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The US Secretary of Defence for Public Affair’s Office organised an opportunity to talk to Colonel Mike Wehr, the combined joint engineer director, and Lieutenant Colonel Steven Lacasse, the infrastructure training advisery group (ITAG) director of the NATO Training Mission Afghanistan.
Both the officials and the men serving under them are actively participating in infrastructure development in Afghanistan. In this task, they are being helped by Afghan officials and engineers as well.
The construction programme has a total cost of $12 billion and most of the project funding is going to be utilised in the next three years.
Q: I’ll ask the two of you that are you actually building bases or are you training the Afghan army to do that? And, also, who is funding this $12 billion project?
Col Wehr: The funding is primarily from American taxpayers. It is a large investment. There is some contribution from our NATO partners. It is growing steadily, but the majority is in fact US-funded. To answer your first question that whether we are building bases or providing training, I would say we in fact are performing both the tasks. The majority, to get started, is certainly provided through construction agents of the corps of engineers.
We do employ construction agents. And in fact many of the contractors are from Afghanistan and they employ a large number of Afghans. Unique to Afghanistan of course is that there’s a tremendous amount of labour available, and that is — one of our goals is to ensure that we are able to employ as much as we can.
Q: Could you give us the exact number of national police and the military which you have been training or target to train? And how would you comment on reports that Taliban or people who have been associated with them were given certain contracts in southern Afghanistan?
Col Wehr: The primary mission of the NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan is to stand up an army and police force through recruiting and to also provide equipment and training. And then in our case for engineers, we’re providing the shelter as well.
The numbers that we are planning for and in fact are achieving for the police is 109,000 by October this year. And then for the army, we have a target of 134,000, which was to be done by October.
I am not aware of any contracts that have been given to the Taliban. But what we are doing is to train the contractors in the administration of contracts and the supervision of work.
Another very critical area, which in fact Steve Lacasse is doing, is training the engineers. And if we have a minute, I will let him describe his mission of training the Afghan engineers.
Col Lacasse: Yeah, this is Lieutenant Colonel Lacasse. And just to give you an idea of what we’re doing on my side of the mission here — as Colonel Wehr said, the army and the police here in Afghanistan both contain elements of engineers and facility maintainers. Itt’s a new programme that’s very fledgling. They’re filling their position sometimes with people with some skill, sometimes people that don’t have much skill at all. And so what our plan is to go out there to where these units are and provide them training both through education and on-the-job guidance and with a lot of different team members — not only the people on my team but some of the contractors who are doing maintenance out in the field right now, civilian mentors and advisers, a whole host of folks who are out there tackling the maintenance mission..
We’re just starting out, figuring out who’s out there and what their skills are and what kind of equipment they have and what they need, and we’re looking forward to pressing ahead and moving forward.
Q: What about the Mazar-e-Sharif base? When does that complete? And number two, what kind of threats do the engineers face in Afghanistan, and have there been any casualties?
Col Wehr: In terms of Mazar-e-Sharif, there’s a lot of construction underway and planned into the future. Just as an example, there is a regional military training centre that we have just recently awarded for construction. And that is about a $30 million camp — I call it a campus, but really itt’s a training base that will be able to train about 2,700 soldiers in various levels of training. That will be constructed and completed by about the fall or late 2011. We have some constructions for police that will be taking place up there to match the strength numbers I’ve mentioned. By 2011, the police will grow up to 134,000 and then the army will grow to 171,000, so literally a 305,000-man force or Afghan National Security Force.
Both the officials and the men serving under them are actively participating in infrastructure development in Afghanistan. In this task, they are being helped by Afghan officials and engineers as well.
The construction programme has a total cost of $12 billion and most of the project funding is going to be utilised in the next three years.
Q: I’ll ask the two of you that are you actually building bases or are you training the Afghan army to do that? And, also, who is funding this $12 billion project?
Col Wehr: The funding is primarily from American taxpayers. It is a large investment. There is some contribution from our NATO partners. It is growing steadily, but the majority is in fact US-funded. To answer your first question that whether we are building bases or providing training, I would say we in fact are performing both the tasks. The majority, to get started, is certainly provided through construction agents of the corps of engineers.
We do employ construction agents. And in fact many of the contractors are from Afghanistan and they employ a large number of Afghans. Unique to Afghanistan of course is that there’s a tremendous amount of labour available, and that is — one of our goals is to ensure that we are able to employ as much as we can.
Q: Could you give us the exact number of national police and the military which you have been training or target to train? And how would you comment on reports that Taliban or people who have been associated with them were given certain contracts in southern Afghanistan?
Col Wehr: The primary mission of the NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan is to stand up an army and police force through recruiting and to also provide equipment and training. And then in our case for engineers, we’re providing the shelter as well.
The numbers that we are planning for and in fact are achieving for the police is 109,000 by October this year. And then for the army, we have a target of 134,000, which was to be done by October.
I am not aware of any contracts that have been given to the Taliban. But what we are doing is to train the contractors in the administration of contracts and the supervision of work.
Another very critical area, which in fact Steve Lacasse is doing, is training the engineers. And if we have a minute, I will let him describe his mission of training the Afghan engineers.
Col Lacasse: Yeah, this is Lieutenant Colonel Lacasse. And just to give you an idea of what we’re doing on my side of the mission here — as Colonel Wehr said, the army and the police here in Afghanistan both contain elements of engineers and facility maintainers. Itt’s a new programme that’s very fledgling. They’re filling their position sometimes with people with some skill, sometimes people that don’t have much skill at all. And so what our plan is to go out there to where these units are and provide them training both through education and on-the-job guidance and with a lot of different team members — not only the people on my team but some of the contractors who are doing maintenance out in the field right now, civilian mentors and advisers, a whole host of folks who are out there tackling the maintenance mission..
We’re just starting out, figuring out who’s out there and what their skills are and what kind of equipment they have and what they need, and we’re looking forward to pressing ahead and moving forward.
Q: What about the Mazar-e-Sharif base? When does that complete? And number two, what kind of threats do the engineers face in Afghanistan, and have there been any casualties?
Col Wehr: In terms of Mazar-e-Sharif, there’s a lot of construction underway and planned into the future. Just as an example, there is a regional military training centre that we have just recently awarded for construction. And that is about a $30 million camp — I call it a campus, but really itt’s a training base that will be able to train about 2,700 soldiers in various levels of training. That will be constructed and completed by about the fall or late 2011. We have some constructions for police that will be taking place up there to match the strength numbers I’ve mentioned. By 2011, the police will grow up to 134,000 and then the army will grow to 171,000, so literally a 305,000-man force or Afghan National Security Force.
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