By Karen Parrish
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, May 16, 2013 – Afghan special operations forces and
Afghan local police are taking on two distinct, but critical, missions
during the transition from NATO to Afghan security responsibility in
Afghanistan, a senior U.S. and NATO commander said yesterday.
Army Maj. Gen. Tony Thomas commands the Special Operations Joint
Task Force Afghanistan, with responsibility for all in-country U.S. and
NATO special operations forces and assets. Thomas, speaking yesterday
via video from Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, briefed Pentagon reporters
on the progress he’s seen in Afghan forces over the 11 months of his
current deployment.
His task force works closely with both Afghanistan’s special operations forces and with Afghan local police, he noted.
Afghan special operations forces conduct dozens of operations around
their country every day, Thomas said, noting the 14,000-strong force of
army, special police and National Directorate of Security members who
form Afghanistan’s special operations corps are divided among:
-- Nine U.S. Army Ranger-like commando kandaks, or battalions, which conduct high-end combat operations;
-- 11 specialized night raid elements, which are partnered with U.S. and NATO strike elements;
-- 19 provincial response companies he described as “SWAT-like elements
who work directly for their local provincial leadership”; and
--
Specially trained counterterrorist units and several “exceptionally
well-trained national special police units who have been mentored by the
United Kingdom, Norwegians, and others for many years.”
All of
those units “have been exceedingly busy over this past year,” Thomas
said, “playing an integral role in the security of Afghanistan,
especially the major population centers of Kabul and Kandahar.”
The general emphasized repeatedly that U.S. and NATO special operations
forces no longer conduct any operations in Afghanistan without including
Afghan forces. The highest-level mission special operators perform is
hostage rescue, he said, and during a successful hostage rescue several
months ago, “we had Afghan special operations forces on the ground with
us.”
Thomas added all proposed operations are vetted and approved by a confederation of Afghan government officials.
“They literally have the up-down vote on whether we go out the door,”
he said. “And, in fact, now they have … an Afghan prosecutor who
provides us with the necessary warrants before we launch on an
operation.”
That coordination is invaluable after operations,
when Afghan officials can explain to local leaders what has happened,
Thomas said.
“We were suffering for a long time with very
successful operations, but the enemy beat us to the punch in terms of
the information that was provided afterwards, usually wrong [or]
misleading, but we didn't have a counterpunch,” he noted. “We weren't
even playing in that arena. Now it's an even more effective effort,
because it's Afghans calling out … and relating to them exactly what's
transpired in their particular area, so that they're most informed after
the fact.”
Thomas said over the past six months in Kabul, Afghan
NDS units and allied partners have conducted more than 60 high-profile
arrest operations, including the interdiction of a 26,455-pound truck
bomb on the outskirts of the city, which resulted in five enemy fighters
killed in action and two captured.
Some 10,000 insurgents have
been removed from the field during operations on his watch, Thomas said
-- more than 3,000 killed and about 6,000 detained. “And those were all
with Afghan partner forces,” he added, “so [it has been] a pretty
relentless tempo, and certainly one that doesn't give the enemy any
respite.”
The cost to Afghan and coalition forces has been high, Thomas acknowledged.
“We have lost 53 of our cherished teammates over the past 11 months,”
he said. “However, their sacrifice has steeled our resolve to win, and
we win through our Afghan security partners, in the successful
transition of security, in the successful political transition through
their sovereign political process, and in the neutralization of the
terrorist threat that brought us here in the beginning.”
Responding to a question on retention rates, Thomas noted that the
Afghan special operators his task force members work with “are a pretty
proud bunch.”
“They don't want to be coddled,” he added. “They do
think that they are all the right stuff, in terms of the warrior
capabilities to be the special operations forces for their country.”
Afghan commandos and other special operations formations aren’t seeing
retention issues, the general said. He credited an established
green-amber-red training cycle, in part, with keeping morale high.
