Looks like Strategic Advisory Team in Kabul being demilitarized

Pity. Excerpt from an article (p.26, Conference of Defence Associations Institute ON TRACK magazine - summer 2008) by Dr. Nipa Banerjee, who headed Canada’s development and aid program in Kabul (2003-06)--currently teaching international development at the University of Ottawa with frequent travel to Kabul:

...mention [must be made] of the contribution made by Canada through the work in Kabul of the Strategic Advisory Team (SAT) from the Department of National Defence (DND). Members of this team were placed within operational program units of the Government of Afghanistan to provide very basic organizational, management, and planning advice on day-to-day activities at the working level. This enabled Afghan government offi cials at operational levels to learn by doing. Through the provision of demand-driven services and the adoption of a low-key approach, SAT had earned a fair amount of success.

Before SAT could prove if it would leave a permanent imprint on the building of sustainable capacity, its life was cut short as the Canadian government took the decision to replace the DND SAT with a civilian crew. While there is the potential of the inclusion of a few of our CF colleagues in the new team, the strength of a well-disciplined commander-led team will be missed. The value added of a DND team lay in the deployment of disciplined teams, well-trained and supervised to deliver at the operational levels. Based on my personal experience, such high standards are not expected from civil servants or contracted civilian personnel, and even less encouraged. In addition, the reality is that CF personnel, for obvious reasons, are less reticent to being deployed in posts with difficult security. It has not been easy for CIDA to recruit seasoned and experienced staff for Afghanistan. On the other hand, SAT has not had a dearth of experienced officers for placement.

While acknowledging the differences in cultures of the three departments – diplomacy, defence and development – and the difficulties of coordinating a single Canadian national mission that this might cause, in the interest of best impact, more time and effort could have been devoted to the provision of assistance at the working levels of the Afghan government through the SAT. When we work in the context of enormous and unprecedented constraints, only unprecedented efforts can help us to build on our successes, however limited they are...

More on the SAT here, here and here.