Tuesday, August 9, 2016

The U.S. Has Spent $17 Billion To Arm The Afghan Army And National Police But The Taliban Are Still Winning

Afghan soldiers stand in formation in Tarin Kowt, Afghanistan, November of 2008. Photo by John Scott Rafoss of the United States of America. Wikipedia

Washington Free Beacon: U.S. Spends $17 Billion to Arm Struggling Afghan Armed Forces as Taliban Surges

Afghan force shrinks despite billions in military aid from U.S.

The United States has spent more than $17 billion to provide weapons, ammunition, and other military equipment to Afghanistan’s struggling defense forces, even as the number of Afghans enlisted in these services dips amid a resurgence in Taliban-backed violence, according to new figures published by a government oversight body.

The United States has spent nearly $13 billion to arm the Afghan National Army as of May 31, 2016 and another $4.2 billion on weapons for the Afghan National Police, according to figures from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

The latest tally of U.S. expenditures for these forces comes amid a new surge of violence in Afghanistan caused by the Taliban, which President Obama said had been “toppled” on Monday.

Read more ....

WNU Editor: Now I know why some Taliban units are better armed than the Afghan Army .... The Taliban Have An Elite Commando Force That Is Causing Havoc On The Afghan Army (August 8, 2016).

1 comment:

B.Poster said...

The US spends more on it's military than any other country. This is often touted by "experts" to "prove" the United States and it's "allies" are the strongest fighting forces on earth.

Since I'm pretty sure most readers are familiar with American football, I am going to use an analogy that pertains to this. Coaches, players, and former players who have all exceled at the game have referred to the statistic known as "time of possession" meaning how much time your offensive team actually has the ball as the "least important statistic in football." Since this statistic does NOY measure how many points your team actually scored on offense or did your team prevent the other team from scoring, this analysis is spot on.

How much money a country spent/spends on it's military is the least important measure of how good that country's military is relative to another country. It is similar to the time of possession statistic in American football except far less important as a metric for measuring military prowess than time of possession is in football.

As such, while the statistic may prove interesting for talking points and it may well mean that money spent in this area cannot be spent on things like infrastructure, paying off debt, education, healthcare, etc. it is completely irrelevant in measuring military prowess and should not be taken seriously when analyzing military power between nation states and should be ignored entirely for this purpose or relegated to a minor metric. In short, commentators who harp on this statistic should not be taken seriously as military analysts.