Andrew Mackay (British Army officer)

Major-General Andrew Douglas Mackay, CBE is a former British Army officer who commanded 2nd Division.

Military career
Mackay was an Inspector in the Royal Hong Kong Police for three years before he was commissioned into the King's Own Scottish Borderers in 1982. He served in Northern Ireland as a company commander and worked on the strategic and operational planning in the Balkans during the Bosnian War and Kosovo War. He was made Commanding Officer of 1st King's Own Scottish Borderers in 1998.

On promotion to Brigadier he served for a year in Baghdad, Iraq. In that capacity he was tasked with setting up and commanding the Civilian Police Assistance Training Team. CPATT was responsible for mentoring, training, equipping and organising the Iraqi Police and the Ministry of Interior. During this period he served alongside General David Petraeus and they are said to be close friends. He became Commander of 52nd Infantry Brigade in 2004 and commanded the Helmand Task Force in Afghanistan from October 2007 in which role he led the successful assault on Musa Qala in the north of Helmand in December 2007. This action was later described as the "best operation to come out of Afghanistan in years" by the Pentagon. The author Stephen Grey subsequently wrote a best selling book of the battle for Musa Qaleh called Operation Snakebite within which Andrew Mackay and his style of leadership featured. 52 Brigade's tour of Helmand was controversial and led to considerable debate within military circles on the emphasis that Mackay placed on the role of Influence and non kinetic operations. Mackay's approach to COIN was also featured in Mark Urban's three part BBC series Afghanistan: War without End.

He was appointed General Officer Commanding 2nd Division and Governor of Edinburgh Castle in May 2009 but resigned only a few months later in September 2009, citing "personal reasons". However, other sources attributed his resignation to frustration over the war in Afghanistan. He subsequently expressed the opinion, in a paper co-authored with Commander Steve Tatham and delivered to the Defence Academy, that the Ministry of Defence was "institutionally incapable of keeping pace with rapid change and the associated willingness to adapt". In 2011 he co-authored with Commander Tatham a book entitled Behavioural Conflict: Why Understanding People and Their Motivations Will Prove Decisive in Future Conflict.