Afghanistan Security: Long-standing Challenges May Affect Progress and Sustainment of Afghan National Security Forces
Released: 2012-07-24T00:00:00

Letter

DOD and NATO Report Progress Developing Capable ANSF, but Assessment Tool Has Changed Over Time

DOD and NATO report progress in developing capable ANSF. In April 2012, DOD reported that the number of ANSF grew steadily and exceeded growth targets. Similarly, as of May 2012, NATO reported that the Afghan National Army (ANA) reached its October 2012 recruitment growth goal of 195,000, while the Afghan National Police (ANP) reached 149,208 of its October 2012 goal of 157,000. We previously reported that DOD reported similar progress in 2010, achieving its interim growth goals for the ANA several months ahead of schedule. Further, DOD noted that increased numbers of ANSF were accompanied by increased capability of these forces, reporting that 7 percent (15 out of 219) of ANA and 9 percent (39 out of 435) of ANP units rated as operating independently with the assistance of advisors.on DOD assessments of the ANA and ANP.

Long-standing Challenges May Affect Progress and Sustainment of Capable ANSF

In April 2012, GAO issued a restricted report on the cost to build and sustain ANSF.

ANP required approximately 8,300. DOD has previously noted that the development of leaders for ANSF is essential to improving its capability. Additionally, despite reported progress in providing ANSF with literacy training—a key prerequisite for learning specialized skills, such as logistics, needed to reduce reliance on coalition forces—DOD states that illiteracy remains a challenge. Further, despite the surge of U.S. troops to Afghanistan, the training mission continues to experience a shortfall in personnel needed to help address these key skill gaps. According to DOD, as of March 2012, about 16 percent of instructor positions to train ANSF were unfilled and NATO lacked pledges to fill them.

Limited capacity of ministries supporting ANSF. We have previously reported that limited capacity in the Afghan Ministries of Defense (MOD) and Interior (MOI)—which oversee the ANA and ANP, respectively—present challenges to the development and sustainment of capable ANSF. For instance, MOI faced challenges, such as a lack of consolidated personnel databases and formal training in properly executing budget and salary functions. In April 2012, DOD reported that the MOD was assessed as requiring some coalition assistance to accomplish its mission—an assessment unchanged since October 2010, while the MOI was assessed as needing significant coalition assistance—an assessment unchanged since 2009. Additionally, DOD reported that the ministries face a variety of challenges, including, among others, MOD’s lack of human capital in areas requiring technical expertise and MOI’s continuing problems with corruption.

Factors to Consider in Deployment and Use of Security Force Assistance Advisory Teams to Develop the ANSF

As part of the overall transition of lead security responsibility to the ANSF by 2014, NATO’s mission in Afghanistan is shifting from a combat role to more of an advising and assist mission. To that end, earlier this year, the United States and coalition nations have begun providing specialized teams, referred to as security force assistance advisory teams (SFAATs), to provide leadership and expertise to ANSF personnel and units. At the same time, overall U.S. troop levels are planned to draw down from about 87,000 as of the end of March 2012, to approximately 68,000 by the end of September 2012.

Mentoring, advising, and partnering with ANSF units has been a key part of NATO’s mission in Afghanistan. For the U.S. contribution, DOD has used a variety of approaches to provide U.S. forces to carry out the advise and assist mission, including forming individual training teams as well as augmenting existing brigade combat teams with additional personnel to serve as advisors. Starting in early 2012, the Army and Marine Corps began training and deploying small teams of advisors with specialized capabilities, or SFAATs. These teams will be located throughout Afghanistan and are comprised of officers and senior-grade non-commissioned officers. They will work with ANSF personnel from the headquarters to the battalion level and advise and assist in areas such as command and control, intelligence, and logistics. In addition, the SFAATs will work with the ground commander to arrange for these units to provide any necessary support to ANSF units such as fire support or medical assistance. To initially provide these teams, the Army and Marine Corps in some cases created these teams by drawing personnel from units that had already deployed to Afghanistan. In other cases, they created teams by drawing personnel from U.S. based units. As the Army and Marine Corps plan to provide additional teams of advisors for future deployments, they are exploring whether to use the same approaches or other options for organizing and deploying these personnel. In addition, coalition nations are expected to provide a number of similar advisor teams.

Our past work examining the use of training teams and advisor teams in Iraq and Afghanistan highlighted certain areas that we believe are relevant to DOD’s plans to provide the SFAATs in support of the current mission in Afghanistan. For example, our recent work focused on the Army, which in 2009 shifted its approach and began replacing individual training teams with brigade combat teams augmented with advisor personnel. Specifically, we identified challenges related to the sourcing and training of personnel, balancing missions, defining command and control relationships, and providing support to advisor personnel once deployed.

Sourcing and training of advisor personnel. Neither the training teams nor the augments provided to the Army’s brigade combat teams existed in any of the services’ doctrinal structures. Instead, they were typically sourced with personnel who were identified individually, and generally consisted of company and field-grade officers and senior non-commissioned officers who were taken from other units. We found that DOD faced some difficulty in providing the required field grade officers or specialized capabilities to these teams, because of widespread demand for these personnel, whose numbers were already in short supply. In addition, DOD faced challenges getting personnel assigned to advisor teams in a timely manner, limiting their ability to train and exercise as a team prior to deployment.

Balancing advising activities with other missions. We found that units in Afghanistan faced some challenges because commanders did not always set clear priorities between the advising mission and other operational requirements, such as counterinsurgency operations or performing missions such as conducting checkpoints. As a result, in kinetic combat environments, commanders prioritized the combat mission and directed their resources accordingly.

Defining command-and-control relationships. Theater commanders did not always provide clear guidance on command and control structures for the advisors. In some cases, the lack of clarity on command relationships between brigades and advisor teams led to the reassignment of advisors to the control of a division or a brigade that they had not trained and deployed with.

Provision of support to advisor teams. We found that brigades in Afghanistan sometimes faced challenges providing the necessary support to advisor teams such as transportation assets, force protection resources, and equipment because support requirements had not always been clearly identified, these items and capabilities were in limited supply and were, at times, also needed to support combat operations.

We made several recommendations to DOD to enhance the Department’s ability to support the advising mission, including clearly defining the requirements for the number, ranks, and capabilities of advisors, the relative priority of the advising mission, and the support that advisor teams require. DOD concurred with our recommendations and has taken some actions to implement them. Given the key role of advising teams in supporting the transition process, these areas will be important considerations for DOD as it continues to refine its plans for forming, deploying, and using advisor personnel to mentor and develop the ANSF.

Chairman Wittman, Ranking Member Cooper, and Members of the Subcommittee, this concludes our prepared statement. We would be happy to answer any questions you may have at this time.

Contacts and Acknowledgments

For further information on this statement, please contact Charles Michael Johnson, Jr. at (202) 512-7331 or johnsoncm@gao.gov, or Sharon L. Pickup at (202) 512-9619 or pickups@gao.gov. In addition, contact points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page of this statement. Individuals who made key contributions to this statement include Tetsuo Miyabara, Assistant Director; James A. Reynolds, Assistant Director; Ashley Alley; Teakoe Coleman; Tara Copp; Thomas Costa; Joyee Dasgupta; David Dayton; Martin deAlteriis; Hynek Kalkus; Farahnaaz Khakoo; Christopher Mulkins; Marcus Lloyd Oliver; Nina Pfeiffer; Lisa Reijula; Biza Repko; Luis Rodriguez; Pierre Toureille; and Sally Williamson.

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