NATO to Take Over Training Afghan Security Forces
On Saturday, NATO took command of the training mission of the Afghan army and police force. In their Forgotten Front report, the Center for American Progress, accused the U.S. of trying to create a ‘pseudo-military’ out of the Afghan police rather than the civilian task force it should be.
In fact, many news reports have featured Afghan citizens who feel they have no one to report crimes to, specifically because there is no strong, legitimate police force in the embattled nation:
The existing U.S. training mission, CSTC-A, until now responsible for most of the training, is to merge with the new “NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan” (NTM-A), under a single NATO command, commanders said on Saturday at a ceremony in Kabul.
Deputy Commander of the new NATO mission Major General Michael Ward said he believed the move would encourage more NATO training personnel to be sent to Afghanistan, helping to speed the expansion of local forces.
“I‘m very optimistic. We‘ve identified what our needs are and we‘re bringing those back to NATO to get nations to contribute and we‘ve already seen in this run-up, a significant number of people coming in with exactly the right skills,” Ward told Reuters.
Increase in Afghan Security Forces by 2010:
At present there are about 95,000 Afghan soldiers and about 93,000 police.
In his assessment of the war, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Army General Stanley McChrystal, has recommended local security forces be eventually raised to a total of 400,000 soldiers and police.
Ward said the immediate aim was to increase the army to 134,000 and the police force to 96,800 by October 2010.
NATO takes command of Afghan army, police training [Reuters]
View Comments