Among the huge challenges it faces in demography over from the abandonment U.S. and NATO armies, Afghanistan’s new army is up adjoin the allegory that its troops aren’t Muslims.
Taliban advertising has approved to bulb the angle that because it works with adopted forces, the Afghan National Army accept to be a agnostic one. So if villagers see his soldiers bead to their knees in mid-patrol and recite the circadian prayer, they’re surprised, said Lt. Col. Abdul Wakil Warzajy, a army commander. “Until they see us praying,” he said, “they anticipate that we are like the foreigners – infidels.”
From the Soviet aggression of 1979 through the after civilian wars, from the acceleration of the warlords and their militias to the U.S.-led aggression that followed the 9/11 attacks, accustomed Afghans can almost bethink accepting had an army they could alarm their own.
Once the adopted troops are gone in 2014, Afghanistan’s defenses will depend absolutely on a force getting molded from ailing accomplished recruits, abounding of whom accuse of activity under-armed, undertrained and up adjoin an ambiguous enemy.
An Associated Press anchorman and columnist afresh spent two weeks with four altered units in ambit breadth the Taliban is strong, and heard of accessories shortages, rifles that jam, and fears that already the U.S. and NATO aircraft are gone, limited and important outposts will become aloof and accept to close.
And alongside abounding affirmation that Afghan commanders are alive harder to brainwash conduct and a faculty of mission in the new force, there are fears that already the Westerners accept left, the country will afresh splinter into militias disqualified by warlords.
At 203 Thunder Corps in eastern Afghanistan’s Gardez Province, soldiers accept to leave their weapons at the gate. That’s because renegades a part of them could advance NATO soldiers – 26 dead in 19 incidents this year, by an AP calculation – but aswell because in an army that reflects the country’s circuitous of battling ethnicities, an altercation could amplify into a firefight.
Abdul Haleem Noori, a colonel in his 60s who remembers the Afghan army of the 1980s, said training acclimated to endure months. Now it’s six weeks.
“Today we accept no discipline. If a soldier doesn’t wish to go about he doesn’t,” he said in an account at the Thunder Corps base. “We should not accept been searching for quantity. We should accept been searching at the superior of our soldiers but we had to attach to the calendar of the foreigners and now we are not ready.”
U.S. Gen. John Allen, the top administrator of U.S. and NATO forces, told the AP that the Afghan army and badge force were proving added able in action. About 90 percent of affiliation operations now are partnered with Afghan forces, and Afghan armament are in the advance added than 40 percent of the time, he said in an account July 22.
The army is acceptable to amount about 200,000 by year’s end, but that’s not enough, said Lt. Yaldash Roasoli, an Afghan soldier continuing alfresco the 203 Thunder Corps battlefront range.
“Even in 30 years we cannot be ready,” he complained. “If you asked me what a appropriate action is I couldn’t acquaint you. That is the affectionate of training we accept had.”
The new force’s commando units accept been activated in high-profile Taliban attacks in the accomplished year, including one on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, and accept won top acclaim from the Afghan government and the U.S. ANA commanders say they are alpha to win the assurance of villagers, who adopt the soldiers to police.
But Mark Schneider, chief carnality admiral of the International Crisis Group that is tracking Afghanistan’s aegis effort, says overall, a decade of training and $35 billion accept collapsed abbreviate of expectations. “It is traveling to be a difficult action to accredit them to be the hand-off partner” for the abandonment Western forces, he said in a blast interview.
For the Afghan army, just anecdotic the adversary is a difficult task.
As a force moves into the apple of Noor Khiel in eastern Logar province, Warzajy, the army commander, is wary. A adept of the civilian wars, a above babysitter to a fabulous warlord, he knows if he’s in Taliban country, and this is an breadth area troops accept appear beneath rocket blaze and automated rifles are accursed from central apple homes.
For now there are no insurgents in evidence, but as Warzajy credibility out, if his troops move in, the Taliban move out. “Sometimes they don’t even leave. They aces up a advertise and say they’re just innocent farmers.”
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