When he ends his 24-year Army career soon after he gets back form Afghanistan, French Army Captain Michel Pech is planning on opening a foundation to help wounded French soldiers deal with their injuries and to tech them skills to build a life while coping with the effects of the combat experience that altered their bodies forever.

A veteran of years of French Special Forces missions around the globe which included action in Rwanda in 1994—the horrors of which left a lasting impression on the young soldier—Pech currently teaches ethics and combat stress to cadets at the École Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr, the French military academy. While that’s his day job, these days you can find him in Kabul as part of a six-month rotation in the French “Epidote” program that pairs experienced French officers with young Afghan officers to instruct them both in the art of counterinsurgency (COIN) and how to be platoon and company leaders.

The officer course, which had been 26 weeks long, has recently been cut down to 20 weeks as part of the rapid expansion of the Afghan National Security Forces outlined most recently in General Stanley McChrystal’s mission assessment which held that “Tighter, restructured training programs will deliver an infantry-based, COIN capable, force in a shorter period of time with the capability of conducting “hold” operations with some “clear” capability while closely partnered with coalition forces … More inexperienced leaders will be accepted into the junior officer and NCO ranks and the risk will be balanced by close partnering ANSF with coalition forces.”

Cpt. Pech doesn’t necessarily think that the condensed training is a problem, explaining one recent evening in Kabul that “the Afghan army, in two years—maybe three—it will be a good army. I think they will be up to doing the job alone.” The Afghans already know the terrain, and they know how to fight, he said. But what they’re lacking is unit cohesion and an ability to plan missions effectively. But that’s something that they’ll have to try and learn from embedded NATO and American advisory teams, who are out in the field with the Afghans on a daily basis.

The training program is cut into two ten-week blocks: the first ten weeks being focused on counterinsurgency (COIN) techniques, and the second half focused on leadership skills for the future platoon and company leaders. One French trainer is assigned to each platoon leader, and one to each company commander for the duration of the course. Most of the courses are scenario-based, with the cadets being given scenarios to work though, then left alone to plan and conduct the operation, after which the French step in and critique their performance. “For them it is difficult to learn the technique of coordination,” between units to accomplish an objective Pech said, adding that because Afghans have a more, shall we say, “elastic” conception of time than Westerners, planning and coordination is extremely frustrating. “But all of the officers of the ANA know their job—in the field they’re very good.” Both Captain Pech’s biggest compliment—the physical toughness of the Afghan soldiers—and his biggest complaint—their inability to plan and stick to schedules—were something I would later hear time and again from an American Embedded Training Team working with an Afghan brigade in Khost.

Still, to teach the basics of platoon and company leadership along with the fundamentals of counterinsurgency in less than six months is an incredibly difficult undertaking, even without the external pressures that the cadets face. Pech said that some of the cadets can’t go back to their home villages or districts because they’re now marked men, and other cadets have confided that they have family members who are Taliban.

As much as anything else, this fact is important to remember. While the West rightfully argues over issues of strategy, and if the fight in Afghanistan is lined up with national strategic objectives, for the Afghans it’s something vastly more personal. It’s a civil war.