Developing Cross-Cultural Competencies at Platoon Level

47 July-September 2015 Developing Cross-Cultural Competencies at Platoon Level by CPT Tyler G. Matthews I served as a platoon leader in Chosen Company, 2-12 Infantry, 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Di vision, from October 2012 to May

2014. During that time, our battalion completed a tour in Afghanistan’s Re gional Command (RC)-East, completed a train-up cycle that culminated in a successful National Training Center ro tation and deployed to Zabul Province in RC-South. Amid a relentlessly paced train-up, extensive personnel turnover and pre-deployment preparation, I learned an important lesson: to set the conditions for success, platoon leaders – not battalion staffs or commanders – must take responsibility for providing detailed mission analysis and cross-cul tural training to their Soldiers and sub ordinates. In late Fall 2013, my platoon was scrambling to complete the mandatory trainings and certifications required before deploying to Afghanistan. We spent many of our days at the readi ness center making sure we were healthy, at the ranges making sure our marksmanship was refreshed, and at the company headquarters making sure containers were packed. We knew we were going to Forward Operating Base Apache in Zabul Province, but outside of that basic “where,” we knew very little about the mission ahead. Doctrine is clear: to win in a complex world, Soldiers must have cross-cultur al competencies and strong cognitive abilities. Arriving at this endstate is no easy feat, but platoon leaders can and should prepare their Soldiers for suc cess by familiarizing them with the ter rain, culture and history of their future operational environment. Doctrine states repeatedly that a robust under standing of terrain, populations and culture is critical to mission success in stability operations, counterinsurgency (COIN) operations and general opera tions in the complex operational envi ronments of the 21st Century.1 Accordingly, doctrine presents tools for leaders to employ when analyzing mis sion variables (mission, enemy, terrain, troops available, time, civil consider ations, or METT-TC), terrain analysis (observation and fields of fire, avenues of approach, key terrain, obstacles and movement, and cover and conceal ment, or OACOK), operational vari ables (political, military, economic, so cial, information, infrastructure, phys ical environment and time, or PMESII-PT) and civilian considerations (areas, structures, capabilities, organizations, people and events, or ASCOPE).2 The Army’s counterinsurgency manual, Field Manual (FM) 3-24, repeatedly emphasizes the critical need for COIN forces to understand both the opera tional environment and the culture in which they are fighting.3 Cultural preparedness Despite Army doctrine’s emphasis on the time-intensive exercises of cross-cultural training, our force often fails to properly prepare for the fight. I be lieve those at the tactical level have difficulties with pre-deployment mis sion analysis and cross-cultural train ing because they lack both confidence and time. The final months before de ployment time is understandably scarce, and softer elements of prepa ration such as cultural training and ter rain analysis take a backseat to more concrete, measurable tasks such as marksmanship and Soldier-readiness processing. In other words, developing cross-cultural competency is not high ly prioritized. Further, I believe most company-level officers are unsure of how to go about conducting a thor ough pre-deployment mission analysis that includes culture, and are even less confident in how to present that infor mation to their subordinates. In the last 90 days before a deploy ment, company and battalion training calendars become crowded with myri ad requirements. Final validation of basic skills, required on-line training and routine Soldier-readiness require ments all compete for the attention of commanders and first sergeants. As a result, it is easy for junior leaders to overlook essential training tasks that will make their formations more pre pared to effectively deploy and win.

