Petraeus COIN guidance put online, taken down - Military News | News From Afghanistan, Iraq And Around The World - Military Times

Petraeus COIN guidance put online, taken down

Soon after the new Afghan counterinsurgency guidance issued by Army Gen. David Petraeus went up on two Internet sites, it was pulled off again. But it is not expected to change drastically when it is rereleased publicly.

“I don’t think it’s going to change,” said Col. Daniel Roper, director of the Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center, in a July 30 interview.

Earlier this week, the Counterinsurgency Center and the publication Small Wars Journal posted the guidance, dated July 27, on their Web sites.

Soon after it was posted, Small Wars Journal took it down and replaced it with this note, “The [Commander, International Security Assistance Force] Counterinsurgency Guidance was prematurely released. It has been requested that the COIN Center remove the Guidance and the associated post from their web site. Small Wars Journal has decided to do the same.”

The training community was excited about the document and it went up too quickly, said Roper. It may have been taken down so that it can be explained to the right people before being made available to everyone, he said.

“I think it’s just a process of socialization and explaining it to different interested parties that are not people that normally look in soldiers’ manuals for tasks, conditions and standards,” Roper said.

The three-page document listed 24 instructions for the conduct of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. Excerpts include:

• “Be a good guest. Treat the Afghan people and their property with respect.”

• “Walk. Patrol on foot whenever possible and engage the population.”

• “Fight hard and fight with discipline: Hunt the enemy aggressively but use only the firepower needed to win a fight.”

• “Manage expectations. Avoid premature declarations of success.”

Now-retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal issued similar instructions in November. His list included 17 bullet points.

It is typical for a commander to issue his own guidance when he takes over a new command.

“Each commander applies his unique insights; it doesn’t mean he throws out everything that went before him,” said Roper, who said he expects the guidance will be released again soon.

In the meantime, counterinsurgency experts in the United States and in Afghanistan are working together to make sure that Petraeus’ guidance is incorporated into draft training standards, which up until now have been based on McChrystal’s instructions.

McChrystal’s 17 points included similar overarching, macro-level principles. One was “The people are the prize. We all must understand the people of Afghanistan. Operate in a way that respects their culture and religion.”

A more specific instruction addressed the effect aggressive driving has on the Afghan people’s perception of international forces.

On May 24, Defense Secretary Robert Gates issued a memo with the subject “Implementing COIN Training Guidance to Support Execution of the President’s Afghanistan/Pakistan Strategy.” It directed the Joint Center for International Security Force Assistance, located with the Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., to establish COIN qualification standards for military and civilian personnel.

The task was to make McChrystal’s guidance understandable and trainable at the company and platoon level, Roper said. The intention is to give commanders “a modular approach so that they can get at some of these things, instead of just making assumptions,” about what McChrystal’s 17 points mean, he said.

When McChrystal’s guidance first came out, different people in different services and institutions interpreted and implemented them on their own, Roper said. There was no centralized mechanism to “ensure that everybody who came to the fight had distilled the commander’s intent and had prepared their units to operate that way.” Creating more detailed training standards was meant to address this gap, he added.

The standards being developed are for trainers, either at the Combat Training Center, or for a company or battalion preparing for deployment, he said.

The effort has included teams at Fort Leavenworth working closely with counterinsurgency experts in Afghanistan.

In early July, a team in Afghanistan conducted an in-country workshop, breaking down McChrystal’s 17 focus areas, Roper said.

From July 18 to 23, the Afghanistan team met with counterinsurgency experts at Leavenworth to finish a draft set of standards, he said. The group included the Counterinsurgency Advisory and Assistance Team, a group of in-theater, hand-picked counterinsurgency experts, according to Roper. It also included members from the COIN Training Center in Kabul, also known as the COIN Academy.

A draft document was finished on July 23, said Roper. Now it goes back to Afghanistan, where the team will continue to vet it. A group from Leavenworth, including Roper, will travel to Afghanistan sometime next week to make sure they’ve incorporated what Petraeus “is asking for and prioritizing and linking it with the training and preparation efforts that occur with the units and teams before they deploy,” Roper said.

While the draft standards are still being worked, Roper said he saw nothing in Petraeus’ guidance that is inconsistent with the work done so far.