How Capable Are Afghan Security Forces?

MICHELE NORRIS, host:

More now on the Afghan security forces: As Tom just mentioned, the hope is that they'll gradually take over the task of protecting the population. So, how is that going? Back in March, President Obama said he was shifting the emphasis of the U.S. mission to training and increasing the size of the Afghan forces.

President BARACK OBAMA: For three years, our commanders have been clear about the resources they need for training. Those resources have been denied because of the war in Iraq. Now, that will change.

ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

The president set a goal for the buildup: an Afghan army of 134,000 and a police force of 82,000 by the year 2011. In September, 4,000 more U.S. troops arrived to help train the Afghans at centers like this one in Kandahar.

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Unidentified Man #1: (Foreign language spoken)

NORRIS: When Ronald Neumann was the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007, he says U.S. backing of Afghan forces was inadequate. Now, with more resources, he says, the Afghan army is gaining some ground.

Mr. RONALD NEUMANN (Former U.S. Ambassador): They're operating in all five military districts - that is the whole country. But they're under strength. One of the things we will have to deal with, as we go forward to build a larger army, is not trying to rush it too fast, not trying to push it into combat more than it can handle too fast. There are all kinds of problems in training. There are issues of whether we're trying to train too much in our own image. But overall, the performance of the Afghan army has been reasonably satisfactory. We got a very late start on increasing numbers and increasing equipment and giving it any capacity to operate on its own. We need to follow up on that.

NORRIS: What lessons should the U.S. take from Iraq, where there were significant challenges to training the police and the security forces there? And that was a country where there was much higher rate of education and literacy.

Mr. NEUMANN: There are some lessons which I think are not really training lessons. I think Afghans are more interested in the project than - they see themselves more involved in saving their country than, I think, many Iraqis did at one point. Clearly one lesson is it is enormously hard to have locally-recruited, locally-based forces and get away from corruption and local politics. We've seen it in both police forces.

I think that as we look at who has the population protection mission, we should be careful when we think about the police, which is the weakest force and the least certain of accomplishment, not yet to hand them too much of the major mission.

NORRIS: I heard you say that one of the dangers for the U.S. was trying to train the Afghan security forces too much in our own image. How does the U.S. try to overcome that natural tendency and what model should it be looking at?

Mr. NEUMANN: I think so far we've done a pretty good job. I mean, you do have Afghan battalions that have been fighting with Special Forces advisors that have done quite a credible job. There is going to be a problem if we try to train to too high a technological standard, when the culture itself doesn't easily support that.

On the other hand, I think the facile comparison with the Taliban: they run around with almost no equipment, so why can't we train the Afghan army to fight like that? That's a mistake because a government has responsibilities for protection the Taliban don't have. The Taliban can disengage from a fight whenever it goes bad or they don't like it. Government forces, if they're going to defend population, can't run away. They have tasks that they have to maintain. That requires sustainment, that requires equipment, that requires tying them to radios, logistics and various things. So, the counterinsurgent can't look the insurgent.

NORRIS: That's former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Ronald Neumann. He's now president of the American Academy of Diplomacy. You can read a memo he wrote about the ethnic breakdown of the Afghan army at our Web site.

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SIEGEL: We're hearing all this hour about what's next for Afghanistan. If you've missed any part of this special, you can download the entire hour at npr.org. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.