48 July-September 2015 Among the areas most often over looked are terrain analysis, language training and cultural-awareness train ing. Platoon leaders must seize oppor tunities to facilitate discussion and study relevant to their future missions. Zabul School With the support of my platoon ser geant and squad leaders, I pieced to gether a curriculum to help my platoon prepare for Zabul. Some of my Soldiers had learned Pashtu or Dari, and while we didn’t have thorough region-specif ic literature, we did have Soldiers who had been to southern Afghanistan. Be tween us, we had plenty of collective resources to get important analysis and training started. “Zabul School” seemed an appropriate title for our platoon training effort, and so it was. Terrain familiarization Our initial approach to preparing for our relief-in-place (RIP) with the out going unit focused on the fundamental aspects of the operational environ ment. Inspired by David Kilcullen’s “Know Your Turf” principle from his “28 Articles of COIN,” I focused our early efforts on map reconnaissance.4 In Kilcullen’s article, he challenges company-grade officers to take time to carefully study the terrain: “Know the people, the topography, economy, his tory, religion and culture. Know every village, road, field, population group, tribal leader and ancient grievance. Your task is to become the world ex pert on your district. If you don’t know precisely where you will be operating, study the general area. Read the map like a book: study it every night before sleep, and re-draw it from memory ev ery morning, until you understand its patterns intuitively. … Neglect this knowledge, and it will kill you.”5 We focused our efforts on familiarizing our Soldiers with Zabul’s borders, cit ies, roads and rivers. Over time, we in cluded the significant mountain ranges and outlying districts. Since we didn’t have military maps of Zabul at first, we relied on open-source maps of Afghan istan, RC-South and Zabul from sources like Google Earth. In practice, our terrain familiarization started with a formal class that resembled elements of the standard operations order. I briefed by orienting and familiarizing the platoon with the province. Next, we engaged in a less formal dialogue in a classroom setting driven by Soldier questions. Where are the population centers in the prov ince? How busy are the roads? What are the main roads and routes around the U.S. bases? Through free-flowing discussion, we created a dialogue where Soldiers and noncommissioned officers (NCOs) with experience in RC-South could answer questions for the less-experienced Soldiers. The ques tions we couldn’t answer became our request-for-information (RFI) list for our battalion’s S-2. In the process, our Soldiers started thinking critically and internalizing the most important as pects of the battlespace. Lastly, we tested our Soldiers’ reten tion of the terrain-based information. Starting in generalities and working to ward more detailed questions, we test ed our Soldiers’ ability to freehand-sketch the province on blank paper. Some caught on more quickly than oth ers, but eventually every Soldier be came confident in his understanding of Zabul. Each Soldier knew where High way 1 bisected the province, why it was important and through which dis tricts it traveled. Further, after only a couple of weeks, each Soldier could draw the province, its key cities, its dis tricts, its roads, its rivers and the sur rounding provinces. Each Soldier knew where key cities were located, how large their populations were and what the roads generally looked like. As a re sult, weeks before we were wheels-up, the platoon was confident that it un derstood the geography of the bat tlespace to which it was deploying. Language and culture Language and cultural training were the second critical component of our Zabul School curriculum. Three of our platoon’s 29 Soldiers had the opportu nity to attend Pashtu language training as part of the brigade’s pre-deploy ment training. Those Soldiers had been handpicked to attend training based on their aptitude for learning and their communication skill. These Soldiers in troduced the rest of us to Afghan lan guage and culture. In the final weeks leading up to the de ployment, our Pashtu-trained Soldiers led two classes per week on key Pash tu phrases and Afghan cultural norms. Our Soldiers with experience in RC-South or who had some familiarity with the language helped. The classes normally included the introduction of key phrases and vocabulary through PowerPoint slides and practical exer cises in buddy teams across the class room. Specifically, we rehearsed basic introductions and the most common individual exchanges we anticipated encountering. In addition to the obvious benefits of knowing key phrases, language train ing enabled our leaders to discuss the importance of cross-cultural respect, understanding and nonverbal commu nication. Our Soldiers who had gradu ated the Advanced Situational Aware ness Training (ASAT) course briefed what they had learned about body lan guage and how to use nonverbal clues to pick up signals of fear and anger. Soldiers with limited language experi ence learned the importance of non verbal communication and body lan guage to convey meaning. During the training, several Soldiers demonstrated a natural aptitude to learn key phrases quickly; those Soldiers later excelled as security-force personnel and often took the lead during our partnered op erations with Afghan forces. A final cultural class we developed covered the principles of Pashtunwali, the honor code of Pashtu populations residing in Zabul and Kandahar. Once again, with minimal guidance and a short list of suggested reading references, two college-educated junior-enlisted personnel in our platoon took the initiative and delivered an outstanding presentation on Pashtunwali. By the end of the class, our Soldiers better understood the importance of hospitality, respect and women to the local Islamic population with which they were most likely to come in contact. History, situational awareness The third component of Zabul School consisted of a focused effort on edu cating our Soldiers on the history of southern Afghanistan, especially with

