Leveraging Observations Of Security Force Assistance In Afghanistan For Global Operations PDF Download

Current operations, demands of persistent conflict, and enduring U.S. national security interests underscore the immediate and continuing need to improve U.S. Security Force Assistance (SFA) efforts. The frequency and importance of such activities throughout U.S. history demonstrate that the current requirements are not anomalies. Since September 11, 2001 (9/11), the United States has been challenged to accomplish key national security goals due to a lack of capability and capacity to effectively advise, utilize, and partner with foreign security forces. To meet this challenge, this Letort Paper recommends the creation of a new organization as a means of overcoming current bureaucratic impediments and providing a coherent focus on SFA challenges. Previous U.S. advisory experience with similar requirements did not result in institutionalized capabilities that would have forestalled major problems. Instead, U.S. SFA efforts have been largely ad hoc ventures. The United States should have had expertise, plans, authorities, and organizational solutions readily at hand to address the full range of partnership activities when the inevitable crises arose. The Department of Defense (DoD) must act now to avoid future SFA difficulties and to ensure that it does not squander the hard-won lessons of recent experience. DoD is long overdue for a comprehensive approach to SFA that supports Geographic Combatant Commanders' (GCC) Theater Campaign Plans (TCP) and contingency operations in a manner that integrates U.S. military assistance activities from ministerial through tactical levels, while providing strong links to complementary interagency and multinational activities. This paper offers recommendations that build upon recent initiatives within DoD to create a comprehensive approach to improve U.S. SFA. At the heart of our recommendations is a DoD-level organizational approach to effectively institutionalize SFA activities and facilitate interagency and multinational unity of effort. We intend to adapt current DoD processes that encourage the ad hoc approach and implement a single DoD-level integrating organization. Expertise in key SFA activities, massed and integrated within a DoD-level organization, offers the best opportunity to improve hitherto disjointed efforts. This single integrator can be successful only with simultaneous change to DoD's authorities and policies. According to the DoD's draft instruction on relationships and responsibilities for SFA, it is defined as: (1) operations, actions, or activities that contribute to unified action to support the development of the capacity and capability of foreign security forces and their supporting institutions; (2) the bolstering of a foreign security force or institution's capabilities or capacity in order to facilitate the achievement of specific operational objectives shared with the USG.2 SFA includes the tasks of organizing, training, equipping, rebuilding and advising (OTERA) foreign security forces and foreign security institutions.3 The problem of improving U.S. SFA has received substantial attention lately. Many good ideas are circulating, and there are various useful solutions in early stages; nonetheless, great shortcomings still plague the general effort. The ad hoc approach to SFA efforts during persistent conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan has been, at best, inefficient and slow. To a degree, the United States has developed effective approaches for specific contingencies, such as in Iraq and Afghanistan; however, the delays in finding effective ways have come at a high price and have postponed, if not compromised, mission success. It would be a mistake to ignore the wisdom gained through several years of painful adaptation; this paper proposes a solution that would prevent such a misstep by leveraging recent experience to prepare and enable future U.S. forces engaged in building partner capacity.