Reinforcement troops from the Afghan army prepared to travel to Kandahar.Ahmad Masood/Reuters
Dan De Luce, The Cable/Foreign Policy: Afghan Forces Face a ‘Crisis’: Watchdog
Without NATO troops at their side, the Afghan army and police are struggling and often failing on the battlefield against the Taliban and Islamic State extremists, despite $64 billion in assistance from the United States since 2002. That’s the sobering conclusion of the U.S. official in charge of auditing aid money for Afghanistan, John Sopko.
The capability of the Afghan security forces has deteriorated since the bulk of U.S. and coalition troops withdrew in 2014, and several provinces are now under serious threat of falling to the militants, according to Sopko, who testified before a congressional panel on Friday.
Many of the billions in U.S. assistance for the Afghan army and police has been spent inefficiently or squandered, he said. And since the departure of most American troops, it has become increasingly difficult to exercise real oversight over the program, or to get a clear picture of the state of the forces, as Washington has to depend on unreliable information provided by ministries in Kabul, according to Sopko.
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WNU Editor: A depressing report. You cannot help but feel that the Afghan Army will never be able to be the effective fighting force that Afghanistan so sorely needs.
6 comments:
WNU Editor,
"A depressing report. You cannot help but feel that the Afghan Army will never be able to be the effective fighting force that Afghanistan so sorely needs."
That's funny, because the Talib are both effective, and affordable.
This is no surprise, this is what happens when you fight war by Think Tank.
You can't be inspired by a president who wears articles of clothing from each ethnic group, while his brother becomes a billionaire.
If there had not be a GWOT, the Karzai clan would have the same interdicts as Mobutu Seko
If you take a very narrow view and do not know how to count, the Taliban are affordable.
I still think that the real blame lays in the absence of any serious help from the US to establish the Afghan Army after the initial invasion in 2001. The US lacked a clear strategy from 2001 until 2009. It was a missed chance. Yes the US did train Afghan soldiers but it wasn't to the extent or with the resources as to what the US put into the Iraqi army. Some US commanders were good but nothing major got going until McChrystal took command in 2009.
in that world, there are oppressed and oppressors. things only change when the oppressed decide that they have a better reason to be on the top than on the bottom. only the taliban are so well organized and ideaed that they have the desire to crush their opponents. another group could replace the taliban only if it has a better organizing principal and can out-ruthless the taliban.
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