“They are on a cycle which has a built-in break, so … [when] combat is
on the schedule, they are going into operation and they know that
they'll … be applied in the hardest possible scenarios,” he said. “But
on the other cycles, they'll have a chance to recoup, take leave.
They'll also have a chance to train as they come back into green cycle.”
Leaders are working to implement such a cycle in other Afghan forces,
he said, but “they're almost in a relentless combat cycle, and it's
breeding some of the retention challenges. But we are looking to fix
that over time, and, again, the special operations example is applicable
to the rest of the force. We just need to bring that into line.”
The Afghan special operations forces are “all in all … very competent
tactical formations,” Thomas said. “Our focus over this next year and a
half is to enhance their higher operational-level capability,
specifically intelligence-gathering and target development, as well as
command and control and, very importantly, logistics.”
Another challenge for Afghan forces is the need to plan for their own fires and air support capabilities, Thomas said.
“Hopefully not any time in the very near future, but over time, they
will have to use their own organic howitzers [and] their own organic
attack helicopters as a replacement for what we currently provide to
them,” he said. “But they're coming to grips with that, and I think
eventually they'll transition to that new development.”
Afghan
special-mission wing helicopters and crews working with his task force
have participated in missions “on a number of occasions and done so
quite successfully, supporting both the police and the army, so it has
really been a remarkable development,” Thomas said.
“In fact,
their aviation capability eclipses many of the other organizations, many
other nations we work with around the world,” he added. “It's a
capability that's developed in quite a hurry, but they're demonstrating
greater capacity every day.”
The general emphasized that
Afghan-developed intelligence enabled “almost all” of the operations his
task force has been part of for several months.
“This past
month, we were able to interdict a 3,000-kilogram truck bomb in the
far-off province of Farah, based on exceptional intelligence provided by
the Afghan intelligence organization,” he said.
Thomas
acknowledged the United States and its International Security Assistance
Force partners have formidable intelligence capabilities. While NATO
will provide Afghanistan airborne intelligence, surveillance and
reconnaissance capabilities over the next few years, he said, “it won't
be as extensive as what we have, but nor do I think they'll need that.”
Where Afghan forces outshine their partners is in their human
intelligence capabilities, he added, which are “playing a huge role
right now.”
“They live here,” Thomas noted. “They know the
locals. … And they're able to provide us a form of intelligence and a
quality of intelligence that, while over time [as] we've tried to
conduct human operations or human intelligence operations, we pale in
terms of what … they're able to do just innately.”
The general
said when Afghan forces can “marry both the technical tools that we'll
give them over time with their innate human capability, I think they'll
be more than capable to understand the threat in their country and then
address it accordingly.”
Turning to Afghan local police, Thomas
noted the program, initially intended to be a temporary stop-gap to
allow growing time for national army and police forces, has “since gone
viral, in a good way.”
There are two reasons for that, he said: Afghan officials love it, and the Taliban hate it.
“Afghan political and security officials have embraced it as the best
form of local security for many of the more troubled districts,” Thomas
said. “ALP are performing as good or better than the army or police in
contact with the enemy on almost every occasion, which stands to reason.
They have been specially selected and trained locally to defend their
turf.”
The Taliban have openly targeted the local police as their
most dire threat, Thomas said. “Their Ulema council recently identified
it as the formation which must be eliminated if the Taliban are to
return to control in Afghanistan,” he added.
Thomas said the
program’s growing success in some of Afghanistan’s most contested
districts, along with some spontaneous anti-Taliban uprisings, are
strong indicators of a popular shift against insurgents and toward
government. The Afghan local police have become an integral part of the
Ministry of Interior, which will have responsibility for the entire
program by this time next year, he said.
Both Afghan special operations forces and the Afghan local police are filling critical roles, the general said.
“Especially as we enter into this historic year of Afghan lead in
security operations,” he told reporters, “they are demonstrating every
day their desire and capability to defeat the insurgency.”
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