A surge of Special Forces for Afghanistan likely
Defense officials say it will fill urgent gaps but Special Forces officers are skeptical.
from the December 23, 2008 edition
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Pat Murphy talks with
Monitor staff writer Gordon Lubold about a planned surge in US Special Forces troops headed for Afghanistan.
Critics worry that Lute's plan is to simply send more Special Forces units to Afghanistan without a coherent plan to support them. "Don't just throw ODAs out there as an answer," says another senior officer. "That's just the easy, lazy answer out there."
Poor use of existing forces
There are other gripes with the way the teams now deployed to Afghanistan are being used.
Too few of the Special Forces teams are partnered with Afghan forces for longer than, say, a month at a time, creating an unsustainable and unproductive training relationship that runs counter to Special Forces doctrine.
Special Forces officers blame the problems on a lack of a coherent strategy for using the Green Berets in Afghanistan. Others say some Special Forces teams operate under NATO commanders from other countries and don't know how to employ the teams properly.
Perhaps most significant, Special Forces officers and experts say it would be a waste of time and resources to send additional Special Forces teams to Afghanistan unless there is a "surge" of helicopters, remote-controlled aircraft for surveilling the enemy, and other "enablers" to allow the teams that are there now to be more effective.
Roger Carstens, a retired Special Forces officer who is now a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a think tank in Washington, visited Afghanistan a couple months ago and asked members of the Special Forces community what they thought about "surging" Special Operations Forces.
"Everyone of them said 'no SOF surge,'" he says. "What they need is an enabler surge and enduring partnerships with Afghan military and police units," he says.
Adm. Eric Olson, the senior commander of US Special Operations Command, Tampa, Fla., is expected to convey the concerns of the special operations community to Gen. David Petraeus, the new commander of US Central Command.
A new command position
The proposal would also include the creation of a new Special Forces command position, to be filled by a one-star general in Afghanistan this spring, whose job it will be to marshal resources to ensure the Special Forces units are employed properly.
The Afghan National Army, the pride of the country's budding national security apparatus, and the Afghan National Police, which is still seen as largely corrupt and weaker, need help to build up into a larger, more effective force.
Ultimately, the US would like to see at least 134,000 soldiers trained and ready to provide for their own country's security.
But trainers have been hard to come by, and the mix of foreign and US forces has muted the training effort, US defense officials say.
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