Afghan War Units Begin Two New Efforts - Yochi J. Dreazen, Wall Street Journal.
The Pentagon is establishing two new units devoted to the Afghan war, highlighting the military's focus on the conflict even as the White House considers scaling back the overall US mission there. The units - a so-called Afghan Hands program run out of the Pentagon and a new intelligence center within Central Command, which oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - are designed to help troops deepen their intelligence about the country's complex political and tribal dynamics.
The Defense Department also is expected to announce that Brig. Gen. John M. Nicholson, one of the military's top experts on counterinsurgency, will assume the helm of the Pakistan-Afghanistan Coordination Cell, a Pentagon office established earlier this year to improve the military's performance in Afghanistan. The moves underline the military's efforts to remake itself in response to the Afghan war despite the Obama administration's signals that it is far from committed to the current counterinsurgency approach...
More at The Wall Street Journal.