Tough as Nails: Police Mentoring in a Non-Permissive Environment

Abstract

In counterinsurgency warfare, training and advising host nation police forces is a key task for the counterinsurgent. Ideally, this task would be assigned to civilian law enforcement agencies. However, in a non-permissive environment where there is a strong insurgent, it is very difficult for civilian agencies to carry out this task. During Operation Enduring Freedom, the task of police force training was eventually assigned to US military police mentor teams (PMTs) starting in the spring of 2007. The military assumption of these duties occurred after other attempts to develop the Afghan police had either failed or were progressing too slowly. This paper addresses the difficulties these PMTs faced, the process by which a plan emerged to utilize these teams, and how PMTs were absolutely essential to COIN execution. Counterinsurgency expert David Galula's model for measuring the strength of the insurgent is used to describe the strength of the insurgency in Southern Afghanistan. Additionally, Galula's COIN operations model is used as a framework to describe the actual police development campaign that ensued. The main method of research is personal experience supported by interviews with senior Army officers who were intimately involved with the 2007-2008 police development campaign. The findings are relatively straight forward. There are several key tasks in police development that require military PMTs in a non-permissive environment, and these tasks must be initiated in a deliberate manner ASAP after expulsion of the insurgent from a given area. Moreover, all development efforts in COIN, be they police, governance, judiciary, etc., are described as tasks requiring hands-on mentoring and over watch by forces on the ground, civilian or military as appropriate. Finally, these forces should be embedded to the maximum extent possible with host nation personnel.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 01, 2009
Accession Number
ADA539695

Entities

People

  • Joel R. Bius

Organizations

  • Air Command and Staff College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Human Systems
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Afghanistan Conflict
  • Counterinsurgency
  • Department Of Defense
  • Doctrine
  • Families (Human)
  • Law Enforcement
  • Military Advisors
  • Military History
  • Military Personnel
  • Military Police
  • National Governments
  • Police
  • Students
  • Terrorists
  • Training
  • United States
  • Warfare

Readers

  • Educational Psychology
  • Instructional Design and Training Evaluation.
  • Military and Counterinsurgency Studies.