Mentoring on the Edge

Mentoring on the Edge

or, "What you Don't Learn in a Classroom"

by Colonel John Bessler

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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.

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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.)