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DTIC ADA588064: Building Better Armies: An Insider's Account of Liberia

We have long known that helping allies build better armies and police forces is a key to regional stability and the exit strategy for costly missions like Afghanistan in an as they stand up, we stand down approach. Yet the U.S. track record on this is unacceptably weak. The 2012 coup in Mali was staged by U.S. trained Malian soldiers. In Afghanistan, after years of training, the Pentagon assessed that only one of the Afghan National Army s 23 brigades is able to operate independently. This does not augur well for U.S. troop withdrawal in 2014 or for the future of Afghanistan. Nor is the United States alone. The United Nations has suffered similar setbacks in East Timor, Haiti, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where ill-trained security forces have staged coups, preyed on the civilian population, and necessarily elongated costly peacekeeping missions. There are many reasons for these failures: Building professional security forces in conflict affected countries is hard to do; there is a significant theory to practice gap on how to do it; there are no comprehensive practitioner guides or field manuals; and few practical models exist. Worse, the de facto train and equip appro

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