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Oklahoma Guard ready to train Afghan National army

Army News Service

Release Date: 11/06/2003

By Master SGT. Bob Haskell

ARLINGTON, Va. (Army News Service, Nov. 6, 2003) -- For the first time, one of the National Guard's 15 enhanced brigades will lead Task Force Phoenix, the mission to train the new Afghan National army.

The training mission has so far been led by the active-duty 10th Mountain Division and 50 Soldiers from the Vermont National Guard.

The new task force of 500 Soldiers and a small contingent of Marines, commanded by Brig. Gen. Thomas Mancino and centered on the 45th Enhanced Separate Brigade, has spent the last few months at Fort Carson, Colo., and will deploy to the central Asian country in December and will remain until June 2004.

"When Headquarters, Department of the Army asked us to assist in this effort, we jumped at the opportunity," said Col. Roosevelt Barfield, chief of Training for the Army National Guard in Arlington, Va. "The Afghan National army is a major part of post-hostilities in Afghanistan and the cornerstone for winning the peace."

"Many of these Afghan troops are already combat veterans. Our job is to turn them into a professional army that is already engaged in combat operations," said Maj. Eric Bloom, a spokesman for the 45th Brigade. "That includes teaching them what officers do and what noncommissioned officers do because the Afghan army has not had a (noncommissioned officers) corps in the past."

To that end, Army Guard NCOs and officers from 19 states have been at Fort Carson since September boning up on how to train their Afghan National army counterparts.

The Soldiers will be responsible for conducting nine-week basic training courses for about 4,000 Afghan nationals at the Kabul Military Training Center outside of the country's capital city.

The task force will also supervise programs for training new officers and NCOs and combat leaders at the center as well as courses in managing ranges and training areas, said Maj. Tom Hanley, a member of the Army Guard's Training Division.

"After that training (the Afghan soldiers) will be able to fight terrorists with U.S. Special Forces," he said.

Other Army Guard soldiers with the 45th Brigade will be embedded as trainers within two Afghan light infantry brigades and an armor and mechanized infantry brigade that have already been organized at Pol-e-Charki and Kamari bases in Afghanistan located in the vicinity of Kabul in the western part of the country, near the Pakistan border.

The Marines will help train Afghan soldiers assigned to a quick reaction force, Bloom said.

An Afghan army corps headquarters will also be trained how to lead those brigades, said Bloom who explained that the Afghani corps headquarters is equivalent to an American division.

The intent, Bloom added, is to have the corps and brigade staffs trained in time for the national elections that the transitional government has scheduled for next June.

The lessons for the Afghani soldiers range from personal hygiene, including shaving and brushing teeth, to combat tactics, he explained

"Patience and understanding cultural differences is the key to this kind of training," Bloom observed.

Even paying the soldiers is a lot different in Afghanistan than it is in the United States.

Most Afghan soldiers do not have bank accounts and direct deposit, Bloom pointed out. The soldiers live in a country where the winters can be harsh and where the 28 million people have just 67,000 passenger cars and commercial vehicles.

That means that after receiving their monthly pay, the soldiers have to be given a few days to take the money to their families in villages throughout the country, Bloom said. And they have to be given a few days to get back to continue the training that is essential for keeping the soldiers' families safe, he said.

The first battalion of Afghans graduated July 2002. Both the Americans and French have been training the recruits.