E. “Success Reporting” by Female Engagement Teams (FETs) in Afghanistan
(Lesson #2430)
Observation.
Female Engagement Teams (FETs) were established by International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)
in Afghanistan in 2009 to influence Afghan women as part of counter-insurgency (COIN)
strategy. According to the report on which this lesson is based, written by a Cultural Advisor in
Regional Command – South (RC-S), US Marine Corps (USMC) and British (UK) FETs in Helmand
province in southern Afghanistan from 2010 to early 2012 reported many of their engagements as
successes without culturally-appropriate indicators to evaluate whether or not there were substantive
outcomes to their varied activities.
Discussion.
After the events of September 11 th and the United States’ subsequent invasion of Afghanistan, the
2001 Bonn Conference established, for the provision of security, the International Security Assistance
Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, whose leadership was taken over by the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) in 2003. Initially, ISAF forces did not form gender-specific engagements or
include female military personnel prominently in engagements due in part to cultural concerns of
offending Afghan men. However, by 2010, ISAF had turned towards a COIN strategy which required
a population-centric approach for the entire society. Afghan women thus became part of the strategic
calculus of the international forces, seen as an untapped 50% of the population who could be won to
influence their communities against the insurgency.
The first Female Engagement Teams (FETs) were initiated by the US Marine Corps (USMC) in 2009
as small teams of female Soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan to engage local Afghan women in light
of this population-centric strategy. The concept was subsequently promoted by USMC Captain Matt
Pottinger, who co-founded the first FET, until it was accepted at higher levels, and by summer 2010,
ISAF HQ had issued orders that all Regional Commands (RC) launch FETs. USMC established a four
month pre-deployment training for FET, ISAF required all deployed Brigade Combat Teams to send
female candidates for FET training in theater, and FETs from the United Kingdom (UK) implemented
short pre-deployment training as well. By 2012, however, only the Marines had full-time FET
personnel.
From the ad hoc beginning of FETs, both commanders and FETs themselves experienced
considerable confusion over these teams’ specific roles, due in part to a broad range of objectives and
a lack of standardization of the teams. FETs ended up performing a broad variety of tasks that ranged
from cordon and search operations to playing with children, teaching literacy, and providing medical
handouts. FETs were tasked to improve situational awareness for military units while influencing
Afghan women to perceive the ISAF forces as benevolent and to support the Government of the
Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA) instead of the Taliban. Yet, some teams were discouraged
from participating in ‘women’s rights’ discourse, which at times proved to be a
contradiction. Furthermore, although some guidance stressed that FETs were not intelligence
collection assets, due to possible danger this may bring to the Afghan women, not all commanders
were trained in how to utilize FETs, and some hoped that FETs could in fact be used to yield
actionable intelligence.
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