May 15, 2011

Afghan Army Transition

The transition of security to seven areas is raising a number of concerns in Afghanistan and the most pertinent one is ability of security forces to withstand pressure from insurgents that have sustained their operations against well equipped NATO troops. There are concerns of literacy levels as only 14 percent of Afghan recruits can read and write with nine out of 10 police and army recruits entering training completely illiterate.  However the present locations selected by Mr Karzai and agreed to by NATO are devoid of Taliban presence and with high level of security and intelligence upgrades it would be possible to maintain security by deploying only Afghan forces. The Taliban would no doubt like to intercede but then there are unlikely to be any major challenges but for normal terrorist attacks which would have to be guarded against. What the Afghans are now demanding is capability to withstand a resurgent Taliban with Pakistani support after departure of the coalition forces that capacity is surely wanting.

The parliament in Afghanistan is becoming more assertive. Members of the Meshrano Jirga, upper house of Parliament have expressed concern over spread of violence and thus summoned the Defence and the Interior Minister for questioning. The lower house even called for removal of the Defence Minister due to deterioration of the situation. How much this would have an impact on the ground remains to be seen, but with greater accountability of Ministers to the parliament and call for removal of the Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak in particular due to infiltration of Taliban in the ranks of the Army, the level of efficiency would possibly go up in the days ahead.

However violence is not likely to come down given that it has a signature spread across the country with a large number of splintered groups which normally become active particularly with the cropping season including poppy now likely to be over in a month or so. Once again expectations are that of a “hot” summer.

The Afghan National Army and police is increasingly likely to face challenge of subversion within the ranks either initiated by the Taliban or local warring groups which have been attempting to wean away some of the recruits for their ulterior purpose. That the spirit of a nationalist army has not been created so far is also a challenge and is likely to increase over a period given the nature of Afghan society and divisions within the same on tribal and ethnic lines. Thus the Tajiks are higher in numbers in security forces to the detriment of the Pashtuns. The Taliban may be taking maximum advantage of high rate of recruitment to attempt to induct some of their hard core so as to carry out stray acts of violence and fratricide as has been seen most recently in some camps which has also led to the death of NATO soldiers.

To build up the conventional capability, NATO forces will be providing weapons, vehicles and airplanes worth more than $10 billion (458.1 billion afghanis) to Afghan security forces till 2014. Rapid expansion of the Afghan Army and number of measures being taken for improving the equipment by inducting armoured and unarmoured vehicles, aircraft and helicopters by 2014 will meet to some extent demands by the Afghan security forces from time to time. With the number of army recruits also having gone up to 6000 per month there would be more troops to meet the diverse security challenges in the country. Now what would be required is to develop capability in the Afghans to maintain the large quantum of vehicles and equipment.

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