It is planned that by October 2010 the Afghan National Army (ANA) will be 134,000-strong. Initially, the Army will be an infantry-centric force able to fight insurgents and hold the ground until the national force reaches full operational capability - with its own logistic and support elements - of 240,000 by 2013.
New recruits to the ANA initially attend an intensive eight-week training course at the Kabul Military Training Centre (KMTC) where they undergo tuition in basic infantry and core military skills - such as weapon handling, live firing, section attacks and compound clearances - before graduating and deploying to the various provinces in ethnically-mixed teams.
See Related News for more information on the training offered by UK forces at the KMTC.
It is at this point that Major Radbourne, head training mentor for the 2nd Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment (2 YORKS) Operational Mentoring and Liaison Team (OMLT) Battle Group, starts his work with the Afghan recruits assigned to the 3rd Battalion of 205 Brigade of the ANA in Helmand province - as well as those already based in the province and in need of refresher training.
Major Radbourne explains the role of his mentors based with the ANA at Camp Shorabak in Helmand:
"The main thing we are trying to achieve with the Afghans is the same as you would with any Army - get them to concentrate on basic individual training, collective training and specialist training.
"Although the most important thing for me here as a mentor is to get the Afghans to do it and deliver the instruction and not me and my staff.
"What my staff do is mentor them and point them in the right direction.
"We might do that in several ways. One of the first ways we will do it is by running a 'triple T cadre', as we call it, a train the trainer course, so we train the Afghan instructors in how to train in a specific military subject area.
"Then once they are trained we get them to deliver it to the Afghan soldiers under our mentorship.
"Obviously, if things are going wrong then we will step in and help or suggest ways that things can be improved.
"My goal on the training mentor side in the next six weeks is to churn out a thousand soldiers that have been through recruit training and have had additional RSOI [Reception, Staging and Onward Integration] training from my staff and my ANA instructors, most importantly, to go forward to the Kandaks [ANA battalions] on the ground and be successful."
Major Bruce Radbourne, the head training mentor with the 2 YORKS OMLT Battle Group in Helmand province
[Picture: Sgt Rob Knight, Crown Copyright/MOD 2009]
Major Radbourne explained that the level of expertise in the troops after eight weeks of training is still relatively low, and even for more experienced soldiers ongoing training is always required:
"We have two facets of training. The first facet is what we are running over the next six weeks which is an RSOI package of brand new soldiers that have come in from the Kabul Military Training Centre where the soldiers will be at quite a low standard of training because they will only have done eight weeks of training or at best a further five weeks - so 13 in all.
"The other side of training I'll deliver will be to soldiers who are already in the brigade and in the Kandaks on the ground around Helmand.
"And there, training could be delivered to a soldier who has been in the Army to anything up to three years or so, so who has got quite a bit of experience.
"However, just because they are experienced doesn't mean that their skills are good. So you want to harness that experience but also teach the correct skills and drills."
In the same way that British, American or any coalition soldiers are trained, Afghan soldiers are focused on five main training areas, as Major Radbourne explains:
"The first area we look at is weapon training of all the platoon-style weapons they would use. Teaching them how to use and care for them correctly and live fire them on ranges.
"The next key area we look at is counter-IED [improvised explosive device] training, which is essential in Helmand as they are big threats out here, so we teach them to detect the devices and what to do once they find an explosive device to bring in the expert teams in order to dispose of it.
"The next key area is medical training. We try and train the medics up to a basic team medic standard, which is getting a soldier to stop a catastrophic bleed with first field dressings and tourniquets, being able to maintain an airway, get somebody breathing or get their circulation going again, and then dealing with a disability that might be caused by a fracture or a loss of limb, and finally to arrange a swift and efficient casualty evacuation.
"The next key area that I would look into would be communications. How to use radios correctly and efficiently across the whole spectrum of radios that they will be using in platoon, company and Kandak level.
"The final area I would concentrate on is driving, because the ANA casualties from driving are almost as bad as their casualties from explosive devices or gunshot wounds. So we try and get them to drive safely, because the standard of driving in Afghanistan is very limited and most soldiers will not know what a driving licence looks like let alone hold one."
According to Major Radbourne the recruits generally respond well to the package, but at times there can be a culture shock between the two forces, and allowances and adaptations need to be made:
"You get very keen soldiers and some less so," he said.
"On the whole the soldiers are better than the senior NCOs [non-commissioned officers] or the officers who tend to think they are a little bit above the training.
"So it is part of our breaking down of that culture that officers should train with NCOs and NCOs should train with soldiers - something we would consider standard in the British Army and something we try and instil in them.
"We get them training in a fashion. But we have to look to the Afghan way and the Afghan solution to things.
"We can't expect to put on a complete British template of the way we like to do things. We have to look at the way they do things and try and adapt them to make them more efficient - not changing the basic way they do business because we are not going to change that in our time here.
"You have to respect that the Afghans know the Afghan way of life.
"They are tough warriors. They are quite determined fighters.
"It is focusing that determined warrior into an effective counter-insurgency soldier who knows when to go in hard and when a soft approach could be more effective."
Looking to the longer term Major Radbourne said that the ultimate goal was to build up the Army to a more stable and self-sustaining level:
"The ultimate goal is to train them to a point where we can bring in new soldiers to replace old soldiers and get a proper rotation cycle between leave, training and operations.
"That way the Afghan Army can be more sustaining and actually sustain itself, rather than at the moment where it is running at 1,000 miles an hour and there are a lot of very tired people.
"So we want to try and give them a structured leave, operations and training cycle as we would know it in a western army.
"We know we are not going to achieve that completely in the way that we would, however.
"But we are working towards that and trying to leave a less haphazard on the spur of the moment thing so operations can be properly planned and soldier retention can be improved because a soldier knows when he is going on leave and he knows he is going to get trained properly before he goes back out into theatre for his next round of operations."
Following their time at Camp Shorabak with the ANA trainers and the mentors under Major Radbourne's command the Afghan soldiers are posted to the various checkpoints, patrol bases and forward operating bases across Helmand province.
Here they receive further guidance from 2 YORKS' mentoring teams as they work side-by-side to carry out operations and patrols.
In tomorrow's article British soldiers in these often remote locations describe their experiences of working with the ANA in the field.