The Afghan National Army: nothing without NATO

On 3 December, the Afghan Ministry of Defence called for the country's fledgling indigenous defence force, the Afghan National Army (ANA), to increase in size to 200,000 personnel.

According to ministry spokesman Zahir Azimi, such a number would be sufficient to provide security to the entire country, and would "cost international forces less than the expenses of their forces in Afghanistan".

This statement, which must appear compelling to the increasingly ponderous governments of several key NATO member governments, is unfortunately little more than a fantastic aspiration with little sign of being achieved within any moderate time scale.

The dream-like scenario of 200,000 well-equipped, properly paid, highly motivated ANA soldiers defending the Afghan state from every conceivable security threat is one that punctuates the sleep of senior Western politicians and military leaders alike. Unfortunately, they awake to a very different reality.

The ANA is widely cited as one of the country's few success stories. From a starting point of zero following the fall of the Taliban in November 2001, the force strength is now widely cited at approximately 57,000. Certain ANA units have also performed admirably on the battlefield alongside NATO and US forces and progress towards these personnel being used in independent operations has certainly been made.

Moreover, it expects to achieve its target strength of 70,000 - a figure put forward in the aftermath of the Taliban's fall - by March 2008. An additional 12,000 troops would then be recruited under a new plan announced by the army's operational chief, Lt Gen Sher Mohammed Karimi, in November. With very few tangible metrics existing in the Afghan context, this one is feted by the US government as a demonstrable indication of development.

Image: An Afghan National Army soldier takes a fighting position with his rocket-propelled grenade. (US Army) 282 of 995 words