I've been at my "second home" for the past few days for a conference set up by this brigade to share its insights and recommendations on being one of the first specially designated "advise and assist" brigades. My own organization, the Center for Army Lessons Learned defines this as: "a modular brigade combat team augmented, based on the requirements of the operational environment, with enabling assets and capabilities to support a distributed security force assistance mission." It's all the rage right now.
When you strip away the hype, all this really means is that an AAB, about 3000-4000 soldiers strong, is no longer focused on fighting a counter-insurgency fight, but on stability operations and advising and assisting a host nation's own security forces (army, police, border security) and its government. It is really a difference in mindset -- in the words of the average joe -- from "blowing up sh*t" to teaching the Iraqi (or Afghan or [insert third-world country we've defeated here]) forces how to train themselves and the Iraqi government how to run itself and be legitimate. It's a pretty far step from where we saw the Army's role in 2003, which was to defeat the Iraqi Army and then go home. It's also the next evolution from the seize, hold, and build strategy used in previous years.
The problem? It takes us very far from our core competency and has us doing things that historically the military has never really been doing. When field artillerymen and tankers are learning how to be administrators of reconstruction funding and serving as project oversight for rebuilding projects, it necessarily takes them away from their ability to shoot big bullets when we need them to. And in Afghanistan, there is this need. The idea is that AABs will support the civilian Provincial Reconstruction Teams (6-15 person teams of specialists) from the State Department who will lead the stabilization effort. However, I've seen that the State Department right now isn't able to field the experts who can do this job. Despite being paid salaries ranging between $200-400k, some of these spots go unfilled or are filled with contractors who are unsuitable -- imagine an econ PhD who has no actual business experience.
Anyhow, the brigade did a good job of putting together a 3 day conference, which probably could have been 2 days. First day was good -- lots of multifunctional team discussion, but the final messages that were briefed to the big shots were mostly taken from a few dominant voices and some of the opposing viewpoints never made it. That's the military way -- makes me wonder if during some of the civilian breakout groups that I've organized, if I've ever been one of those voices that overpowered the others.
Enough boring stuff....I took around some of the Division and Corps folks to see the biblical Ziggurat of Ur, which is just outside the camp's security perimeter. Built an estimated 4000 years ago with similar characteristics as the Tower of Babil, the ziggurat actually means, "building whose foundations create terror!" The ancient Babylonians were big into buildings that reached to the skies and the ziggurat was the momma one of them all. The ancient city of Ur where it was situated was also the birthplace of the prophet Abraham. Although we couldn't actually get to the site, I took them along the fenceline to a security tower (manned by our friendly Ugandan contract security guards) where they could climb and take some good shots in the setting sun. One group even had a photo op with a pair of Apache helicopter gunships flying overhead. When I was getting ready to return with the second group, one of them pointed out that we had a flat. It was almost a joke -- took 6 senior officers and non-coms almost a half hour to get the tire changed because no one was familiar with where everything was on an armored Suburban. Finally we got it done and I was a little red-faced to return a borrowed vehicle with a flat tire in the back.
I had dinner with TL, the deputy team leader of the Dhi Qar provincial reconstruction team. We had met on a previous visit, when I interviewed him to gauge the military-civilian interaction, and this was a follow up visit (depressing, but a topic for another day). This was more of a social chat too... T is a career State Department guy and had been posted all throughout Asia. His Indonesian wife and two kids were actually in Beijing right now. So, we got along the way you do when you meet another expat. He returns in Feb, but departs China to go back to Indonesia in June of next year, so we traded info and hope to meet up in a different place. Small world.
