CAMP BERMEL, Afghanistan – Minutes after U.S. Army engineers were ambushed in far eastern Afghanistan, the 25 Taliban attackers were running for their lives.
Though U.S. troops were based nearby, it was Afghan soldiers who raced to the scene last week, jumping from brown pickup trucks and charging up the mountain. Helicopter gunships also swooped in, and 22 Taliban were killed and three captured. One Afghan soldier died.
Marine trainers at Camp Bermel and their Army counterparts at nearby Camp Orgun-e say Afghan soldiers are eager to fight, but add that progress is slow because of a low level of education, the language barrier, low pay and ethnic tensions among Afghans.
Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and the Afghan defense minister, Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak, congratulated the soldiers during a weekend trip to Paktika province to assess the Afghan army’s training and performance.
Eikenberry acknowledged “some real daunting problems” in creating a national army but said the troops have made great strides.
“I talked to the Marine lieutenant colonel who was with that Afghan National Army unit, and he said he’s never seen a more fearless group of soldiers go into enemy fire and simply overpower the enemy with their sheer tenacity,” Eikenberry said.
A strong Afghan army is key to the West’s strategy for eventually turning over the country’s security to Afghan forces. With no national military just five years ago, Afghanistan has basically created an army from scratch and now fields some 36,000 soldiers.
Their performance is in stark contrast to the 100,000-member Iraqi army, which faces Sunni-Shiite divisions and whose ranks have been infiltrated by sectarian militias.
Seth Jones, an analyst with the RAND Corp. think tank, said Afghan troops generally perform better than those in Iraq, which has a bigger problem with soldiers abandoning their posts.
“Now that might not be saying a lot,” he said. “But I do think that the Afghan security forces began from a better baseline compared to the Iraqi groups. The fact that you’ve had several decades of war in Afghanistan means everyone knows how to handle a weapon.”
There are 68 U.S. and NATO training teams working with Afghan forces.
Sgt. David Bowman, a National Guardsman from Portland, Ore., who is training soldiers at Camp Orgun-e, said progress “comes and goes”
“They’re eager to fight the enemy,” he said. “Sometimes it’s to the point of negating the American actions because they’re so eager. Sometimes it’s like taking a bunch of 9-year-olds to Chuck E. Cheese’s.”
Capt. Mark Larson of Madison, Wis., said most Afghan soldiers are not literate. “You make progress, but it’s frustrating,” he said of the training.
And though the new army is multiethnic, a point of pride with Eikenberry, that can cause problems.
A Pashtun soldier, for instance, might feel he is being picked on by a Tajik officer, and other Pashtuns will jump to the soldier’s defense, a breakdown in discipline that wouldn’t happen in the U.S. military.
Another problem is pay – Afghan soldiers make just $70 a month.
“Sometimes you see the higher-ups take theirs and then some and leave crumbs for the soldiers,” Larson said. “It’s really bad for morale. I think until they get their pay situation figured out there’s going to be problems.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
