Green-on-blue incidents are what happens when the conventional Army tries to operate unconventionally in Afghanistan

By "An SF Vet"

Best Defense guest contributor

When SF moved there they fell in on a ton of unvetted ALP that the regular Army had "trained." Why was the regular Army standing up ALP, when they have no real understanding about how to properly vet and conduct unconventional warfare? Great question. Probably because a sorry officer made the poor decision to allow this to happen. 

So the ODA fell in on hundreds of these poorly-trained, unvetted Afghans. So, they did what they were told, set up a base out there, and began vetting these guys with the last month they had in country. Fast forward to another sorry officer that told the team to "Hurry up and vet these guys" so he could tell higher how great of a job they were doing. When they said they had only vetted, like, 40 percent, they were told that wasn’t good enough, and the officer then padded the stats because in his exact words, "I can’t tell a general we only vetted 40 percent."

I can’t speak to everything that happened this past year, but this is the sort of thing that causes green on blue. The conventional Army has no business setting up ALP, but since that is the hot ticket these days, people only want to mass-produce them. The current team on the ground has done a lot of good things there, but it is hard (and dangerous) when you have leaders that allow this to happen.

Morals of the story:

1) Start giving higher the real story (I am talking to you, shitty, self-serving, careerist field grades).

2) The war isn’t over yet for the guys on the ground, so support them and give them what they require to be successful.

3) Stop allowing conventional Army to do unconventional tasks.