American troops are training the Afghan Public Protection forces, known as the Guardians, and Patrick Devenny explains what they could learn from Captain Charles Trower’s 1845 British cavalry memoir, Hints on Irregular Cavalry:
Among Trower’s horsemen was a troop known as the “Khandahar Horse” — Pashtun recruits from modern-day Afghanistan and Pakistan, the direct ancestors of today’s “Guardians.” Recruited in cooperation with tribal chiefs, the Native Horse were not loyal to any form of government outside their British minders. Trower writes extensively on how to properly manage and maintain the support of these units, the members of which he describes as “generally illiterate, haughty and turbulent: but they are gallant and true, hard-working and zealous.” Of their martial skills, they were “first in excellence.”One hundred and fifty-five years later, the U.S. officer now charged with overseeing Afghan self-defense forces has more to learn from Trower than you might think. Trower’s treatise on advisory missions — the first of its kind — expounds on three main themes that are useful to this day.
- Incentivize
- Live and let live
- Go native