Afghan National Army Trains Engineers

CAMP SHAHEEN, Afghanistan – As the Afghan National Army continues to grow into an extensive and sustainable force, the need for technical training for its individual soldiers has become a priority.

To provide this specialized training, the ANA, in coordination with multinational mentor teams from the International Security Assistance Force, is in the process of establishing several training centers throughout Afghanistan.

One of the first of these centers is the ANA Engineer School located on Camp Shaheen in the northern region of the country near the city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

Soldiers selected by the ANA to attend the school first learn basic combat engineer skills like mine awareness and wire obstacles. The class of roughly 70 soldiers is then split into three specialty categories; construction, heavy equipment operation and combat engineering. From there, the ANA students begin their job specific training.

In the construction trade, soldiers are instructed on either carpentry or pipe fitting proficiencies, skills needed to build and maintain the various camps and forward operating bases around Afghanistan. The heavy equipment operators gain knowledge of basic equipment maintenance and learn to operate a 30 ton excavator or D-7 bulldozer. Soldiers attending the combat engineer’s course are drilled in the use of demolitions, techniques of combat construction, and explosive ordinance clearance procedures.

Toward the end of the eight week course, the class is formed back into a single group for end-of-course exams and graduation.

After successfully completing all of the instruction, the soldiers are then certified as combat engineers by the ANA and sent back to their units where they can apply their new skills.

One unique aspect of the Engineer School is the ANA students are taught by ANA instructors who attended a “Train the Trainer” course in May 2010.

While the ANA instructors work with their students in each course, soldiers from the mentor team observe from a distance. This allows them to assist, support or coach the ANA instructors while at the same time not impeding their classes.

The school was initially established from the explosive ordinance disposal school on Camp Shaheen in October 2009 when the first members of the ISAF Engineer Mentor Team arrived. Soldiers from the team developed the curriculum, instituted the course planning and requirements, and obtained equipment needed for training. In early 2010, they began training the ANA instructors. Less than a month after the instructors completed their course, they began training the first group of future ANA combat engineers.

According to one of the EMT members, before the “Train the Trainer” program, soldiers in the ANA received extremely rudimentary instruction. There were not enough instructors or resources to conduct proper training.

With all of the instructors trained and ready, the school is set to begin multiple class cycles that will continuously overlap each other throughout the year.

The ultimate goal of the mentor team and ISAF, is to enable the ANA to operate the school independently.

Although commanded by the German Bundeswehr, the engineer school’s mentor team is staffed by soldiers from seven European countries. Together they make up a corps of commissioned and non-commissioned officers who over-watch every aspect of the school from command and training to logistics and planning.

Currently the school is in the process of expanding into modern facilities with barracks and classrooms, and adding additional equipment like forklifts, loaders, dump-trucks and a road grader for the operators.

Over the course of the of the next several months, there are plans to support the National Military Academy of Afghanistan and add a basic officers training course, a captain career course, and a non-commissioned officers course.

In addition to the Engineer School, Camp Shaheen is set to become home to the ANA Signal and Military Police Schools.