From June to December 2003 in support of Operation Enduring Freedom-Afghanistan, Major Nikolai Andresky served as the S3, S2 and de facto XO trainer on an advisory team assigned to train the first and only Afghan National Army armor battalion. Among the first conventional US Army forces on the ground in Afghanistan in such a training capacity, Andresky - previously a troop commander in the 11th ACR - in this interview discusses his predeployment preparations, operating initially in the Camp Policharki / Kabul metropolitan area in country and then at Camp Black Horse, and the principal challenge his team faced in understanding that "we were working at the Afghans' pace and that we were there to help them build their army, not to make a miniature US Army." He also discusses working with personnel from fellow NATO countries and how they interacted with the Afghans, and says that he wishes he'd had a much better grasp of Afghan culture prior to deploying and how Afghans currently living in the US represent a potential untapped resource for assisting the military in this manner.

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