The 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade (SFAB) is the first of six units comprised of roughly 1,000 soldiers that will be sent to Afghanistan to “advise and assist” foreign armies.
However, the commander of the SFAB, Colonel Scott Jackson, has revealed that training in the woods of Louisiana has been cut short by six months as part of the Republican firebrand’s efforts to diffuse tension in the region.
Colonel Jackson explained: “Whenever you accelerate something, you reduce the quality.
“That’s a strike against it right there.”
Despite the apparent rush to get troops dispatched, the Colonel declared that “this is not going to be like previous deployments” and explained that all previous “advising-type work has been ad hoc”.
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Meanwhile, Captain Kristopher Farrar also told Politico that the effort marked a decided shift in how the US Army is tackling the war in Afghanistan.
He said: “This is a way for us to help shape the fight differently than we have in the past.
“The Army’s changing.”
Former State Department and senior Pentagon official David Sedney played down the new brigade’s significance in the region by explaining the SFAB will not “radically change things”.
He went on: “Any idea that these teams are going to come in and radically change things is a huge over-expectation.
“I think they will make a difference, but what degree of difference — that we won’t know for several years, which is the time frame it takes with an institution as fragile and flawed as the Afghan National Army, which we partially trained, partially abandoned and are now coming back to.”
The SFAB will be used to assist foreign troops already fighting in the region and will not wage war by themselves.
The Army’s Chief of Staff, General Mark Milley, explained: “We are training, advising and assisting indigenous armies all over the world, and I expect that will increase and not decrease.”
Meanwhile other senior figures are sceptical about the new brigades capability to make a difference in the Afghanistan war.
Retired Brigadier General Donald Bolduc declared: “I always wish the Army the best of luck and success.
“But I don’t think this organisational structure is going to succeed.”
The US launched its invasion of Afghanistan on October 7, 2001 – the war is the longest in the countries’ history.