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Teams to build relationships in Afghanistan

Convinced that familiarity with Afghanistan’s complex tribal environment and local leaders are key to a winning effort, the Pentagon is developing plans to create teams of officers and senior enlisted leaders who would make shorter but repeated deployments in an effort to not only build but sustain relationships with local leaders.

The concept, driven by Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was briefed for the first time last week by Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Mullen’s staff director, to the other Joint Chiefs as well as representatives from U.S. Central Command, according to a military officer familiar with the planning effort.

The concept had its genesis, the officer said, in a recent trip to the region by Mullen and Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke.

“One common complaint that tribal elders in Afghanistan made was that they just get to know American troops, and they begin to build these very strong relationships, and then they leave,” the officer said. “And when those units deploy back to Afghanistan a year or a year and a half after they’ve come home, they go to a different place, or they perform a different mission.

“And so … these same local provincial leaders on whom we rely so much … they don’t get to build up the long-term, effective relationships they need with us,” the officer said. “One potential outcome of this approach, as we have seen with such success with [Special Operations forces], is that the names and faces are familiar. And in this part of the world, relationships matter most.”

The size and composition of the proposed small units, whether they would be drawn from their present units or from a variety of units, perform training or counterinsurgency operations or both, their command relationship with U.S. or NATO units that they might work alongside, and the lengths of their deployments and time back home, are all to be determined, the officer said.

“We are really in the preliminary stages of working this out,” the officer said. “The mission and the location they would be sent to would define their specific makeup.”

The officer said no deadline has been set for implementation, but officials are trying to flesh out the concept “just as fast as we can, because of the urgency in Afghanistan. They’re working this very, very hard.”

McChrystal is leading a working group composed of roughly the same individuals who attended the initial briefing, the officer said.

President Barack Obama already has approved the deployments of about 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan this year, and, according to recent congressional testimony from defense officials, might approve another 10,000 later this year for 2010 duty. U.S. troop strength would rise by year’s end from the current 40,000 to about 68,000, and to 78,000 next year if the additional troops are deployed.

In drawing a parallel to special operations units, the officer familiar with the planning effort noted that such units plan, train, deploy and come home together.

“But when they come home, they are still focused on what’s going on in that same region they were just deployed to,” the officer said. “When they go back, the names and faces are all familiar, they know the terrain, they’ve kept up with what’s going on with the units that relieved them. There’s greater familiarity with what’s going on on the ground.”

Consideration of the plan was first reported by Politico.com. But the officer disagreed with that report’s finding that the local team concept is part of a plan for war expected to last another three to five years.

“Nothing specific like that,” the officer said. “It’s simply about being able to improve our ability to meet the manning requirements in Afghanistan as well as enhancing our own cultural awareness of various regions of Afghanistan. … This is an effort to try to find innovative solutions for resourcing the fight in Afghanistan while providing troops and families more meaningful dwell time at home.”