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United States will speed up 70,000-strong Afghanistan army

WASHINGTON: The United States is trying to fast-track Afghanistan’s objective of having a 70,000-strong army within five years, the American envoy to Kabul said on Friday.

“We are looking at how ... to get to the 70,000 (target) as soon as possible,” Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said. “The current plan is to get there in five additional years. We could do that at a faster rate. We are looking at that.” The Afghan army is more than 15,000 strong today while the police force has more than 30,000 trained personnel, according to the envoy.

Khalilzad said German-led efforts to train Afghan police personnel would also be stepped up, based on lessons learned in Iraq, where training of local policemen was being boosted. Last year, 20,000 Afghan police personnel were trained and “we are looking at ways to make that police training programme into an effective programme.

“Our preferred approach is to get the Afghans to stand on their own feet as soon as possible,” he said. “We could get at that number sooner if we put more resources in.” Khalilzad said “clearly for some time to come, there will be a role for US and coalition forces and NATO” in Afghanistan with an option to bring about a unified force. At present NATO-run and US-led forces in Afghanistan were separate entities.

The United States has nearly 20,000 troops in Afghanistan. They are still seeking to pacify the country’s southeastern border regions three years after the fall of the hard line Islamic Taliban regime after a US-led invasion. NATO has a 9,000-strong International Security Assistance force primary involved in peacekeeping and reconstruction efforts. Khalizad said it would “take as long as 10 years” for Afghanistan “to be a truly successful country in terms of its security, in terms of economic development, in terms of being a successful democratic state.” afp

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