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My time in the rotation helps show why our approach in Afghanistan is doomed
[FP] By John Ford, Best Defense guest respondent.I am a former enlisted U.S. Army soldier. Between May of 2012 and May of 2013 I was deployed to Kandahar province. Imagine my surprise when browsing Foreign Policy I stumbled upon this brief piece about how troop rotation is a poor strategic decision. The strain of constant rotation was something I experienced on my own deployment. Somewhat uniquely I was not part of a BCT, but instead deployed as part of a 20-soldier team to fill gaps in intelligence capabilities. I did not do then-standard nine-month deployment, but instead did an off-cycle 12-month deployment. As a result, I did not see just a single handover, but three different ones. I watched them from the intel perspective. And I saw for myself that constantly cycling soldiers cannot build effectiveness. My team discussed this, as we saw that at three months in country, the entire mission changed as a new BCT rolled through. Then it changed again six months later as the next handover began. In the last third of my deployment I ended up giving briefings about why the "new" plan hadn’t worked six months prior, the last time it had been tried. As someone used to filling gaps, I was often sent to work with new platoons and new companies for each mission. Each time I had to prove that I was capable and trustworthy because that is how human relationships work. Each time I wasted precious mission time and goodwill building up a relationship to become effective only to be moved out at the conclusion of a mission ‐ that is, right when my new unit had really begun to trust me. I came away thinking that my individual experience was a microcosm of the entire war in Afghanistan. This way of operating took a toll on everyone involved, but I think most of all on our Afghan interpreters. These men would spend a year or more integrating themselves into a team, building that essential trust, only to have their friends torn away from them, leaving behind only letters of recommendation or vague promises of future support for a citizenship application. I can’t even imagine the impact on local Afghans, told they can trust the faceless Americans, working hard to build trust and rapport, only to have the soldier mutate into a new, unrecognizable face all over again every six months. Posted by: Besoeker 2017-10-21 |
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