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...country into isolated valleys run by warlords, marginalizing any central government authority. And as the 219th poorest nation among the world's 229, Afghanistan simply can't afford to pay for a big military. Afghan forces today are largely slipshod and corrupt, U.S. officers who have served with them say. Technically they seem capable of doing little more than basic daytime operations, and they have yet to master the bookkeeping vital for any military force to keep track of itself. (See pictures of the battle against the Taliban...
...fact, say many U.S. officers, the Afghan mindset works against building a military force. Afghans have a "God-willing mentality" that "delays progress for all routine and major actions," U.S. Army Colonel Scot Mackenzie wrote in a study for the Army War College last year. Information is power, and senior leaders hold on to it tightly. They prefer faxes to e-mails because they like "paper in their hands, as opposed to data on a disk," Mackenzie said. Such tendencies freeze "subordinates into doing nothing until specifically ordered," he added. "Taking risk or initiative has historically been seen...
...Obama's aides say the President recognizes that this is not a repetition that can go on indefinitely, and few in Washington will escape noticing that his July 2011 target to begin withdrawing troops is well-timed for Obama's 2012 re-election campaign. In the meantime, Obama faces pushback from members of his own party, who have been complaining loudly about the wisdom and cost of the decision. "The U.S. government is already spending $3.6 billion a month on the war in Afghanistan," said Representative Louise Slaughter of New York in a statement after the speech...
...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...