Aug 22, 2012

AnglaVakt In Afghanistan

Another initiative, now a priority, is a program named “Guardian Angel.”

Also, notice that they have cleverly modified the "black market uniform" IO narrative. For the last month or so they have claimed that investigations determined that these are mostly not infiltrators (ridiculous on the face of it), but "disaffected" members of Afgh mil and police. They don't bother with the obvious implication if this was true - that treatment from US trainers or the shitty operational atmosphere or something equally bad was causing basically decent recruits to decide to turn on their Western allies.

They still do the "afghan uniform" misdirect in every case. Even when - as WaPo reported - the attacker wasn't even wearing a uniform. (The tea boy mentioned in NYT piece served the Afghan commander more than tea.)

US command has officially changed the designation from "green on blue attacks" to "insider attacks." And now we have this manpower-intensive "Guardian Angel" approach ...

The dire implications for the mission remain the same as when we first discussed the problem a couple of years ago. If our only hope for a decent exit from AF is to stand up a sizable security apparatus, and we have this disastrous "insider attacks" issue, we are fucked.

Hence, the only approach is to have a bullshit information operation to downplay the problem. 

2 comments:

Carl said...

There is a report available on the net called "A Crisis of Trust and Cultural Incompatibility" that suggests these killings are in a large measure caused by "that treatment from US trainers". It is a very good report.

M1 said...

Thanks Carl. Will have a look.