Afghans make progress growing army, police - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Afghans make progress growing army, police

The challenges are plentiful, officials in Afghanistan say, but they believe they will be able to grow the Afghan army and police by more than 50 percent — from 202,561 people to 305,600 — in the next 20 months.

“We are making progress here,” Brig. Gen. Gary Patton, deputy commanding general for programs for NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan/Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan, told Army Times on Feb. 19. “[The Afghans] want to run their own army and their own police force. They just can’t do that themselves yet.”

As the U.S. military builds up its forces there, to almost 100,000 troops by late summer to help fight an increasingly violent and complex insurgency, a critical piece of the effort in Afghanistan has centered on building an Afghan army and police force capable of fighting on its own.

The U.S. and its NATO allies are working hard to generate new Afghan army and police units every month, Patton said.

That includes training new recruits, providing them with equipment and getting them to bases across the country, he said.

Patton also oversees the effort to sustain the forces already in the field, from bullets and fuel to firewood and vehicles. And that effort doesn’t come cheap.

This fiscal year the U.S. government is providing $6.6 billion to train, equip and base the Afghan security forces, plus an additional $3.6 billion in fiscal 2009 supplemental funding.

Here’s how the Afghan security forces stack up now:

Afghan National Army

The army has a current end-strength of 104,296 soldiers, Patton said. The goal is to grow to 134,000 by Oct. 31, and 171,600 by Oct. 31, 2011.

To reach this year’s goal of 134,000, the Afghans are “turning up the interest and energy in recruiting,” Patton said.

Since November, the army has grown by 7,000 new soldiers, he said, and one key factor in that growth likely is the new pay raise that took effect in December for the army and in January for the police.

Each soldier and police officer received a $45 a month raise, and depending on where they are serving, hazardous duty pay of up to $75 each month, Patton said.

“We’re competing for, in some areas, with the Taliban for the recruits and the recruiting base,” he said.

This month, the Afghan army will welcome three new battalions, six new companies and a brigade headquarters, Patton said. March will be an even bigger month, with plans to produce four new battalions, six new companies and a new brigade headquarters, he said.

But recruiting new soldiers is not enough, he said.

“The other thing you have to do to grow to 134,000 in October and 171,000 by October 2011 is every soldier has to have a weapon, there’s a density of vehicles that go with that, there are helmets and boots and bases,” Patton said. “There’s a lot of infrastructure that goes into it.”

Right now, many new units are being put in temporary bases consisting of tents or heated containers while officials try to catch up and build permanent structures, Patton said.

Humvees are being shipped to Afghanistan from Iraq, as many as 1,600 in the next six to nine months, to improve force protection for the Afghan troops.

There is a lack of high-frequency radios, but Patton said he believes that backlog will be eliminated in the next three to six months.

On the weapons front, as the Afghan security forces transition to NATO weapons such as the M-16, the M249 squad automatic weapon and M240B machine gun, officials just received a new shipment of SAWs and M240Bs that will immediately be issued to units that were lacking them before, Patton said.

As the army continues to grow, military trainers are trying hard to make sure they produce quality soldiers, not just quantity, Patton said.

“Quantity gives you sufficiency in your force so you can rotate your force,” Patton said. “Quantity also gives you greater coverage in terms of ground [so] you can hold the ground you clear, enabling you to build on the ground you clear and hold.”

But quality is also something the trainers focus on as well, Patton said.

For example, he said, there are new standards for marksmanship among Afghan soldiers in basic training, and two units coming out of basic training recently were recycled and sent back for additional training, Patton said. That has never happened before, he said.

When soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division’s 2nd Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade, deployed in January, they were immediately tasked as trainers at the Afghan training bases, Patton said.

“In just the last several weeks, we’ve seen a pretty substantial jump in marksmanship and quality of shooting and the quality of trainees coming out of the training base,” he said.

And once the soldiers graduate basic training, they are partnered with a coalition unit in their area of operations, Patton said.

“That’s the way that we mitigate some of the quality challenges we have,” he said. “You can’t keep up the pace in developing leaders as you do in producing recruits. Quantity is important, but we’re mindful of quality. We’re watching that closer than we have in the past.”

Afghan National Police

There are 98,265 members of the Afghan police, Patton said. The goal is to grow to 109,000 by Oct. 31, and to 134,000 by Oct. 31, 2011.

However, only 25 percent of the current police force is formally trained, Patton said.

“The other 75 percent has on-the-job training,” he said. “That’s all they’ve got. The army has a balance of growth and quality. The police, the focus is on reforming the police.”

The key push to train and reform the police force is called Focused District Development, Patton said.

The program takes police from one district and puts them through eight weeks of training at a regional facility. While they’re gone, members of the national police fill in at the local district, Patton said.

During that training, the police receive formal training and are matched with embedded trainers and advisers who return to the local districts with the police, Patton said.

“The combination of formal training, the embedded advisory teams, [the police] refit, get some new gear, they come back significantly reformed force in that district,” Patton said.

Another major challenge faced within the police is corruption, he said.

One effort to reduce corruption is moving the entire force toward electronic funds transfer during pay day, Patton said.

Currently, 80 percent to 85 percent of the army and about 75 percent of the police receive their pay directly into their bank accounts, Patton said.

“Now it doesn’t put cash in the hands of the soldiers and policemen, and it reduces the temptations for other corrupt officials to take their cut,” he said.

One key challenge remains the shortage of trainers.

“We are short trainers of all types,” he said. “That’s one of our chronic issues, and we are seeking additional trainers both for the police side and the army side.”

The arrival of 2nd Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, “significantly boosted” the training capability, but shortages remain in many different areas, including logistics, police and medical, Patton said.

In the long run, Patton said he believes the infrastructure and training provided to the Afghan army and police will bear fruit, not just in creating professional security forces but also in strengthening Afghanistan.

“We’re building military schools that will produce professional officers and [noncommissioned officers], creating clinics and hospitals, supply depots, maintenance centers, and schools providing a wide range of skills,” he said. “In the future, we want them to be self-sufficient. We want to get to the point where the Afghan army and police can sustain themselves.”