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General: We're training 3 Afghans to get 1 soldier
There's been talk in Washington for months of the July 2011 deadline, when President Barack Obama promised to begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. He didn't say how many or how quickly.But there is a less talked about date on the horizon that may be more important: October 31, 2011. That's when the United Nations says there should be 305,000 members of the Afghanistan national security forces trained and assigned. There are currently about 249,000 Afghan forces, but getting that number to 305,000 isn't as simple as recruiting and training one Afghan to fill each empty slot. It's closer to three Afghans for each position. "Just to grow that 56,000, we're going to have to recruit and train and assign 141,000 police and soldiers," U.S. Army Lt. Gen. William Caldwell said during a satellite briefing from Afghanistan on Monday. The problem is attrition, the loss of troops and police from deaths, resignation or desertion. Caldwell said, adding, "They pose the greatest threat to both quantity and quality of the Afghan national security force." How many Taliban are we training? Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC 2010-08-26 |
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