The six weeks leading up to deployment has been interesting to say the least. Focus has shifted in both the personal and professional sense toward re-orienting and simplifying as the days keeps sprinting by.
Right now Team 1 is focused on the culmination of our Civil Affairs training: the exercise known as Enhanced Mojave Viper, or EMV for short. For our partnered infantry unit this is the month-long comprehensive field test of all the skills they will need to accomplish their mission in Afghanistan. They incorporate all their organic and attached assets on missions as varied as intelligence gathering, combat operations, meetings with village leaders, and call for fire missions using artillery.
Did I mention it takes place in the southern California desert in late July and early August?
We support this infantry unit but are only involved in certain parts of EMV, specifically the last third or so. Our primary task is to set and run a Civil Military Operations Center (CMOC, pronounced "sea mock"). The CMOC will run over several days meant to simulate the three phases of stability operations according to classic counterinsurgency doctrine: clear, hold, and build.
The "clear" phase implies active combat operations, as in we're clearing the area of enemies. Our job here involves responding to humanitarian needs, possible setting up a dislocated civilian (DC) camp, or providing payments to people who have suffered losses during our operations.
"Hold" refers to the consolidation of our monopoly on security and the development of strong ties with local power brokers. Team 1's job here is to identify important civilians, gauge the population's sentiment, identify short- and medium-term projects, and to dispense funds.
Finally we have our "build" phase when the focus is on furthering local self-governance and security capacity. Here the messier work of placating angry leaders, reintegrating former combatants, training indigenous military and police forces, and reforming (or more likely instituting) the rule of law.
All these operations will be condensed into a very short period of time, of course, and we only "notionally" accomplish many of our tasks. Still, this time with our partnered units is invaluable: it allows us to see how we will integrate into their force structure and daily "battle rhythm". They get to see our faces and we become familiar with the movers and shakers on their end. All this makes our work in Afghanistan that much easier.
Our actual work in country will not be anywhere near this defined but it does help to have such clear expectations for desert dress rehearsal. The junior Marines and sailor in Team 1 - Creole, Mumbles, Dominicano, and our replacement medic that I'll call Buddha - will now get to see how many of their skills are to be used. Part of my job as the team Sergeant is to focus their attention on the most important aspects of our training given the mission at EMV, and then offer guidance on how best to accomplish them. This is no easy task but it's necessary to prove our value to the infantry Marines whose job is create the peace necessary for long-term stability in Afghanistan. The better we do at our jobs, the more LT can focus on the big picture and engage effectively with the other Marine leadership.
Focusing my Marines means first focusing myself, and that is a completely different task. Rather than working hard on simplifying my life as I have before, I have instead allowed those closest around me whose opinions I most value to point me in the right direction. Their honesty and perspective is what will help pare down the flotsam and jetsam I've accumulated over the months and even years. Only then will the important components of my Civil Affairs work appear as they should. And so, in keeping with this idea, I will say no more about my personal opinion (this is a blog after all) and just let the results speak for themselves. Who knows - I may even try to apply this to the rest of my life as well . . .
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Monday, July 19, 2010
Civil Affairs vs Everyone Else
Much of the Civil Affairs mission appears strange to other Marines and to civilians who think they know what the military does in Afghanistan. The Marine Corps as a whole prides itself on being self-sufficient; we look to leverage other resources before using our own. The Marine Corps focuses on its primary mission to locate, close with, and destroy enemies; we try to get indigenous forces to complete this mission instead. Really it's a yin-yang dynamic. The Marine Corps is primarily military, so we must be political.
I'm well-aware of all these differences, but a recent conversation with another Marine veteran demonstrated just how much my perspective has changed in the last few months. Ten minutes after sitting down with our drinks we were arguing about the what was happening in Afghanistan. A little background here: my friend was in the infantry during the invasion of Iraq and then served in the second battle for Fallujah (the most intense urban combat seen since Khe Sanh in Vietnam) so his perspective is one of offensive military operations. The details of our conversation are not important; what really struck me was how I immediately sought ways to understand or identify with the Taliban and see them as a complex organization rather than as "the enemy" whose goal was to kill freedom-loving people all over the globe.
Of course, we need a lot more Marines with his perspective than mine, but in this particular fight we could probably stand to balance out the ratios a bit. As a Marine Officer put it to me, "The worst non-lethal threat we face in Afghanistan is Marines who don't get it." That is, those stuck in the offensive military model. There's a lot more to this fight than the Taliban as an insurgent group.
We often hear from others in the Civil Affairs/State Department community about how easy it is to discredit the standard arguments given about why people join or support violent movements. If it was religion, there would be a lot violence because fundamentalist madrassas [Islamic schools] are sprinkled all over the world. If it was money, there would be more of the 1,000,000,000 people in dire poverty taking up arms. The truth is we don't know - or more accurately, it's impossible to know for any one person or area by looking at large trends. It's our responsibility as CA Marines to analyze the local environment and figure out which factors are contributing to instability and (more importantly) which are NOT.
