Afghan Army: Oh my God! We're privatizing training! And the Yanks are coming!

Seems like a good idea to me:

Ottawa seeking trainers for Afghan army
Contractors will teach basic military and language skills ahead of Canada's departure

Ottawa wants to give Afghan army officers a crash course in bureaucracy [that's Globeite negative spin, see below for what the training is actually about--e.g. topography=bureaucracy?].

According to a "letter of interest" published this month on a federal site, the Canadian government hopes to hire several ex-military officials to instruct the Afghan National Army on how to run their troops in Kandahar [that's not the whole story--the training in to take place at Kabul, presumably for the benefit of the ANA wherever in Afstan]. Planned topics include subjects such as battleground intelligence and map reading - and even media relations.

The contract gives an insight into Canada's changing priorities ahead of its soldiers' scheduled 2011 departure.

Public support for Canadian combat missions is plummeting [emphasis added--evidence, please] as a Taliban insurgency grows and as American reinforcements arrive [so, are we to infer that those Americans are a cause of the "plummeting"--Globeite at it again]. Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his ministers have been appearing in Afghanistan this month in hopes of re-branding the mission...

One major problem is that most Afghan recruits are illiterate. That means modern warfare - which is dependent on logistics, planning and paperwork - eludes them.

One possible solution is to teach Afghan officers how to teach themselves. The Canadian proposal asks that teams of up to four contractors, who have experience leading Western armies, bid for contracts to be brought in as teachers.

Canada agreed to sponsor the junior officer staff course last year, and pilot-program classes were to have started by now. Dozens of Afghan officers are to be taught 12 hours a day, six days a week, for up to 23 weeks at a time.

Planned courses include "Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield," "Soldier Retention," and several military topography courses.

More peripheral are courses in basic English, on how to run meetings, and even "media interview techniques," according to the proposal. There is a plan to teach the army brass on how "to effectively prepare written correspondence."

An unrelated contract indicates that Canada also hopes to outfit Afghan police in Kandahar with equipment to raid compounds. Handcuffs, metal detectors, radios, bolt cutters and breaching tools are being ordered.