49 July-September 2015 respect to the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I have often observed many junior officers and NCOs read widely to familiarize themselves with the history of the enemy they may face and the environment to which they may deploy. Yet only rarely do these lessons-learned make their way down to the Soldier level. In our curriculum, we sought to familiarize the entire pla toon with the history of the Taliban and the Afghan population prior to de ploying. In an informal classroom set ting, we watched a handful of brief documentaries and gave NCOs the op portunities to brief the enemy tactics, techniques and procedures they had observed on past tours. Beyond history, I challenged our more ambitious younger Soldiers to develop and brief short classes in teams of two or three. In one example, three of our privates delivered a 15-minute presen tation on what they felt were the most important of Kilcullen’s articles of COIN and how those might come into play on our deployment. This forum enabled us to leverage and integrate our various educational and experiential backgrounds into con structive dialogues that helped all our Soldiers prepare mentally for the bat tlespace. These classes were not part of a lengthy program of instruction but instead were the result of brainstorm ing and curiosity at the platoon level and the soliciting of volunteers to step up and present critical information. Benefits In total, our platoon spent about 12 formal hours over the course of four weeks carrying out the Zabul School curriculum described previously, not including any outside time our subor dinate leaders used to expand further. Through observation and leader feed back, I found the return on investment for those 12 hours well worth their weight. Our platoon’s leadership was well pre pared to make the most of our brief RIP/transfer of authority. We were pre pared to cope with the constraints of the quick transition with the outgoing unit. Because of our familiarity with the terrain and geography, we were able to ask detailed questions that led to more nuanced lessons learned and mission analysis from the outgoing pla toons. Furthermore, our familiarity with the main routes and districts al lowed us to simply fill in the gaps with the details that experience and ad vanced imagery can provide rather than starting from zero. Our emphasis on language and culture greatly mitigated risk when working with our Afghan partners. Less than a week into our deployment, our platoon was interacting with Afghan soldiers and leaders on bases across Zabul. From our riflemen to our squad lead ers, our personnel were confident they could build relationships, establish baseline behavior in our partnered el ements and identify anomalies repre senting heightened risk. As a result, I never doubted that our platoon’s Sol diers would be respectful and cordial to our Afghan partners. Our Soldiers benefited professionally and personally from Zabul School. Pro fessionally, Soldiers developed confi dence in their briefing skills and im proved their ability to think critically about their operating environment. Soldiers also benefited on the person al, more intangible level. Some of my Soldiers told me that they had gone entire tours in the past without being able to point out their province’s loca tion on a map of Afghanistan. To me, that reflects poor, incomplete leader ship from company-level officers. It is unsatisfactory for leaders to tell subor dinates that terrain, culture and histor ical variables are important to opera tional success and yet postpone discus sions of the variables of ASCOPE and OACOK until after the deployment’s in-brief. Zabul School provided a medium for our platoon’s leadership to help our Soldiers “gain intellectual advantages over adversaries through cross-cultur al competencies,” consistent with the Army operational concept’s challenge.6 Lessons-learned and recommendations Outside of the challenge of finding time for our training curriculum in the busy training calendar, the greatest challenge was how to go about getting started with mission analysis. How ex actly do we train the “cross-cultural competencies” required to fight and win at the platoon level? While imperfect, Zabul School was certainly a learning experience for me. I learned that platoon leaders must lead from the front if they are to de velop platoons of cross-culturally com petent Soldiers. I used my familiarity with basic frameworks – METT-TC, OACOK and PMESII-PT – to put togeth er the first couple of briefs. In doing so, I framed the subsequent classes and established a foundation on which the training could build. Most importantly, I recognized early that the platoon’s collective commitment to learning cross-culturally would reflect the atti tude of my platoon sergeant and my platoon’s three squad leaders. Their buy-in was essential. As the platoon’s leadership, we made it clear that we highly prioritized learning about the operational environment. And because we approached the task with both the seriousness and humility required for learning, our Soldiers did, too. The best classroom training occurred when Soldiers were fully engaged in an informal, classroom environment. I learned that both atmosphere and set ting are immensely important to achieving results. I realized early on that many of my Soldiers had little to no experience abroad, spoke one lan guage and had never conducted the type of terrain and civil analysis essen tial for developing cross-cultural un derstanding. We needed to approach the task with humility and in a way that facilitated regular mature discussion on complex issues. In terms of setting, we learned that a closed classroom was more effective than a more traf ficked area with potential for distrac tions. With respect to the atmosphere, we emphasized from the first engage ments that this was a collective learn ing effort as a platoon – we were all in this together. We encouraged ques tions and feedback from every level and took each inquiry seriously. Our Soldiers showed a tremendous capac ity for learning and retaining terrain analysis, and a hunger to know more about the areas in which they would fight. In fact, the best RFIs I generated from the training did not come from my seasoned NCOs but from curious gunners who had never deployed. Using the skills and talents of Soldiers

