guidance of Petraeus when the latter commanded the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., highlighted one lesson in particular from Iraq: “Foreign powers cannot win counterinsurgency campaigns, but they can enable and empower host nation governments to do so, and one of the most important tools they have to accomplish this task is the use of combat advisers.”

With that in mind, he said, “perhaps the single most pressing need is for a larger Afghan National Army and police force, and additional American and allied advisers to help them fight our common enemies.”

Read more: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/07/army_coin_panel_072208w/

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Vietnam, part III

[maddezmom]

1. Afghan police needs 2,300 additional trainers: US general

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US teams in charge of training security forces in Afghanistan are short of some 2,300 trainers to set up a national police force, team commander Major General Robert Cone said Tuesday.

"The Afghan police are several years behind the Afghan Army," the commander of the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan said in a video news conference from Afghanistan.

There is a "shortage in the police training mission ... right now the number is about 2,300 police trainers that we are short," said Cone, who heads an 8,000-strong team: 3,000 civilians and 5,000 military personnel, including 800 coalition members.

"We think it is a joint responsibility of all the (15) nations contributing" to the coalition forces, he said, adding that Britain, Canada, the Netherlands and Germany "are considering increasing their commitment" to the training force.

more:http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080722/pl_afp/afghanistanuspoliceunrest_080722215700;_ylt=AviDHz_UUuDNGm8DB.osKvSsOrgF

[LynnTheDem]

2. "his Iraqi success"...

And which "success" would this be???

[Barrett808]

3. So we'll be arming and funding militias that were once "terrorists"? n/t