THE WORLD'S OFFICER CORPS:

Can the U.S. Lead Afghans? (MARK MOYAR, 9/04/09, NY Times)

First, the United States must pressure senior Afghan leaders to weed out bad commanders. Second, we must assign more and better officers to advise Afghan units. Third, American units should work more closely with Afghan units.

Given what is at stake, however, the United States should also consider more drastic techniques. One is direct control over selecting commanders, a model that the United States used to excellent effect in Vietnam with the Provincial Reconnaissance Units, paramilitary forces that proved successful against the Vietcong. By appointing the units’ indigenous commanders, the C.I.A. eliminated the political and other non-merit considerations that plagued other South Vietnamese forces. That arrangement would benefit Afghanistan, as cronyism and nepotism run rampant there.

Regrettably, these measures may not suffice. We therefore should consider the most drastic method, which is also the method most likely to increase quantity and quality simultaneously — foreign command of indigenous units.

In the Philippine insurrection of 1899 to 1902 and in the Malayan revolt in the middle of the last century, indigenous soldiers worked well under the command of able American and British officers. Effective indigenous units were thereby deployed at much lower financial and political costs than foreign units.

Some will object that those colonial wars are not relevant to our postcolonial world. Yet in postcolonial Vietnam, foreigners commanded indigenous troops through the combined-action program, an initiative long heralded as a paragon of enlightened counterinsurgency. The program succeeded by placing South Vietnamese militias and United States Marines under the leadership of American commanders.