Word: afghanistan
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...address these costs." For the moment, he is content to do what he has done best - connect with his immediate audience. After the speech ended, he worked the West Point cadets like a campaign rope line, smiling for many a digital camera. The glad-handing won't help in Afghanistan, but it looked good on television, suggesting support from a military that will now be asked to sacrifice some more...
...There are currently more than 110,000 foreign soldiers in Afghanistan, anchored by a 68,000-strong U.S. force. The other members of the 43-nation, NATO-led coalition provide some 42,000 troops. The Afghan army currently numbers about 94,000, but the government wants a force of 134,000 by October 2010, rising...
...spite of crumbling public support for the mission in Afghanistan, the U.S.'s NATO allies should be able to muster an extra 5,000 troops to join President Barack Obama's surge, officials at the alliance say. But this will still fall well short of the 10,000 troops Washington has been seeking. And it is likely to come with demands for a more robust strategy to build civil institutions, including benchmarks on stamping out fraud and corruption in the Afghan government...
...Some NATO officials, though, say that even getting to 5,000 extra troops could be hopeful. That number may include troops that were already deployed as reinforcements for Afghanistan's presidential elections last August. And many NATO countries, struggling with a deeply skeptical public, have already indicated they want to scale back their military involvement in Afghanistan...
...constraints on government expenditure. "I don't see anyone sending massive numbers. Most countries are under pressure to announce exit strategies," says Shada Islam, Senior Program Executive at the European Policy Center, a Brussels-based think tank. "It's such a confused narrative about what we are doing in Afghanistan. Nobody can explain what we're doing, and people think there is nothing to show for the billions of dollars plowed into this." (See pictures of British soldiers in Afghanistan...