Word: afghanization
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Some 38,000 Afghan soldiers have been trained by U.S. and coalition forces since 2003, and many already accompany NATO troops on the ground. The U.S. and the international community have launched an ambitious plan to nearly double the size of the Afghan National Army (ANA), to 70,000; to build a fully functioning police force of 82,000; and to lay the groundwork for a National Afghan Air Corps by December 2008. But building a strong army in the middle of a war is a difficult undertaking. Much of the Afghan corps is young, illiterate and prone to desertion...
...when U.S. and NATO forces have come under scathing criticism for civilian casualties--figures compiled by media groups and human-rights organizations indicate that since the beginning of the year, the number of civilians killed by Western forces is on a par with those killed by militants-- putting an Afghan face on the war has become an essential part of regaining the faith of the public. "All this anger about civilian casualties by foreign forces--it's just like Baghdad before everything started going downhill," says a Western official who has spent time in both countries. Because of a shortage...
...range where he's been drilling on targeted fire. For 18 weeks the recruits learn to march in formation, set up camp, shoot weapons, organize missions and react to ambushes. Staff Sergeant Robert Paul Rosell, a California National Guardsman who works as a mentor to the Afghan battalion led by Waris and Ahmad, says, "The hardest lesson is getting through the idea of 'one target, one shot.' They tend to go blacko on ammo." Other military trainers call it the "spray and pray" school of target practice...
Rosell has spent the past four months living at a small ANA base in eastern Afghanistan, about a mile (1.6 km) from the Pakistan border, part of a new program to embed U.S. soldiers with Afghan companies to ease the transition to full independence. It's rough work. For the first month of their deployment, the troops had no showers. Snow, mud and rain dogged every patrol, and landslides caused the collapse of a couple of barracks and a chow hall. The post's remote location meant that food supplies flown in by helicopter were sometimes delayed--and when they...
...camouflage uniform, a gift from the U.S. government, may as well be a beacon for insurgent attacks. Several hundred ANA forces have died in combat since 2003, and a Taliban directive has decreed that ANA soldiers are infidels for their affiliation with the foreign forces. Insurgents prefer to target Afghan forces rather than NATO, knowing that the poorly prepared troops rarely drive armored vehicles and that they lack sufficient retaliatory firepower to mount a counteroffensive. The rising military death toll has made recruiting new soldiers even more difficult, says Colonel Karimullah, head of army recruiting in Kabul. "The boys themselves...