Afghan security chiefs unveil plan to boost force level

Nov 21, 2009, 13:00 GMT

Kabul - Top Afghan security chiefs on Saturday unveiled a plan, drafted by NATO's top commander in Afghanistan, to boost country's police and troop strength to 400,000, double the size of its previous goal.

Afghan Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak said the government intended to increase the size of its army from the current target of 134,000 to 240,000 troops.

The Afghan army currently has around 93,000 soldiers on its payroll, eight years after training - mainly conducted by the US military - began.

'It can be achieved and it will be achieved,' Wardak told a ceremony at a military base in Kabul, where the US forces handed over the command of the training of Afghan forces to a newly-established command centre, dubbed NATO Training Mission.

Afghan Interior Minister, Mohammad Hanif Atmar, meanwhile told broadcaster Aljazeera that the goal was for the Afghan police to increase in size from 82,000 to 160,000 forces.

The information about the increase level of Afghan security forces was first reported when a confidential document drafted by NATO's top commander, US General Stanley McChrystal was leaked to the media, but until now not officially confirmed.

'Based on the latest assessment which is part of a proposal put forward by General McChrystal as part of his new strategy there will be all together 160,000 police force and 240,000 army,' Atmar told the TV channel.

'We pretty much agree, we think at the time being this is a very good figure based on our best assessment of the situation,' he said.

In his assessment of Afghan war, McChrystal had also asked for up to 40,000 extra US troops from US President Barack Obama for next year to reverse the gains made by the Taliban over the past three years.

Over the past two months, Obama has been consulting his national security advisors on whether to send tens of thousands of troops to top 68,000 US soldiers already stationed in Afghanistan. Obama's drawn-out deliberation has sparked criticism in both the US and Afghanistan.

Afghan ministers did not provide details of a timeframe for the new goal. However, President Hamid Karzai, who was sworn in for a second five-year term on Thursday, said in his inauguration speech that his country's forces would be able to take over the overall security of the country from around 110,000 NATO-led troops in five years.

The notion that Afghan security forces should take charge soon comes at a time when the public support for presence of international troops is waning in Western countries, mainly because of no clear prospective for the eight-year-long Afghan war and the mounting casualties among the NATO-led soldiers in the strife-torn country.

For the new goals, the Afghan and Western military officials hope to attract more military mentors for the training of Afghan security forces from some of the European countries, which are unwilling to send more troops to fight the rampant Taliban-led insurgency.