NATO Plan Tries to Avoid Sweeping Cuts in Afghan Troops

Shah Marai/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

An Afghan National Police graduation in Kabul on Thursday. A plan would sustain troops at more than 350,000 through 2018.

THOM SHANKER | New York Times | February 21, 2013

BRUSSELS — NATO defense ministers are seriously considering a new proposal to sustain Afghanistan’s security forces at 352,000 troops through 2018, senior alliance officials said Thursday. The expensive effort is viewed as a way to help guarantee the country’s stability — and, just as much, to illustrate continued foreign support after the NATO allies end their combat mission in Afghanistan next year.

The fiscal package that NATO leaders endorsed last spring would have reduced the Afghan National Security Forces to fewer than 240,000 troops after December 2014, when the NATO mission expires. That reduction was based on planning work indicating that the larger current force level was too expensive for Afghanistan and the allies to keep up, and might not be required. Some specialists even argued that the foreign money pouring into Afghanistan to support so large a force was helping fuel rampant official corruption.

Recruiting, training, equipping and operating Afghanistan’s army and national police forces at their present level will cost about $6.5 billion for the current American fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. Afghanistan pays $500 million of that total, its international partners add $300 million, and the United States provides the remaining $5.7 billion.

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US Could Refuse to Leave Any Troops in Afghanistan

Lesley Clark and Jonathan S Landay | McClatchy Newspapers | Report | TruthOut | January 9, 2013

Washington – The White House said for the first time Tuesday that it’s possible that no U.S. troops will be left in Afghanistan after 2014. The statement appeared to be a bid to pressure Afghan President Hamid Karzai to accept American terms for keeping U.S. forces in his country to train Afghan security forces and prevent a return of al Qaida.

The acknowledgement that a “zero option” of troops is being considered came a day before Karzai begins a state visit to Washington that concludes with talks Friday at the White House with President Barack Obama.

The United States is seeking an accord under which any U.S. troops remaining in Afghanistan after December 2014 – when a pullout of the U.S.-led NATO combat force is to be completed – would be subject to the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice, not Afghan law.

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