Effective military advising operations: A comparative analysis of the Korean and Afghani advisory efforts

The use of a blended composition of resources to develop the internal security forces in both the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts displays a significant divergence of officially declared doctrine by which the U.S. Army Special Forces maintain purview over training and advising of foreign forces. The relevant question that is drawn from this divergence is whether the U.S. military currently has adequate force structure to train and organize the internal security forces of a host nation. This study attempts to answer that question through a comparative analysis of the current military advising operation in Afghanistan with the U.S. development of the South Korean Army from 1946--1950. The primary hypothesis driving this research is that the length of time that is required for the internal security forces of a host-nation to become fully effective is directly determined by certain factors involved in the military advising operation. These factors include types of units employed, overall experience level of the advisor team, training received by the average advisor, and structure of the military advising organization. The results display a much more rapid development with the Korean advisory effort than with the Afghanistan advisory effort, even though the Afghanistan campaign held a substantial advantage over the Korean effort in every area except structure. The conclusion that can be drawn from this data is that the structure of a military advising operation has a far greater impact than any other factor in reducing the time required to build internal security forces, and that lack unity of command and unity of effort within the Afghanistan advisory effort is at the center of the continuing struggle to build effective internal security forces in that country.