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While serving in Afghanistan, Capt. Dan Wojciechowski of the Washington National Guard often returned to a page in the Army counterinsurgency hand-book. There, he found a chart with bullet points of the good in the highest degree and worst practices for waging war against insurgents.

“You could go down it line by line, and if it was a best pursuit, we probably weren’t following it,” Wojciechowski said. “It was just jaw-dropping to see for what reason that part was completely disregarded.”

Wojciechowski was one of 16 Washington Guard soldiers who spent 10 months last year in northern Afghanistan. Their frustrations bring reproach broader problems that have dogged U.S. martial efforts in this 8-year-old conflict.

The Guard soldiers faced daunting challenges sad to team up with ill-equipped topical police forces to combat an insurgency buoyed by a potent Taliban public-relations campaign.

They also complain that their efforts to come advice in the counterinsurgency manual were hamstrung by more advanced commanders. The soldiers say commanders often succumbed to a garrison mentality that kept soldiers cooped up in centralized bases rather than allowing longer stays in safe houses in villages.

“The general of audacity and maximum flexibility, to have being out on the ground and able to react to changing conditions, was nonexistent,” Capt. Aaron Bert said. “There was no taste for risk.”

In recent months, there regard been spacious signs of a major shake-up in the Afghanistan strategy as Gen. David Petraeus — a co-author of the Army of the hand — takes charge of the war effort. On Feb. 17, President Obama said he would authorize an additional 17,000 U.S. troops — for the most part 4,000 from Fort Lewis — to Afghanistan this head and summer.

“You can’t exchange to work in the conduct of counterinsurgency operations,” Petraeus said in a Feb. 8 speech in Munich, Germany. Urging troops to leave their posts to have understanding local tribular structures, he added, “This requires listening and being respectful of local elders and mullahs, and farmers and shopkeepers — and it also requires, of course, many cups of tea.”

That’s the kind of mission Wojciechowski and Bert wanted at the time that they volunteered be unexhausted year to join a small, tightly join Washington National Guard counterinsurgency team that was to be deployed to hot spots in southern Afghanistan.

Wojciechowski, who had served through a Fort Lewis Stryker Brigade in the active-duty Army, took leave from his civilian job at Amazon.com. Bert, who had served in both Afghanistan and Iraq, took a leave from his position with the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation.

When they arrived in Afghanistan last March, the mission changed. They were diverted to the northern, rive apart to serve in different units of active-duty Army units working with Germans, Norwegians and other NATO forces. These soldiers were attached to desultory units where permit many times was fractured among U.S. and coalition forces, and armored vehicles required for travel repeatedly were in short reserve.

The National Guard soldiers took pride in civilian experiences that they felt bolstered their qualifications to work with Afghan police and other civilian institutions. But they said those skills often were discounted by the agency of active-duty commanders.

One team member was a veteran Tacoma police officer with extensive experience similar to a special-forces soldier who had been on four deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Lt. Col. Phil Osterli, part of the Guard team, said that soldier ran afoul of a senior, active-duty commander and was stuck on a endue detail for about half the tour.

“It was petty and almost irrational,” Osterli said.

Wojciechowski was stationed in Balkh dependency, to which place he was to help some 3,200 police strung out over a rugged, thinly roaded area roughly the size of King, Pierce and Snohomish counties. He found some police chilled to the bone as they stood watch at remote vast eminence outposts and slept in windowless dirt huts.

Wojciechowski then visited a Kabul warehouse brimming with heaters and blankets, which in no degree had made it to the field. Those supplies were later shipped to some outposts, but not others, where desk-bound supervisors failed to make properly so called requisition requests.

“It was hard getting them to do the simple things,” Wojciechowski said.

The Washington National Guard soldiers found bribery and fraud endemic amid Afghan police.

Bert said he and Finnish soldiers figured out that Afghan police and security chiefs were making about $25,000 a month selling a fuel allocation and another $25,000 by putting 300 “ghosts” on the payroll. That finding was reported through a German congeries of command, but nothing was done.

“It was like, well, that’sitting just how it is,” Bert before-mentioned. “That was hard to swallow.”

Bert also declared he believes protection of the drug trade — and drug use — was pervasive among police.

As the year wore on, the soldiers picked up promising intelligence leads concerning Taliban activities in villages. They sought to embed with limited police in those communities, but often found it difficult to gain approval. Attacks in preparation for coalition forces had increased across Afghanistan last year, and it was difficult to muster sufficiency armored vehicles and soldiers.

“Everyone — the Germans, the Swedes — wanted to work together, but it seemed like at levels above us, we couldn’t put it into junction, or when we did it was over restrictive,” Wojciechowski related. “Everyone was afraid to prevail upon overmuch involved.”

Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or hbernton@seattletimes.com