America's North Shore Journal

Today's Blog­gers' Round­table was with Col. Paul Som­er­sall, Regional Corps Advi­sory Com­mand Com­man­der. He heads the advi­sory teams for the Afghan 205 Corps, the "Hero" or Atl Corps. Col. Som­er­sall is an upstate New York­ers and a mem­ber of the New York Army National Guard.

The Afghan National Army's 205 Corps has the respon­si­bil­ity for the provinces of Kan­da­har, Hel­mand, Zabul, Nim­ruz and Oruz­gan. It con­sists of four brigades, a com­mando bat­tal­ion and three gar­risons. It is presently under the com­mand of Gen­eral Sher­mo­hammed Zazai. The Corps has inte­grated artillery and air lift capac­ity. The Corps also sup­ports a regional med­ical hos­pi­tal ded­i­cated to the secu­rity forces.

Col. Somersall's com­mand is advis­ing the Corps down through the com­pany level in all aspects of mod­ern war­fare, with empha­sis on logis­tics and main­te­nance. The 205 Corps is in the heart of the fight­ing against the ter­ror­ists and their will­ing­ness to fight is not an issue. Inter­cepted Tal­iban com­mu­ni­ca­tions, accord­ing to Som­er­sall, warned against fight­ing one par­tic­u­lar bat­tal­ion newly equipped with the M-16 rifle since "they can kill us faster".

Corps units are con­duct­ing their own resup­ply mis­sions, by ground and air. Since August 2008 the Corps has moved over 90,000 tonnes of sup­plies using the MI-17 heli­copters belong­ing to the Corps.

Col. Som­er­sall repeated the gist of the state­ment that has been made by other Amer­i­can offi­cers in Afghanistan, that if they had more, they could do more. Nim­ruz Provice, as an exam­ple, has no Afghan Army pres­ence, only some police units. More Afghan troops, more NATO men­tors, more funds for train­ing and out­reach to the civil­ian pop­u­la­tion, all of these items would prove valu­able. The effects of the cur­rent pro­grams are significant.

I asked the Col. about recruit­ing for the Army. He was quite emphatic that there is a demand to join the army among Afghans and stated that the Army is highly respected by the civil­ian populace.

The take­away from this inter­view is the cur­rent abil­ity of the 205 Corps and its units to plan and exe­cute their own oper­a­tions, whether com­bat or logis­ti­cal. It is clear that the men­tor­ing is being successful.