NATO commander: recruitment of Afghans gaining - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

NATO commander: recruitment of Afghans gaining

STUTTGART, Germany — Afghanistan’s military and security forces are on track to meet their goal of recruiting 300,000 troops by the end of 2011, though retaining those troops has been a challenge, NATO’s top military officer said Thursday.

With a high desertion rate, expanding the Afghan ranks has been difficult, but a decision last year to raise salaries helped to draw more recruits, said Adm. James Stavridis, supreme allied commander for Europe and the commander of the U.S. European Command.

“We have just increased the pay ... and that has resulted in a significant increase,” Stavridis said.

The Afghan troops also are taking bigger roles in fighting the Taliban and other insurgents in Afghanistan, including during the current assault on Marjah.

“I think performance of the Afghan security forces is improving rapidly,” Stavridis said, noting there was a “roughly one-to-one ration” of Afghan troops to American soldiers in Marjah.

They are “fighting hard,” he said, ticking off a flurry recent activity including a helicopter commando raid led by Afghan pilots and troops last month and the rounding up of suspects after major suicide bomb assault in Kabul.

As for how to keep the troops in uniform, the commander said the United States, NATO and their partners were working to “stem that” problem both through the raised pay and “good, old fashioned leadership.”

“There is a challenge with retention,” Stavridis said during a brief break in a meeting with several military chiefs from European countries at a U.S. base in Stuttgart.

“Everything we are doing — in our partnering, our embedded approach — is putting our superb noncommissioned officers and junior officers from all the nations involved alongside their Afghan counterparts,” he said.

He also said they were making it easier for Afghan soldiers to receive their pay and send money to their families electronically, so as to avoid having to travel from one province to another to “deliver a stack of dinars.”

“We’re developing a cell phone bank system so they can be paid electronically and transfer those funds from cell phone to cell phone,” he said.