There may also regional or transnational points to consider, but the concept applies across the spectrum. That's what is so refreshing about CA compared to a lot of other work: it takes away the mental comfort of "knowing" things. There's an intrinsic humility in this sort of work when it's done properly. We seek out advice from the people around the area for everything we do. It's their problem so it has to be their solution. In fact, the more successful we are, the less credit we'll be given. The locals will see how much they've put into a given project and quite naturally decide the weird guys in the crazy camouflage suits didn't do a damn thing. We get to leave and they get to live. Fair trade in my opinion.
The best statistic I've heard illustrating this point is that approximately 75% of the schools we build in Afghanistan end up destroyed, while about 75% of those built by the locals survive. It might not be entirely accurate, but it's worth pondering.
I'm well-aware of all these differences, but a recent conversation with another Marine veteran demonstrated just how much my perspective has changed in the last few months. Ten minutes after sitting down with our drinks we were arguing about the what was happening in Afghanistan. A little background here: my friend was in the infantry during the invasion of Iraq and then served in the second battle for Fallujah (the most intense urban combat seen since Khe Sanh in Vietnam) so his perspective is one of offensive military operations. The details of our conversation are not important; what really struck me was how I immediately sought ways to understand or identify with the Taliban and see them as a complex organization rather than as "the enemy" whose goal was to kill freedom-loving people all over the globe.
Of course, we need a lot more Marines with his perspective than mine, but in this particular fight we could probably stand to balance out the ratios a bit. As a Marine Officer put it to me, "The worst non-lethal threat we face in Afghanistan is Marines who don't get it." That is, those stuck in the offensive military model. There's a lot more to this fight than the Taliban as an insurgent group.
We often hear from others in the Civil Affairs/State Department community about how easy it is to discredit the standard arguments given about why people join or support violent movements. If it was religion, there would be a lot violence because fundamentalist madrassas [Islamic schools] are sprinkled all over the world. If it was money, there would be more of the 1,000,000,000 people in dire poverty taking up arms. The truth is we don't know - or more accurately, it's impossible to know for any one person or area by looking at large trends. It's our responsibility as CA Marines to analyze the local environment and figure out which factors are contributing to instability and (more importantly) which are NOT.
There may also regional or transnational points to consider, but the concept applies across the spectrum. That's what is so refreshing about CA compared to a lot of other work: it takes away the mental comfort of "knowing" things. There's an intrinsic humility in this sort of work when it's done properly. We seek out advice from the people around the area for everything we do. It's their problem so it has to be their solution. In fact, the more successful we are, the less credit we'll be given. The locals will see how much they've put into a given project and quite naturally decide the weird guys in the crazy camouflage suits didn't do a damn thing. We get to leave and they get to live. Fair trade in my opinion.
The best statistic I've heard illustrating this point is that approximately 75% of the schools we build in Afghanistan end up destroyed, while about 75% of those built by the locals survive. It might not be entirely accurate, but it's worth pondering.
Friday, July 16, 2010
TCAPF Round Two
The Tactical Conflict and Planning Assessment Framework was developed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and adopted by the Marine Corps a few years ago. It has been folded more and more into predeployment training in hopes it will improve the effectiveness of our projects and activities in Afghanistan. Its actual implementation has been contentious and haphazard: many infantry Marines are not convinced of its utility. As with so many other things related to the difficulties of civilian-military coordination, the onus lies on Civil Affairs to prove all these new programs can help win the fight.
It has been a month and a half since Team 1 went to San Mateo for its first iteration of TCAPF training, and we started this three-day session with mixed feelings. Some of the USAID instructors were the same and they were duplicating much of the content from our previous training. To make matters worse, we lost the most charismatic instructor and he was replaced by a French Canadian. I don't know who exactly plans these things, but they were not thinking about their audience when they deemed a Canuck with an accent a suitable replacement.
As feared, the repetition had its effect almost immediately and most of our team did not engage the instructors. Things were spiced up slightly when the class was divided into two groups that competed against each other for points (which, so far as I could tell, were assigned pretty arbitrarily). Unfortunately this focused the Marines more on accumulating points than learning the material but at least it raised the enthusiasm level.
The first day closed with little being accomplished in the class, but we did learn a little about some of our classmates. Many of the others were from a reserve unit called the 3rd Civil Affairs Group (CAG, pronounced "kag") with CA deployment experience. They were able to bring their personal history into the class and offer different perspectives than the instructors'. As day one dragged on, the atmosphere became increasingly charged with tension between us and 3rd CAG, mostly due to the Canuck's sarcastic sense of humor - case in point: his comment after a silence in response to a question was "Come on! I heard Marine know how to think."
Way to go, Frenchy. What a great example of the charm that wooed the Germans into submission.
Day two moved from collection of information to analysis and then designing solutions to the identified problems. This was mostly review but we began to understand things better the second time around. The basic premise is simple: traditional aid, whether delivered through military or civilian, public or private, has not helped stabilize Afghanistan. For those of you keeping score, that's billions of US tax dollars wasted.
