Reviews Raise Doubt on Training of Afghan Forces - NYTimes.com

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By THOM SHANKER and JOHN H. CUSHMAN Jr.

WASHINGTON — A series of internal government reviews have presented the Obama administration with a dire portrait of Afghanistan’s military and police force, bringing into serious question an ambitious goal at the heart of the evolving American war strategy — to speed up their training and send many more Afghans to the fight.

As President Obama considers his top commander’s call to rapidly double Afghanistan’s security forces, the internal reviews, written by officials directly involved in the training program or charged with keeping it on track, describe an overstretched enterprise struggling to nurse along the poorly led, largely illiterate and often corrupt Afghan forces.

In September, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top American and allied commander in Afghanistan, recommended increasing the Afghan Army as quickly as possible — to 134,000 in a year from the current force of more than 90,000, instead of taking two years, and perhaps eventually to 240,000. He would also expand the police force to 160,000. The acceleration is vital to General McChrystal’s overall counterinsurgency plan, which also calls for more American troops but seeks more protection against the Taliban for the Afghan population than the Pentagon could ever supply.

While General McChrystal knew of the latest assessments when he wrote his plan, their completion just as President Obama considers the general’s proposal has given fresh ammunition to doubters.

“Nothing in our experience over the last seven to eight years suggests that progress at such a rapid pace is realistic,” said Representative John F. Tierney, the Massachusetts Democrat who is the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on national security.

The latest reports offer new details that show just how tough it will be to meet General McChrystal’s training goal. Among the previously undisclosed conclusions: one out of every four or five men in the security forces quit each year, meaning that tens of thousands must be recruited just to maintain the status quo. The number of Afghan battalions able to fight independently actually declined in the past six months.

“The most significant challenge to rapidly expanding the Afghan National Security Forces is a lack of competent and professional leadership at all levels, and the inability to generate it rapidly,” concluded one of the reviews, a grim assessment forwarded to Washington in September from the American-led training headquarters.

Another September report, the Pentagon inspector general’s annual review of the training program, warned that any acceleration “will face major challenges. ”

A third assessment, a quarterly report sent to Congress last week, revealed that despite the formation of new army battalions, fewer of them were capable of operating independently. One reason may be that the Afghan Army’s jerry-built logistics system, a relic of the Soviet era and one of the training program’s orphans, has become a drag on the combat forces.

The problems have been a recurring topic during Mr. Obama’s policy review, broken out for separate discussion among the president and his top advisers. Accelerated training has been one of the constants among the various options before them. “We’re aware that it’s an enormous challenge,” one senior administration official said. “We feel, though, this is essential for any strategy going forward.”

Among other problems, one of the reports found, the United States military’s training headquarters simply does not have enough people to do all it is already being asked to do, a flaw that “has delayed and will continue to delay” building the Afghan forces and that unless corrected would only prolong the American presence in Afghanistan.

Construction is also falling behind, leaving recruits living in tents and making a boom in barracks-building problematic, since there are not yet enough qualified engineers. And attempts to draw Afghan businesses into the war effort have backfired. One local start-up company assigned to do basic weapons maintenance for the Afghan Army tried to use hammers and nails to hold grenade launchers together and ultimately had to be trained by an American contractor.

The Americans are sometimes stymied by delays in training that sprout unexpectedly from profound cultural differences. Costly delays in the building of barracks for new recruits, for example, are a result not just of scarce labor and materials, but also of time-consuming repairs of damage that occurs as soon as the troops move into their new quarters. Afghan soldiers reportedly ripped sinks from barrack walls and used them to wash their feet before praying, an important custom. They also built fires on barrack floors for heating and cooking, even in buildings with furnaces and kitchens, according to the reports.

Despite the obstacles, few disagree that Afghanistan’s forces must eventually become bigger and better. And senior Pentagon and military officials insist that it can happen faster, too. But it may take 10,000 to 15,000 more trainers from the United States and NATO, which have just agreed to overhaul the training program.

Even that decision required a concession to European sensitivities: the creation of a wholly new NATO training effort to operate alongside the American forces who currently dominate the training program and who typically accompany the Afghans they train into combat. Some European governments balk at that practice.

A three-star Army general, Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, will soon take command of the new NATO training mission — and overhaul the American-led program. General Caldwell, a West Point classmate of General McChrystal, was previously in charge of the influential Army schools and training programs at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and he will command both the American and allied training headquarters.

“Our NATO allies have been an active participant in Afghanistan from the very beginning, but with this new NATO structure, we perhaps will see even more involvement by partner countries,” General Caldwell said in an interview.

At a meeting of defense ministers in Slovakia on Oct. 24, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates won from the alliance an agreement that the NATO training mission “will need to be fully resourced in order to build the capacity necessary.”

Pentagon planners consider NATO’s contribution essential — if overdue — given the strains on the American force as it builds up.

Because of those strains, the Pentagon has failed to provide fully qualified trainers even when they have managed to hit their own numerical goals, officials said. The Pentagon’s top generals have resisted bleeding the combat ranks to field permanent, full-time training units. But using combat forces as ad hoc trainers has proved less effective, according to Pentagon analysts.

Maj. Gen. Mike Ward, the Canadian two-star officer who will serve as General Caldwell’s deputy for the allied training mission, said in an e-mail message that NATO’s bigger role “will invite a much broader community of expertise and practice.”

One example is the brigadier general who will join them from Italy’s Carabinieri — the national police force that is a part of the military — as the American military has nothing comparable.

Today, only about one in 10 Afghan police units is capable of operating wholly independently, according to the latest report to Congress. Despite that, the police force is constantly attacked and is taking casualties at an even greater rate than the Afghan or American military, it said.

The Afghan National Police currently fields 92,000 people, but only 24,000 have actually completed formal training, according to Pentagon records. The attrition rate is 25 percent, the training command in Afghanistan reported. The situation is not much better in the army, with 19 percent attrition.

“Clearly we will have to continue generating new forces at the small-unit level,” General Caldwell said. “But leader development also has to be a priority. For us to have enduring and sustainable Afghan security forces, we have to put commensurate time and effort into the leader portion of the training effort.”

Peter Baker contributed reporting.