TCAPF

There are many tools at our disposal to carry out our civil affairs mission. The most interesting and innovative, in my opinion, is the Tactical Conflict Assessment and Planning Framework, known as TCAPF ("tee-caf"). My team recently attended some TCAPF training at San Mateo in Camp Pendleton, the home of the 5th Marine Regiment. One of the three battalions, 3rd Battalion, will be our parent unit in Afghanistan. That is, we will be attached to them and used as the Battalion Commander sees fit.

Though it was developed by the United Stated Agency for International Development (USAID), TCAPF has been adopted by the entire Marine Corps. USAID still operates the training program, and they use contractors to teach classes to the Marines. These are all former State Department, USAID, or military personnel, but none of them are currently employed by the federal government. I see this another nod to the stresses of war-time and overextension of our government's assets.

In any case, our team dutifully drove the winding stretch of Basilone Road that leads from Las Pulgas to the School of Infantry, and then took San Mateo Road to our destination. Like most mornings in late May and early June, it was overcast and chilly. The LT drove up separately in his truck (a domestic, of course) while the enlisted crew crammed into a Honda Accord. No one was in a particularly good mood: we had formed up for physical training (PT) at 0500 and barely had enough time to shower before we needed to leave Pulgas.

I can't speak for everyone else but the classes quickly made me forget the day's bad start. We had three instructors with over a decade of collective experience just in Afghanistan, and over twenty years if you counted Iraq and several African countries. They were all youngish--mid-thirties I would say--and quickly overcame the natural uneasiness felt by the assembled Marines with stories about their time in country.

The best thing the instructors did--and the most depressing--was recount individually how much money they had overseen in projects during their time as Foreign Service Officers. "$98 million." "$150 million." "$212 million." Then they dropped the bombshell: "None of us can tell you whether any of those projects really made a difference." What a statement to make! The point, it turned out, was how obsessed governments and NGOs are with performance measures: kilometers of road built, schools opened, vaccines delivered, and so on. TCAPF alters this focus: it is designed to measure impact, not performance. Using the measurements above, they would be changed into: Are people traveling more? Is the literacy rate going up? Is life expectancy increasing? These are things we should care about if we seek to stabilize Afghan society.

The instructors went over all this in the overview class, which was followed by a TCAPF basics class, then we rolled into Collections. This was a chance for the Marines to get up in front of the group and try their best to go over the four questions in the TCAPF questionnaire. The goal is to get the person's opinion on the general state of their area and gauge their attitude toward the government. These exchanges generally take place during patrols and are conducted by a junior enlisted Marine with villagers at random, ideally over a period of months.

A corporal from 3rd Battalion volunteered, and I held my breath. Thus far I was not feeling too welcome as one of their Civil Affairs Marines, and the general attitude toward this training would help me understand how difficult it would be to get these infantry Marines to respect (or even acknowledge) us.

"Salam Alaikum" So far, so good. At least he knows the greeting.
"Ah, hello sir, pleased to meet you. What is your name please? What are you doing here?"
"Don't f*cking worry about it." Crap. This is going to be painful.

Recounting the rest of the exchange wouldn't do much good. Sufficed to say things did not go well on the first try. Several other Marines went, including a Civil Affairs Marine from Team 3, and the atmosphere thawed out a bit. Later on in the training a few of the senior NCOs offered war stories from Iraq that showed how important this type of interaction can be, and I could see some of the younger guys nodding their heads. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all. We have a lot more training to go and not too much with these Marines before we meet up with them in Afghanistan, but hopefully they will remember enough from these classes to take us seriously when the time comes.