U.S. forces continue to provide tough, realistic, and challenging training for the Afghanistan National Army.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Army News Service, Nov. 29, 2005) – Operation Atal Wali, or Operation Heroic Success, set a new benchmark for training Afghan National Army Soldiers in Kandahar and, for that matter, the country of Afghanistan.

Soldiers from the 1st Kandak, 2nd Brigade, 205th Corps, took part in a nine-day validation training exercise Nov. 12-20 at Kandahar Airfield and Camp Sherzai, the first such exercise ever conducted with the ANA.

The battalion, or Kandak-level exercise, trained ANA soldiers from the top of the chain of command down to the lower-enlisted ranks. Kandak officers, infantrymen, medics and artillerymen all honed their skills under the watchful eyes of Coalition Forces.

Photo courtesy U.S. Army

The key to their success of course lies with these ANA Soldiers and their belief in and allegience to the idea of a free sovereign Afghanistan. Sgt Hook out.

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Posted by Hook @ 0015 zulu | | Permalink
This post is filed under: The Stan

Congratulations to the Afghan National Army and to our wonderful people over there training them. (especially to our wonderful people because they are doing a job the MSM has been screaming ISN’T being done).

It takes time to create an Army and time to train them. I saw some idiot make the claim that since we give 18 year olds about 16 weeks of training… we should have really good Armies going in Afghanistan and Iraq by now!!! ARG!

I know that the ANA will improve with experience - in a few years they’ll be on track to take care of most, if not all of their own problems. That is excellent.

Comment by Teresa — 30 November 2005 @ 1807

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This is great news. I put this same article up a few hours ago (GMTA!) along with a couple others news items.

I really am proud of what Americans have done for Afghanistan. It’s got to be without a doubt the most challenging and difficult country in the world to transform into a democratic nation of laws. You can’t even call the building of infrastructure .. reconstruction.. since a lot of what is being done now never existed! And along that vein, I couldn’t help but draw a comparison the other day when I heard that the reconstruction in Afghanistan wasn’t on track and had the thought that probably was because the US/Coalition in Afghanistan has a very different mission than the one in Iraq. Do you know if we have much of a civil affairs operation in Afghanistan or is it mostly Afghanistan Ministries working through contractors and NGOs doing most of that work?

Comment by Texas Gal — 30 November 2005 @ 1853

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