Kentucky Guard Trains Afghan Army in RC North

Photo LTJG Bryan Mitchell Jan 2014

Members of the Kentucky National Guard are training Afghan Soldiers at Camp Marmal in Regional Command North (RC North). They are part of the Kentucky National Guard 1103rd Military Police Detachment. Many of the military police units belonging to the Army National Guard are also members of the civilian police and law enforcement community. There are many observers and critics who feel that the training of the Afghan National Police (ANP) fell way behind the training of the Afghan National Army (ANA). That is considered by some as one of the most likely of the reasons that the ANA is considered a professional institution when compared to the corrupt and mostly ineffective ANP. When the Army deployed its initial Security Force Assistance Advisory Teams (SFAAT) in early 2012 many of these teams were assigned to advise and assist the Afghan Uniform Police (AUP) in the district centers. However, most of the SFAATs did not have the one Military Policeman assigned as required by ISAF Joint Command (IJC); in fact most of the SFAAT advisor teams had no one with a military police background. The SFAATs advising the police were supposed to have four Embedded Police Mentors (EPMs) but many would only have one or two. This was a shortfall that could have been readily corrected with the addition of some U.S. Army National Guard police members but . . .  it didn't happen. Some counterinsurgency experts consider the police to be the tip of the spear in the fight against an insurgency but this principle of COIN was largely ignored by the International Security Assistance Command. Read more in "Kentucky National Guardsmen train Afghan soldiers", DVIDS, January 31, 2014.