A particularly acute need is for new military trainers for regular Afghan forces and the militias, as part of the U.S. push to improve local security.
The new Pentagon plan would expand the number of military trainers in Afghanistan by giving combat troops added responsibilities. Currently, most units are assigned either to a combat or training role. Mullen has advocated a hybrid role for most units.
The shift would have the effect of de-emphasizing combat operations against militant targets. Some experts have said those offensives amount to a fruitless game of whack-a-mole and distract from the more crucial training mission.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff has approved the hybrid proposal, officers said. But supporters of the local approach in Afghanistan said the task is likely to be far more complicated there than it was in Iraq.
Part of the reason the hyper-local strategy in Iraq was successful in decreasing violence was because the U.S. was able to offer employment and a measure of local power to tribal minorities alienated from the Shiite Muslim-led government.
In Afghanistan, however, tribes in the restless south and east are mostly Pashtun, the same ethnicity as President Karzai.
"The Sunnis in Iraq were disenfranchised, so we knew what motivated them," a military official said. "The Pashtuns in Afghanistan are not disenfranchised, so the same tools won't work."
'A hybrid mission'
In part the proposed shift reflects the new reality in Afghanistan. Units sent there this year and charged with training have found themselves fighting militants. The 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, went to southern Afghanistan to train security forces but regularly ended up in combat.
"No one is looking at this as a schoolhouse job," the military official said. "They have to do combat as well. It is almost a hybrid mission."
The change in direction would also help shift the military's focus to working with village and district leaders. In the Pentagon, growing numbers of officers have come to the conclusion that the military is too reliant on the relatively weak central government.
"There is a local level that we really have to work hard on," the senior official said.
Counterinsurgency experts said focusing more units on training and working with a wider variety of forces, including militias, represent a needed shift.
Current operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan are focused too much on disrupting militants, said Andrew Krepinevich, executive director for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington think tank.
Krepinevich said some special operation forces in Afghanistan have trained local militias, to good effect.
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julian.barnes@latimes.com
