Pubdate: Tue, 24 Aug 2010 Source: New York Times (NY) Page: A4 Copyright: 2010 The New York Times Company Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298 Author: Elisabeth Bumiller Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Afghanistan Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?420 (Cannabis - Popular) U.S. GENERAL CITES GOALS TO TRAIN AFGHAN FORCES WASHINGTON -- The American commander in charge of building up Afghanistan's security forces said Monday that in the next 15 months he would have to recruit and train 141,000 new soldiers and police officers -- more than the current size of the Afghan Army -- to meet President Obama's ambitious goals for getting Afghan forces to fight the war on their own. The commander, Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, said the large recruiting number was to allow for attrition rates in some units of nearly 50 percent. Over all, General Caldwell said it would not be until October 2011 -- three months after the deadline for the start of American withdrawals set by Mr. Obama -- that he will have finished building the Afghan security forces to their full capacity. For now, he said, "they cannot operate independently." General Caldwell's remarks, made by video feed from Kabul, the Afghan capital, to reporters at the Pentagon, underscored the challenge the Obama administration faces in trying to turn around the nine-year-old war, which has deteriorated on the ground and become increasingly unpopular among Americans. Training Afghan security forces to defend their own country remains at the heart of Mr. Obama's strategy for ending the United States' involvement in the war. Despite the challenges, General Caldwell said he had made progress and had so far met his recruiting targets. Currently, the Afghan Army numbers 134,000, with a goal of 171,600 by October 2011. The Afghan National Police has 115,500 officers, with a goal of 134,000 by October 2011. Desertions and resignations continue to be a problem. "In the Afghan National Police, the attrition rate is unacceptable," General Caldwell said, citing a current rate of 47 percent, down from a peak of 70 percent. Another major problem, he said, is illiteracy. The vast majority of Afghan recruits cannot read and write in their own language, meaning that basic tasks, like knowing the serial numbers of their weapons, are impossible. As a result, the United States has started a basic literacy program, with 27,000 recruits currently enrolled and an expectation that 100,000 will be in the program by next summer. "We're not trying to make high school graduates," General Caldwell said. "Our intent is to give them enough to have the ability to do certain key things for the professionalization of the force." For example, he said, "if they're issued equipment and told that they're supposed to have four shirts, three pairs of pants and two pairs of boots on a piece of paper, they can actually read that and then look at the equipment instead of being reliant on somebody else to do that for them." General Caldwell said illiteracy had created a problem among Afghan soldiers in the north last week, when 90 out of a group of 100 soldiers told American commanders they had not been properly paid by electronic funds transfer, the system now used for most of the Afghan Army payroll. "The money was in fact in their accounts -- they just had no ability to, in fact, look at a bank statement or read the A.T.M. machine to understand they had been paid," General Caldwell said. "Had they had some basic literacy training, they would have known that." One factor that has helped recruiting this year, the general said, is a raise. Base pay for an Afghan soldier or police officer is now $165 a month, and in a high-combat area like Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan a soldier can make a starting salary of $240 a month, up from $180. General Caldwell has said in the past that the Taliban often pays insurgents $250 to $300 a month. James M. Dubik, an author of a recent report on Afghan military training and a retired Army three-star general who oversaw the training of Iraqi security forces in 2007 and 2008, said he was optimistic about General Caldwell's mission. General Dubik said General Caldwell had greatly expanded the capacity to train Afghans by increasing the number of instructors and training locations and changing the training week from five 8-hour days to six 12-hour days. General Caldwell said drug abuse remained a problem, particularly among the police. He said drug use on average in the police was found to be 9 percent, although in certain areas it was much higher. He did not specify the type of drug abuse. At an Afghan police training facility outside Camp Leatherneck in Helmand Province, the American Marine commander, Lt. Col. Gerard Wynn, said in April that American trainers had immediately rejected 10 percent of Afghan recruits because of opium use. But the trainers did not turn away recruits who showed evidence of marijuana use because, he said, "it's so prevalent in society that we'd be kicking everybody out." - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake