Nightmare Logistics
NATO troops are in the process of withdrawing from Afghanistan. Canada will complete its troop withdrawal in roughly a month's time. But some troops will remain as part of a training mission, to ensure that Afghan soldiers have been well trained in the art of looking after their own country on their own recognizance. It is past time, after all.And this is the rough material that Canadian and other forces that have agreed to assist in the military teaching process must contend with: Only one in ten Afghans who sign onto Afghanistan's police force and army is capable of reading and writing. Many of these Afghans who comprise their country's security forces are incapable of writing their own names.
How can they function at their posts, when they cannot read instructions for their own information or to convey those instructions to others? Literacy has become an important part of basic training by Western forces on behalf of Afghan recruits to ensure they become basically functional. New police officers and soldiers devote two hours daily learning to read.
Those security forces have been built gradually by the NATO forces stationed in the country over the past decade to the point where it is fervently hoped that through sheer strength of numbers along with the training they have received, they will become capable of self-defence. The country's security forces now stand at 300,000.
The presence of American troops alone in Afghanistan has been costly, at $110 billion yearly. Foreign force strength in the country stands at 147,000 soldiers, and about 100,000 of that number is American. Canada currently has 2,900 military personnel stationed in the country, on the verge of departure.
Canada has functioned with the difficult job of countering Taliban advances in Kandahar Province over the past five years. There have been 160 Canadian mortalities in Afghanistan since 2001; 156 soldiers, one reporter, one diplomat, two aid workers. Canada has spent over a billion dollars on various development and humanitarian projects in the country; this apart from the cost of the Canadian military presence.
Desertion rates among Afghan security forces are very high; about 18% of Afghan police desert yearly, while for the army that rate stands at close to 30%. One might say that morale is not very high, and the police are known for their corruptibility in a society acknowledged for its endemic corruption.
Beyond that, both the police and the military of Afghanistan have been infiltrated by Taliban sympathizers and Taliban members as well. Dressed in police and military uniforms they have often successfully attacked foreign forces as well as Afghan recruits, slaughtering whom they can. The persistence of the porous nature of the security ranks remains troubling.
And that's the understatement of the year.
Labels: Afghanistan, Canada, NATO, United States
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, June 08, 2011
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