Program has Afghans as first line of defense

The Local Police Force envisioned by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, shown here with Army Gen. David Petraeus, retains the focus on village-level protection forces that was the hallmark of the village stability program, which began in Day Kundi province in August 2009.


Program has Afghans as first line of defense
By Sean D. Naylor - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Jul 20, 2010 13:49:39 EDT

Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s decision to establish a 10,000-strong police force in villages across Afghanistan combines two initiatives launched during the past 18 months by U.S. special operations forces.

The July 14 announcement of the Local Police Force’s creation followed months of negotiation between the Afghan government and senior U.S. officials over the future of one of those initiatives: the village stability program. The initiative embeds special ops teams in carefully selected communities with the aim of delivering security — through locally recruited “community watch” forces — and development while connecting the villages to the Afghan government.

In a memo to his troops, Col. Don Bolduc, who commands the special ops task force that developed the program, said the village stability initiative will likely play an “essential” role in achieving the U.S.’s strategic military objectives in Afghanistan this summer.

Key to this success will be a multilayered information operations campaign that includes “word of mouth” at the village level and “stories by embed reporters,” among other elements, according to Bolduc’s memo, a copy of which was provided to Army Times. Information ops and strategic communications “must be applied seamlessly at the tactical, operational, strategic, and policy levels with a consistent narrative of Afghans standing up for ... themselves with a connection to ,” the memo says. That narrative “has the potential to shape local through strategic perceptions,” writes Bolduc, who commands Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Afghanistan.

The village stability program was one of the CJSOTF-A’s highest priorities, but met with a cautious response from the Karzai government, which was leery of the creation of any security force that fell outside its direct control.



unhappycamper comment: I am amazed at the lack of understanding about the Afghan population in the White House. Evidently no one there has read any history of the region. Afghanistan is called the "Graveyard of Empires" for good reason.