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Obama under Pressure to Boost Afghan Army
[Quqnoos] Senators and civilian advisors to President Barack Obama has pressurised the new US administration to double the size of Afghan National Army and police to at least 400,000 personnel from the current 175,000, Bloomberg News reports. "Any further postponement of a decision to support a surge in Afghan forces will hamper US efforts to quell an insurgency in its eighth year," influential US senators wrote to the White House in a July 21 letter. President Obama also highlighted the training and bolster of Afghan security forces in his Afghan strategy that unveiled last March. He underlined to build up an Afghan Army of 134,000 and a police force of 96,000 in the next three years -- a commitment that costs $7.5 billion. The US administration and lawmakers emphasise to boost Afghan security forces despite a record level of foreign troop surge to Afghanistan to overcome a growing Taliban-led insurgency. In a part of the new US strategy for Afghanistan, President Obama is to send 4,000 US trainers by the end of September, exclusively to train the Afghan security forces. General Stanley McChrystal, the new US and NATO commander in Afghanistan also recommends a speedier expansion of Afghan forces. He will officially make the suggestion in a report to US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, and new NATO Secretary-General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, in the coming weeks, the report added. Senators argued in their letter to the White House that building Afghanistan's own forces is far cheaper than sending American soldiers -- a show of support to any requests for funds to train and equip Afghan troops. "For the cost of a single American soldier in Afghanistan, it is possible to sustain 60 or more Afghans," the senators wrote in the letter. Posted by: Fred 2009-08-06 |
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