A Fragile Key to the Exit: Training Afghan Forces

President Barack Obama's plan to get U.S. troops out of Afghanistan in three years without yielding it to the Taliban hinges on training Afghan army and police forces. So far, after spending more than $6.2 billion on training the police and substantially more on the nascent Afghan National Army, the U.S. and its allies are still a long way from building an indigenous force that can hold up against a determined Taliban adversary.

Both the hope and the discouragement that have accompanied training efforts so far were on display one recent chilly morning in a village in eastern Afghanistan's Pech River Valley. Troops from the U.S. Army's 2nd Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment, and a green group of Afghan National Army troops were charged with searching a handful of mud-brick homes for weapons and bomb-making material. The American soldiers stayed outside and let their Afghan counterparts conduct the house searches, since villagers object to foreign soldiers entering their homes, particularly when women are present.

The Afghans did fine on the sweep, which turned up just a single shotgun that the U.S. commander allowed its owner to keep. But moments later, when shots rang out from the surrounding mountains, their soldierly discipline faltered. While American troops took protective cover and returned fire, the Afghans soldiers appeared confused, disorganized and even indifferent to the perils of the rocket-propelled grenades and machine gun fire peppering the combined forces. If it had been a concerted attack, they looked as if they might well have simply fled.

Motivation for hanging tough doesn't come easy, yet it is key to forging an effective Afghan counterinsurgency force. More experience, better equipment and training, and more pay all help, but may not suffice. "The very first thing they have to do -- and if they can't get over this hurdle it's hopeless -- they have to create an Afghan government that people are willing to die for," says Winslow Wheeler, a military analyst with the Center for Defense Information. "In other words, a government that takes the interest of its civilians first and understands the concepts of ethical, competent government."

While progress on that goal has so far been lacking, there has been some on other fronts. Last week the Afghan ministries of the Interior and Defense announced a 40 percent pay rise for Afghan soldiers and policemen to $165 a month, a relative fortune considering the average Afghan earns about $25 a month. The hope is that better pay will help counter the estimated 25 percent desertion rate in the army, as well as pervasive corruption and bribe-taking among the police.

"This will help improve recruiting, increase retention of those professionals in the force today, and it will also help reduce attrition," said Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell, a commander at NATO's Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan, which is tasked with training the Afghan National Army.

U.S. and NATO commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal has called for doubling both Afghan security forces, which currently have a strength of about 90,000 each. However, before Obama's speech Tuesday announcing details of his plan, The Wall Street Journal reported that the administration was backing off from committing to a doubling of those forces out of concerns over the continued inefficacy of the Afghan government that would control them.

U.S. forces tasked with training the Afghan army claim they're making progress in learning the art of war, but their police counterparts are widely condemned for being corrupt and undedicated. Earlier this week, an Afghan policeman shot and killed six of his fellow officers in southwestern Afghanistan before being killed himself. The threat of Afghan soldiers and policemen turning on their brethren and foreign trainers has become more acute over the last year.

Nevertheless, the arduous consultations in the White House over how to prosecute the war appear to have reached the consensus that enlarging and improving Afghan security forces is critical to the success of the U.S.-led campaign there. Obama's announcement of 30,000 more troops is meant to unlock an exit strategy that depends on those Afghans taking over.

But some hope for even more than that. On CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Carl Levin argued that a U.S.-led "surge" in Afghanistan reminiscent of the one in Iraq in 2006-07 is not the solution. Instead, he said, an expanded Afghan security force should lead the charge.

"The key here is an Afghan surge, not an American surge," said Levin.

But so far, Afghan forces haven't shown much fire in the belly when it comes to defending the widely disdained government of President Hamid Karzai. Many Afghan soldiers and policemen complain they don't receive their salaries on time, if at all, and they blame Karzai officials for skimming funds from federal coffers earmarked for national security.

James Jay Carafano, a defense and military expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said Levin and others who want to foist the responsibility for the prosecution of the war on the Afghans have failed to take Afghanistan's endemic corruption into account.

"It's a stupid statement [by Levin] because the Afghans are not going to surge anything," an irate Carafano said in a phone interview. "That's just idiot Levin talk."

However the dependence on Afghan forces is calibrated, Obama is prepared to wager his presidency on Afghans proving willing to fight for their deeply fractured nation. It's a bet that could prove costly both to his political future and the lives of the tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops he plans to send into harm's way.