Word: afghanization
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Read a TIME story about the Afghan boxer who won French citizenship...
...would be needed to defend the country shortly after the U.S. invaded in late 2001. But the beefed up force is needed to battle surging enemies led by the Taliban - scattered by the U.S. in 2001, but who have since returned with a vengeance - and al-Qaeda. The current Afghan military comprises about 90,000 troops, slated to rise to 134,000, while there are 80,000 men in the national police...
...Tuesday, Afghan Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta called on the international community to give the country the tools and training it needs to prevail. "Afghanistan is determined to take more responsibilities in the fight on terrorism," Spanta said in Kabul. "We hope that the international community does more to strengthen our police and army. We want them to send more police trainers, more army trainers and send us more equipment...
...there's a problem with the option of doubling the size of the Afghan security forces: Officials inside and out of the Pentagon warn that the bill for setting up such a large force, estimated at $2 billion to $3 billion annually for several years, could prove daunting - more than double the budget of the Afghan government, and way more than could be sustained by Afghanistan's own economy for the foreseeable future. Even U.S. trainers for these new forces are in short supply: the Government Accountability Office, in a report issued earlier this month, said the Pentagon...
...Funding [an Afghan] force this size will be a major challenge - especially if it succeeds," says Stephen Biddle, a military expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. While the West will pump in the billions needed to fund the force during wartime, they'll turn that spigot off as soon an uneasy peace emerges. "Yet, the Afghan government is very unlikely to be able to pay these costs itself even if we make optimistic assumptions about economic growth and government revenue extraction potential," Biddle says. "The result could easily be a postwar Afghan security force too large...