In any case, military commanders have resources at their disposal they will use in their local community. Our job is to use TCAPF to differentiate between needs (existing in endless supply) and sources of instability. To do this, we have to figure out what a significant percentage of the local population identifies as a problem. From there, we screen these priority grievances against a set of principles and what comes out the other end is . . . POOF! The local sources of instability. After that we figure out objectives and ways to measure how successful these efforts are.
All of this sounds common sensical but it hasn't been done consistently across any country we've given aid to, including Afghanistan. Civil Affairs Marines are the ones trained to do this and so we must occupy the role of advisor to those Marines tasked with approving projects, meetings, training programs, and so on. The military has limited time and resources - we rarely look at the opportunity cost of our efforts. After all, who wants to turn down the project building schools or digging wells? These are difficult things to turn down because they appear to benefit the community and (more importantly) they fit into our understanding of helping people.
These things swirled around in my head as we logged in hour after hour of checklists, questions, and matrices. By day three my comments had distinguished me to such an extent the USAID instructors asked me to be another assessor for practical application. Apparently they decided I "got it" and should be used to increase the number of groups. So instead of practicing I ended up grading other Marines as they worked with role players and interpreters (all Afghans here on visas) to develop their TCAPF skills.
Abilities varied widely and did not track with age or experience. Some of the older Marines with deployments to Afghanistan were not very good, and the two best interviewers I saw were corporals under 25. One red-headed female from Georgia came across so genial and friendly the role player answered all her questions despite his orders to the contrary. I suppose it will be somewhat different in country, but what do I know?
Taking stock of the training over the week, I decided this was very helpful. I learned the one thing I had been missing from the last round: perspective. My team should be able to ask the right questions for the right reasons and create a accurate picture of the local community, taking us one step closer to stabilizing the country.
It has been a month and a half since Team 1 went to San Mateo for its first iteration of TCAPF training, and we started this three-day session with mixed feelings. Some of the USAID instructors were the same and they were duplicating much of the content from our previous training. To make matters worse, we lost the most charismatic instructor and he was replaced by a French Canadian. I don't know who exactly plans these things, but they were not thinking about their audience when they deemed a Canuck with an accent a suitable replacement.
As feared, the repetition had its effect almost immediately and most of our team did not engage the instructors. Things were spiced up slightly when the class was divided into two groups that competed against each other for points (which, so far as I could tell, were assigned pretty arbitrarily). Unfortunately this focused the Marines more on accumulating points than learning the material but at least it raised the enthusiasm level.
The first day closed with little being accomplished in the class, but we did learn a little about some of our classmates. Many of the others were from a reserve unit called the 3rd Civil Affairs Group (CAG, pronounced "kag") with CA deployment experience. They were able to bring their personal history into the class and offer different perspectives than the instructors'. As day one dragged on, the atmosphere became increasingly charged with tension between us and 3rd CAG, mostly due to the Canuck's sarcastic sense of humor - case in point: his comment after a silence in response to a question was "Come on! I heard Marine know how to think."
Way to go, Frenchy. What a great example of the charm that wooed the Germans into submission.
Day two moved from collection of information to analysis and then designing solutions to the identified problems. This was mostly review but we began to understand things better the second time around. The basic premise is simple: traditional aid, whether delivered through military or civilian, public or private, has not helped stabilize Afghanistan. For those of you keeping score, that's billions of US tax dollars wasted.
In any case, military commanders have resources at their disposal they will use in their local community. Our job is to use TCAPF to differentiate between needs (existing in endless supply) and sources of instability. To do this, we have to figure out what a significant percentage of the local population identifies as a problem. From there, we screen these priority grievances against a set of principles and what comes out the other end is . . . POOF! The local sources of instability. After that we figure out objectives and ways to measure how successful these efforts are.
All of this sounds common sensical but it hasn't been done consistently across any country we've given aid to, including Afghanistan. Civil Affairs Marines are the ones trained to do this and so we must occupy the role of advisor to those Marines tasked with approving projects, meetings, training programs, and so on. The military has limited time and resources - we rarely look at the opportunity cost of our efforts. After all, who wants to turn down the project building schools or digging wells? These are difficult things to turn down because they appear to benefit the community and (more importantly) they fit into our understanding of helping people.
These things swirled around in my head as we logged in hour after hour of checklists, questions, and matrices. By day three my comments had distinguished me to such an extent the USAID instructors asked me to be another assessor for practical application. Apparently they decided I "got it" and should be used to increase the number of groups. So instead of practicing I ended up grading other Marines as they worked with role players and interpreters (all Afghans here on visas) to develop their TCAPF skills.
Abilities varied widely and did not track with age or experience. Some of the older Marines with deployments to Afghanistan were not very good, and the two best interviewers I saw were corporals under 25. One red-headed female from Georgia came across so genial and friendly the role player answered all her questions despite his orders to the contrary. I suppose it will be somewhat different in country, but what do I know?
Taking stock of the training over the week, I decided this was very helpful. I learned the one thing I had been missing from the last round: perspective. My team should be able to ask the right questions for the right reasons and create a accurate picture of the local community, taking us one step closer to stabilizing the country.
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