Aufbau der afghanischen Streitkräfte: Was so schief lief (und läuft)

Vor einigen Tagen haben die afghanischen Streitkräfte ihre ersten US-Hubschrauber vom Typ Blackhawk erhalten. Fast 160 dieser Helikopter soll die Afghan Air Force in den kommenden Jahren bekommen – damit die Streitkräfte des Landes am Hindukusch langfristig selber in die Lage versetzt werden können, gegen Aufständische vorzugehen. Die gebrauchten, aber runderneuerten US-Hubschrauber sollen die Mi-17 aus russischer Produktion ersetzen, die nicht mehr ausreichend gewartet werden können – oder sollen?

Denn der Wechsel von robuster russischer zu amerikanischer Technik ist auch dem Willen des Geldgebers, nämlich des US-Kongresses geschuldet. Und da liegt eines der Probleme, die beim seit Jahren laufenden Aufbau afghanischer Streitkräfte durch die USA und die anderen westlichen Nationen in der NATO-geführten Resolute Support Mission liegen: Hochentwickelte westliche Waffen- und Computersysteme, dazu teilweise auch ohne eine ausreichende Ausbildung dafür, machen Afghanistan nicht nur dauerhaft abhängig, sondern kosten die Geberländer auch mehr als nötig.

Das ist eines der Ergebnisse, zu denen der Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), eine Art Rechnungshof für das US-Engagement in Afghanistan unter der Leitung von John F. Sopko, in seinem am (heutigen) Donnerstag vorgestellten Bericht über den Aufbau der afghanischen Streitkräfte kommt. Und man muss wohl sagen: seinem ziemlich desilluisionierenden , wenn nicht vernichtenden Bericht.

Den kompletten Bericht gibt es hier:

Reconstructing the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces: Lessons from the U.S. Experience in Afghanistan

(in der interaktiven Version; als schlichtes pdf-Dokument hier)

Einige der wesentlichen Schlussfolgerungen, die zwar vor allem die USA betreffen, in weiten Teilen aber ebenso für die NATO und ihre Mission am Hindukusch gelten:

• The United States failed to understand the complexities and scale of the mission required to stand up and mentor security forces in a country suffering from thirty years of war, misrule, corruption, and deep poverty.

• U.S. military plans for ANDSF [Afghanistan National Defence and Security Forces] readiness were created under politically constrained timelines, rather than based upon realistic assessments of Afghan readiness.

• The U.S. government lacks a deployable police-development capability for high-threat environments, so we have trained over 100,000 Afghan police using U.S. Army aviators, infantry officers, and civilian contractors. One U.S. officer watched TV shows like Cops and NCIS to learn what he should teach. In eastern Afghanistan, we met a U.S. Army helicopter pilot assigned to teach policing.

• The NATO training mission for the ANDSF was chronically understaffed by more than 50%.

• Insufficient attention to Afghan institutional capacity meant that the personnel, logistical, planning, administrative, and other functions vital to sustaining the fighting forces remained underdeveloped—as they do to this day.

(…)

• Developing foreign military and police capabilities is a whole-of-government mission. However, there is a large “hole” in U.S. government reconstruction activity.

•  Security sector assistance training and advising is not currently career enhancing for military personnel. Therefore, experienced and capable military professionals often choose other assignments later in their careers, resulting in the continual deployment of new and inexperienced forces for security sector assistance missions.

The report finds:

• The lack of commonly understood interagency terms, concepts, and models for security sector assistance (SSA) undermined communication and coordination, damaged trust, intensified frictions, and contributed to gross under-resourcing of the U.S. effort to develop the ANDSF.

• Early U.S. partnerships with independent militias—intended to advance U.S. counterterrorism objectives—ultimately undermined the creation and role of the Afghan National Army (ANA) and Afghan National Police (ANP).

• Critical ANDSF capabilities, including aviation, intelligence, force management, and special forces, were not included in early U.S., Afghan, and NATO force-design plans.

• Individual donor nations’ limitations, rationales for joining the coalition, resource constraints and military capabilities, as well as NATO’s force generation processes, led to an increasingly complex implementation of programs and the lack of an agreed-upon framework for conducting SSA activities.

• The constant turnover of U.S. and NATO trainers impaired the training mission’s institutional memory and hindered the relationship building and effective monitoring and evaluation required in SSA missions.

(…)

• ANDSF monitoring and evaluation tools relied heavily on tangible outputs. This focus masked intangible factors, such as corruption and will to fight, which deeply affected security outcomes and failed to adequately factor in classified U.S. intelligence assessments.

• Because U.S. military plans were created with politically constrained timelines—and because these plans consistently underestimated the resilience of the Afghan insurgency and overestimated ANDSF capabilities—the ANDSF was ill prepared to deal with deteriorating security after the drawdown of U.S. combat forces.

Mit anderen Worten: Es wurde nicht nur sehr viel Geld ausgegeben, es wurde vor allem schlecht und teilweise unsinnig ausgegeben. (Die Bemerkungen des SIGAR zu dem Bericht zum Nachlesen hier.)

Und, wie gesagt: Die Bemerkungen zielen in erster Linie auf die US-Anstrengungen in Afghanistan, dürften aber in weiten Teilen auf die anderen am Hindukusch engagierten NATO-Mitglieder ebenso anwendbar sein. Auch auf Deutschland.

So hat der SIGAR auch seine Bemerkungen zum Aufbau der afghanischen Polizei, für den über Jahre Deutschland verantwortlich zeichnete:

While the Germans made progress in the five focus areas of their police support
project, most of Germany’s funding focused on building infrastructure, primarily
the Kabul Police Academy. The academy officially opened in August 2002 with
1,500 police recruits enrolled. Although it is possible a few hundred NCOs may have graduated near the end of 2003 and the beginning of 2004, based on the Germans’ three-year officer curriculum, the first trained police at the officer level would not have graduated until 2005. Taking into consideration the stated 62,000 force size goal, one expert noted that “the German approach would have taken decades.” This restricted effort left local security outside of Kabul largely under the control of untrained police officers affiliated with militias and predatory warlords.

Aber jetzt bekommen die Afghanen ja fast 160 Blackhawks.

(Foto: The first Afghan Air Force UH-60 helicopter is unloaded off a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III, Sept. 18, 2017, at Kandahar Air Field, Afghanistan – U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Trevor T. McBride)