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Perhaps the highest-risk strategy outlined in Obama's agenda is his hope that within 18 months, Afghan security forces will be able to take a greater role in protecting the country. When Karzai took a new oath of office at his inauguration ceremony in Kabul last month, he promised that by the end of his five-year term, Afghan security forces would be "capable of taking the lead in ensuring security and stability across the country." Accelerating the process in order to achieve the necessary number of well-trained Afghan soldiers - ideally estimated to be 134,000 troops, compared...
...then there's remuneration. Both Afghan soldiers and police officers were recently granted a 40% pay rise, bringing the base salary for a new police officer or soldier to about $165 a month - almost on par with what the Taliban offer their fighters. Like many Afghans, many of the new army recruits are uneducated and illiterate, so it will be difficult to develop the capabilities that are essential for effectively running an army or a police force, such as seamless logistics planning, accurate weapons training or even clear police reports...
...Karzai's government did not clean up its corrupt ways, was unclear. Officials say the most likely punishment would be a withdrawal of U.S. and foreign funding to those ministries that are clearly corrupt or that underperform. As for development, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking on Monday in New York, said Washington's "goals in Afghanistan include providing the government with the support that it needs to take full responsibility for its own country. That makes civilian efforts as vital as military operations and of longer duration." To do so, she and Obama envision a "civilian surge" of agriculturists...
...offers of additional support for their counterinsurgency efforts and fledgling democracy. But Obama's plan to dispatch 30,000 extra troops to the war next door has been greeted with ambivalence. While Obama's setting a date for the beginning of a withdrawal was welcomed, the element of the new strategy that has Pakistan's military sensing a long-awaited opportunity is the prospect of negotiations with the Taliban. (See pictures of the battle against the Taliban...
...Pakistani army sees the conflict in Afghanistan being resolved through negotiations that lead toward the establishment of a new government with greater Pashtun representation and diminished Indian influence. Pakistan's security establishment has never embraced Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government, which it sees as dominated by the ethnic Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara forces of the India-backed Northern Alliance. And it fears that India is expanding its influence there through massive development projects, even accusing India of using Afghanistan as a base from which to destabilize Pakistan...