Information Paper and Essay

It took 8 years of war in Afghanistan before the Department of Defense (DoD) figured out that it needed a deeper intellectual bench that was versed in the cultures, languages, and regional issues within the Afghanistan and Pakistan (AFPAK) area of operations.   The Afghanistan-Pakistan Hands (APH) program was established in September of 2009 to help fill this bench.   This joint service program develops a cadre of military and civilian experts who speak the local languages, are culturally attuned, and focus on regional issues for an extended duration.   The APH’s are rotated back and forth between operational assignments in theatre and strategic level assignments back in the U.S. that deal with AFPAK issues, all the while, continuing their skills training.   The APH program is yielding increasing levels of success, is a proven force multiplier in the region, and should be expanded into other regions of the world under the command of the Geographic Combatant Commanders (GCCs).     Like most things in Afghanistan though, success is not an overnight accomplishment.  
The success of the APH program is not likely to be fully realized until at least several rotations of the APH’s have had a chance to finish their tours.   The first cohort of APH’s personnel has yet to complete the full three to four year iteration of the program.   They have received their training, deployed to either Afghanistan or Pakistan, and are only now working at the strategic levels within the major Combatant Commands (COCOMS) or at the Pentagon.   This cohort has yet to deploy back to their exact same areas in theatre and reconnect with the host-nation officials that they have developed relationships with the first deployment; a critical part of the APH strategy.   Critics of the program who claim that there are no tangible results have not given the program time to mature to its full potential.   What is unique with the design of the APH program is that most of the APH’s will go back to the exact...