Mentoring on the Edge
Mentoring on the Edge
or, “What you Don’t Learn in a Classroom”
by Colonel John Bessler
Download the full article:
Mentoring on the Edge
The ‘Afghan experience’ for those who serve overseas can be vastly different
from the one about which the American public sees, hears, and reads. The same
can be said for those who do the writing and reporting. It is comparatively
simple to travel to Afghanistan, observe and interview selflessly-serving
patriots at work, and write a blog or an article about the challenges ISAF and
the coalition faces; it is quite another to be intimately involved in a mission
extending over many months. It’s easy to watch; it’s tough to “do.”
This article attempts to bridge that gap. As one of the many who have
mentored, assisted, trained, and fought with the Afghan National Security Forces
(ANSF), I hope to provide some perspective to the stories in the paper or
blogosphere. From mid-2008 through 2009, I commanded all the ANSF mentors and
trainers in the Western Provinces of Afghanistan, in an area about the size of
Mississippi, and served as the senior US officer west of Kabul and north of
Kandahar.
In my role of commanding the mentors and trainers embedded in all three
Afghan security organizations (Army, Police, and Border Police), we contended
with competing priorities, the tyranny of distance in counterinsurgency (COIN)
environment, answering to a NATO higher headquarters, and responsible for four
vast, remote and primitive Afghan provinces, in an economy of force mission. We
experienced firsthand the day-to-day frustration and the almost crushing
inertia, friction, and fog of war that comes with working in a coalition; as a
result, I feel uniquely branded by my experiences. Hence the article’s title,
“Mentoring at the Edge of Civilization — What You Can’t Learn in the Classroom.”
This story mostly takes place in Badghis Province. Badghis is the one
province in Afghanistan in which no part of the Ring Road is paved. Just east
of Herat City, the all-weather road turns to gravel, then dirt, then into a
potholed path. It improves slightly over the 8200′ Sabzak Pass (courtesy of the
Spanish), then returns to a bone-jarring, winding dirt path through several
villages enroute to Qala-E-Naw, and all the way into Ghormach District/ Farayab
Province in Regional Command-North. It doesn’t return to all-weather road until
about Meymanah, where a Chinese company is currently laboring to finish the job.
Download the full article:
Mentoring on the Edge
COL John Bessler became the Deputy Director of PKSOI in May 2010. Prior to
that he served as the Division Chief, Security, Reconstruction, and Transitions
for PKSOI in August 2009 after 14 months in Herat, Afghanistan, where he
commanded the Afghan Regional Security Integration Command, Western Provinces (ARSIC-West).
In that position, he worked and fought side-by-side with Afghan and NATO forces
while training Afghan Army and Afghan Police forces during 2008 and 2009. He
worked intimately and regularly with NATO forces both in a mentoring as well as
in a combat capacity, and even more routinely with United States Agency for
International Development (USAID) and Department of State representatives, four
Provincial Reconstruction Teams from as many countries, as well as routine
contacts with DIA, CIA, the Joint Interagency Task Force (Counter Narcotics),
and Special Operations Forces (USA and USMC.)
