Afghan police question need for more U.S. troops
The money would be better spent on local forces, say officials from violent regions.
KABUL - Police officials from some of Afghanistan's most violent regions yesterday questioned the need for more American troops, saying that it would increase the perception that the U.S. is an occupying power and that the money would be better spent on local forces.
The police were responding to an assessment from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, that the war was getting worse and could be lost without more troops.
Increasing the troop number risks alienating Afghans, the police officials said.
The officials come from some of the provinces where the militant threat is the strongest, and where international soldiers and Afghans alike have struggled for years to keep the peace. Their reluctance to add troops is striking because of their broad experience already against the Taliban.
"It is very hard for local people to accept any foreigners who come to our country and say they are fighting for our freedom," said Gen. Azizudin Wardak, the police chief in Paktia province. "To give the idea that they are not invaders, that they are not occupiers, is very difficult."
Mohammad Pashtun, chief of the criminal investigation unit in southern Kandahar province, the Taliban's heartland, said the money would be better off going to Afghan forces.
"For the expense of one American soldier, we can pay for 15 Afghan soldiers or police," he said.
The top U.S. and NATO spokesman in Afghanistan, Adm. Gregory Smith, agreed that Afghan forces would be key to defeating the Taliban. But the "major way forward," he said, is to partner international troops with Afghan ones day to day, and not simply for the West to train Afghan forces and send them out on their own.
"We're really talking about complete layering of individuals at all levels to achieve, we think, much, much more increased ability to influence the professional development" of the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police, Smith said.
The Afghan army is trying to build a force of 134,000 soldiers by fall 2010, but McChrystal's assessment said the target should be 240,000, though it did not give a date. It said the police force must grow from the current 92,000 to 160,000.
Smith said that 20 percent of Afghan police are now partnered with NATO troops, and that the performance of those forces has risen dramatically.
Many Afghans say they are relieved to see international forces with the police on joint patrols. Afghan police are often accused of corruption and bribe-taking, and some American troops complain that their Afghan counterparts are not battle-ready.
About 4,000 of the additional U.S. troops that started arriving this summer are military trainers.
Reacting to McChrystal's assessment, Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi did not question the need for more troops but insisted they should be sent to Pakistan along the border with Afghanistan, and "target the insurgents' resources and sanctuaries there."
Sampling Is OKd For Vote Recount
The U.N.-backed panel investigating fraud in Afghanistan's Aug. 20 presidential vote has agreed to allow a recount of just a sampling of hundreds of thousands of suspect ballots to speed a process that some fear could stretch into spring, an official said.
Preliminary results show President Hamid Karzai with 54.6 percent, but if enough votes are thrown out, it could drop him below 50 percent, forcing a runoff with top challenger Abdullah Abdullah.
Afghan officials have said a full audit and recount could take two or three months.
- Associated Press EndText