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KABUL: Afghan government's plans to massively boost army and police numbers have been greeted with scepticism by diplomats and military experts who say the figures are too ambitious.
Afghanistan lacks the capacity to recruit and train men in large enough numbers, they said, despite a pledge by President Hamid Karzai to take over the nation's security from foreign troops by the end of his new five-year term.
Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak used a ceremony on Saturday in Kabul, where NATO took command of Afghan army training, to announce that security force numbers would be cranked up to 400,000.
"Our programme is to have a total of 240,000 soldiers," ministry spokesman Zahir Azimi told AFP, more than double the current about 100,000.
They hope to have 150,000 by the end of next year, he added, with the rest "in following years".
Police numbers would rise to 160,000 from the current 97,000, said Zamarai Bashary, interior ministry spokesman, adding the "deadline is under discussion".
Experts said recruiting such numbers would be difficult because Afghanistan lacks a pool of literate young men, as well as veterans with leadership skills, facilities for training and grooming, and money for weapons and ammunition.
"That means they will have to be raising trained soldiers at a rate of 3,000 people per month – that's a very tall order," said a military attache in Kabul, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"They will have to find more than 100,000 at least semi-educated young men who are volunteers to join the army. It will be difficult," he said.
Afghanistan's first batch of 120 officers passed out earlier this year after four years' training at the National Military Academy.
Increasing police numbers faced similar problems to the army, said a Western diplomat, speaking anonymously.
Wardak had spoken "prematurely", he said, as Interior Ministry working groups are yet to complete reports on which such decisions will be based.
"There is no way we can recruit that many people," the diplomat said. "The numbers are political. The Afghans are under pressure from the United States to boost the numbers, but the Afghans are also putting on the pressure for support to do so."
Western nations supporting Afghanistan are pressuring Karzai to bolster security forces and take responsibility for the war against Taliban-led insurgents so their own forces can be drawn down.
Afghan defence forces are currently backed by more than 100,000 international soldiers taking the operational lead in battling the insurgents, who are spreading their footprint across the war-ravaged country.
The US and NATO are eager to cut deployments in response to public opinion, which is increasingly impatient with a perceived lack of progress in the war.
Karzai, bowing to international pressure, vowed in a speech marking his inauguration last week that Afghan forces will lead operations in three years and take overall responsibility in five years.
"We are determined that within the next five years, the Afghan forces are capable of taking the lead in ensuring security and stability across the country," he said.
General Stanley McChrystal, US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has adopted a strategy called "partnering" in which Afghan and foreign soldiers train, live and fight together.
But NATO commanders, who last month approved a plan to accelerate the training programme, said the Afghan army is plagued by defections and drug addiction.
Out of the some 94,000 Afghan soldiers trained so far, 10,000 have defected, said General Egon Ramms, commander of the operational headquarters in charge of the NATO-led International Assistance Force in Afghanistan (ISAF).
Some 15 per cent are drug addicts, he said. The police faced similar problems, are prone to corruption and their training has been inefficient.
McChrystal plans to double the size of the Afghan police within a few years. Their losses are expected to reach 1,500 killed this year, and some 10,000 are AWOL.
US President Barack Obama is currently considering a large increase in US troop numbers, expected to be announced after Thursday's Thanksgiving holiday and to include a component of trainers.
- AFP/so
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