LESSONS ENCOUNTERED

Hammes
Magnifying the difficulty of developing security forces is the fact that political,
economic, and social conditions define what is possible in each case. The
mission of the security forces can be clearly defined only after the problem is
understood. The lack of clarity was most noticeable in the different approaches
to police training taken by the State and Justice departments’ training teams
as opposed to those taken by the DOD team. But even within DOD, there was
strong disagreement about the mission and hence the force structure of both
the Afghan and the Iraqi armed forces. Similarly, due to a poor understanding
of the actual problems in Iraq, the initial plan for the army was to build an army
to fight a nonexistent external threat. Unfortunately, that army was not sufficiently
organized, trained, or equipped to deal with the actual internal threat.
Insight 3: Understand that the Situation Will Change and Develop
Branches and Sequels Concurrently with the Primary Plan
All insurgencies are wicked problems, the very nature of which means the
problems will change as various players interact with each other. These changes
often invalidate initial assumptions. Thus, a critical element of planning must
be developing branches and sequels to compensate for invalid assumptions.
In each theater, the deteriorating security situation led to rapidly changing
estimates of the situation and subsequent changes in planning. Each change
included an increase in the proposed size and composition of the host-nation
security forces. However, there is little indication that branch plans were developed
to cover the eventuality that the situation would continue to worsen
and larger host-nation forces would be needed. Thus, each increase had to be
planned and executed from scratch.
The frequent changes led to reorganizations of the U.S. and coalition command
arrangements. The confusion inherent in the constantly changing arrangements
was exacerbated by the short tours of most trainers. It was difficult
for the host-nation personnel to establish relationships with their coalition
counterparts. Furthermore, the mix of government and contract training personnel
contributed to fragmentation of coalition efforts. Finally, the training
and mentoring establishments never received the number of personnel required
by their tables of organization. Another complication was that personnel
without the required knowledge or skill were often assigned in an effort to
fill those billets.
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