Military develops its cultural understanding of Afghanistan

The unit, which is preparing a pool of deployable cultural specialists, also provides cultural awareness training to the British military, and the first Commander's Cultural Briefing took place in London this week, attended by the Afghan Ambassador to the UK.

Addressing the one- and two-star commanders from across all three Services, the Ambassador, Homayoun Tandar, said:

"I welcome warmly the Defence Cultural Specialist Unit. The main concept of armies at the beginning of the 21st century needs a better cultural understanding. The idea of armies is not to make war everywhere but to create friendships between nations and peace-building.

"Afghanistan is the best example of that. In the first time in our history, the foreign troops are for the peace-building and not for the war."

The DCSU has been set up in the spirit of counter-insurgency operations and it ties into the aims of Operation MOSHTARAK which has been taking place over the last two weeks in central Helmand.

The operation is intended to show the local people that the International Security Assistance Force and Afghan forces are there to help them by providing enduring security and development.

This in turn, it is hoped, will mean that the Taliban will have no chance to regain support in the area and violence will therefore reduce.

Cultural understanding is therefore being seen as more and more essential to help international forces protect and provide for the local people, while reducing the need for force to be used.

And that is why the DCSU has been set up. Although the unit, which will be based at RAF Henlow, does not officially come into being until April, many of its capabilities are already being implemented.

Lieutenant Colonel Steven Windmill, from the MOD's Afghan specialist implementation team, which has set up the DCSU, explained:

"The whole point of developing cultural capability has come from a very firm operational need. All recent post-operational tour reports from commanders at all levels have identified that we have not been doing cultural understanding well enough.

"That is a situation that was picked up by PJHQ [Permanent Joint Headquarters] and has been firmly endorsed by the four-star community in Defence and downwards. All the Chiefs of Staff of the three Services are fully bought into the need to do cultural awareness better. That's what we are trying to achieve here."

Lt Col Windmill added that in the last year there has been significant progress and in the last six months tangible results are starting to be seen, including the creation of the pool of deployable cultural specialists and the development, design and running of training packages.

In fact, until the unit came into being, most Service personnel got just half-a-day's cultural awareness briefing before deploying to Afghanistan, and the training need was poorly defined.

As well as running training packages on cultural awareness, the DCSU will also have the role of defining what the training requirements are.

The courses so far established include the course for one- and two-star and brigade headquarters staff, the first of which took place this week. This is intended to give commanders a sufficient cultural background to identify challenges as they arise and give a framework to be able to make decisions.

A week-long cultural specialist level one course has also been established, which is ideally for all people going into theatre, but particularly those who will have regular and sustained contact with local nationals.

This course gives people an understanding of Afghan and Islamic culture such that when issues arise personnel can think them through and offer advice which will solve the problem or pacify the locals, and have sufficient understanding to guide and influence battle group plans.

The cultural specialist level one course has recently been delivered to 250 members of 4 Mechanized* Brigade who, when they take over the command of Task Force Helmand in April, will take on the 'holding phase' of Operation MOSHTARAK, the success of which will be dependent on the relationships the military and civilian agencies build with the local population.

Finally, there is the cultural specialist level two course which is specialist training at a masters level, covering anthropology, psychology, sociology and influencing skills, lasting around ten weeks.

Sharing his experience of Afghan culture with his British colleagues at this week's brigade headquarters course was Major Mohammed Safi from the Afghan National Army.

He explained why he thought the need for cultural understanding is so essential:

"The enemy and insurgents exploit the lack of cultural understanding to win over the local population and entire villages who feel they have been shamed or dishonoured by actions taken by foreign troops.

"The insurgents exploit grievances from villagers about issues such as searches, lack of respect, shaming of women, and use this as a major recruiting argument amongst people who, fundamentally, oppose them.

"This is really important for the soldiers. International forces have to know about the culture and understand which areas to respect; how to enter a house, how to search people.

"The soldiers who go to Afghanistan need to know what they can and can't do."

As well as the training strand, the DCSU has a pool of cultural advisors. There are currently 25 in the pool and it is intended that there will be 40 in total. Each one is a linguist, speaking either Pashto or Dari.

Lt Col Windmill explained that the DSCU has important links with the Defence School of Languages, adding:

"We see languages as our key success factor. If you don't have an understanding of language and the ability to communicate with the people you are working with, we don't see this capability as being as influential as we would wish it to be. Therefore we need people with linguist skills. That's our key success factor."

The cultural advisors will advise senior military commanders; there will never be enough of them says Lt Col Windmill, so they have to be placed at key decision points.

They will help identify and understand issues relating to the local cultural, political, economic, social and historical environment to help commanders make better and more informed decisions.

From March, eight of these cultural advisors will be deployed to Afghanistan at any one time. Most are senior military officers.

In addition, there is a civilian cultural specialist, Sippi Azarbaijani-Moghaddam, who Lt Col Windmill says is considered one of the top five experts on Afghan culture in the world.

She will be advising the head of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan, the Commander of Regional Command South, Major General Nick Carter. There will also be a cultural advisor deployed to each of the battle group HQs.

Lt Col Windmill explained how the cultural advisors already in theatre are having tangible benefits. One who has been deployed for almost 18 months has been mapping the tribal dispositions and their allegiances and as a consequence is helping shape battle plans.

The imperative for the DCSU is of course to focus on Afghanistan; however, the idea is that over time and as the capability evolves, it will be broader than Afghanistan and be enduring and sustainable and capable of looking at other areas of operations.

If you want to find out more about the Defence Cultural Specialist Unit, contact the DCSU Director of External Relations by email at JtCap-JWAS-JITLO@mod.uk

* The spelling of 'Mechanized' with a 'z' is correct and is not an Americanisation.