50 July-September 2015 of all ranks and backgrounds for the purpose of learning about culture is es sential. I challenged my Soldiers who had strong presentation skills, experi ence abroad and advanced education. Two of them put together the slide show on Kilcullen’s articles of COIN. Our resident Pashtu-course graduates led our language training. Two Afghan istan veterans who were well-read on international relations helped motivate Soldiers to teach the platoon about Pashtunwali. Without question, the most valuable discussions were those that stemmed from the classes taught by these eager and curious Soldiers. There were also more nuanced take aways that aided the training’s effec tiveness. I learned to start the training early and to not overreach. Getting started early was critical. Eventually, our battalion staff provided exception al smartbooks and language cards to the Soldiers across the battalion that aided with mission analysis and nar rowed the focus areas, but if we had waited for these products to start our training, we would have been severely disadvantaged. Instead of relying on these aids as a base, we instead used them to fill in specific gaps in the knowledge we had built through our curriculum. Equally critical was making sure that our curriculum’s goals and pace were manageable and realistic for both the platoon and myself. We assessed that an hour a day would quickly lead to burnout, and an hour every three weeks would probably be too little for the desired progress. I found for our platoon that two to three hours a week, balanced across language train ing, terrain and area familiarization, and cross-cultural training was the right balance for our group. Lastly, we learned it was especially beneficial to integrate as many mis sion-specific competencies into the training as possible. My platoon knew that part of our mission would be se curity-force patrols securing U.S. advis ers, and our tactical patrols would like ly partner with Afghan National Army forces. In light of that mission and the high insider-threat potential, we trained accordingly to mitigate our tac tical risk and emphasized learning cul tural norms, respect and behavior. Are your Soldiers prepared? By limiting our Soldiers to the funda mental fighting functions of marks manship and squad attack, not only are we ignoring Army doctrine, but we also aren’t giving our Soldiers enough cred it – or enough of a challenge – intellec tually. Consider this: many of your Sol diers could, on a moment’s notice, sketch to-scale maps of several levels of the videogame “Call of Duty”; these same Soldiers are more than capable of conducting highly sophisticated analysis of the terrain on which they will fight. They just need to be chal lenged accordingly. The Army is and should remain in the business of man ufacturing leaders at every level. To day’s privates are tomorrow’s squad leaders; no one is too junior to know the fundamentals of the theater in which they are risking their lives. Time is not too short in the pre-deploy ment window already. To the platoon leader who feels constrained, consider Teddy Roosevelt’s famous words: “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”7 If all you can do is an informal class on the major cities in your area of operations two months before you deploy, great – that’s bet ter than nothing. If you have time for a more elaborate effort to educate your Soldiers on language, culture and geography, even better. But it is never too early to start. Zabul School proved a worthwhile ex ercise that reaped big rewards for our platoon. It was far from perfect. In hindsight, I should have started earlier; I should have used a wider array of ar ticles and videos; and I definitely should have worked harder to find pri mary sources with knowledge of Zabul. But even so, it was a learning exercise that moved us forward as a platoon, helped all of us improve our cross-cul tural competencies and made us that much more prepared to win in the complex environment to which we de ployed. Just like training battle drills, cross-cul tural training and learning to “know your turf” takes time and concentrated effort. As deployments shift from Af ghanistan and Iraq to new areas of op erations, the need for adaptive leaders who can hastily provide detailed analysis and innovative training in short timespans will only grow. CPT Tyler Matthews is a student at the Maneuver Captain’s Career Course. Most recently, he served as assistant battalion operations officer and rifle-platoon leader in 2-12 Infantry Regi ment, 4th Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, during which he deployed twice to Af ghanistan. His military schooling in cludes Ranger and Airborne schools and ASAT. He holds a bachelor’s of sci ence degree in political science from the U.S. Military Academy and a mas ter’s of science degree in African stud ies from the University of Oxford. Notes 1 FM 3-07, Stability, June 2014; Depart ment of the Army, Insurgencies and Counterinsurgencies, May 2014. 2 Army Doctrinal Reference Publication 5-0, The Operations Process, May 2012; FM 3-21.0, The Infantry Rifle Company, July 2006. 3 Insurgencies and Counterinsurgencies. 4 David Kilcullen, “Twenty-Eight Articles,” Counterinsurgency, 1 (2006). 5 Ibid. 6 U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Com mand Pamphlet 525-3-1, The U.S. Army Operating Concept: Win in a Complex World, October 2014. 7 Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography, New York: MacMillan, 1913. Acronym Quick-Scan ASAT – advanced situational-awareness training ASCOPE – areas, structures, capabilities, organizations, people and events COIN – counterinsurgency FM – field manual METT-TC – mission, enemy, terrain, troops available, time, civil considerations NCO – noncommissioned officer OACOK – observation and fields of fire, avenues of approach, key terrain, obstacles and movement, and cover and concealment PMESII-PT – political, military, economic, social, information, infrastructure, physical environment and time RC – regional command RFI – request for information RIP – relief in place