Earlier this month, Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a congressional committee that he is not convinced that coalition forces are winning in Afghanistan. But, he said, he believes they can win. He repeated the same comment a few days later before an audience in Los Angeles and later told reporters that the US needs to focus on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border."And they're killing American soldiers and coalition soldiers in Afghanistan, and that's also a place where al-Qaeda resides and still plots against us in the West, specifically to our homeland,'' Mullen said in an interview with Tavis Smiley on the PBS station.
Speaking at the Senate Armed Services Committee, Defense Secretary Robert Gates sounded the same alarm, saying that the greatest threat to the US homeland lies at the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. "The war on terror started in this region. It must end there," he added.
Well, referring to Gates' rather ambitious statement that "the war on terror started in this region. It must end there," one inevitably asks the question "How?" The obvious answer is with more military action and more men. But the US lacks more men to send to Afghanistan even though it desires to do so. Moreover, NATO is reluctant to send more troops. For these reasons, the US has been contemplating an increase in the size of the Afghan National Army to make up for the international troop deficiency and in fact devised a plan for this purpose.
According to this plan, initially proposed by the Afghan government and recently endorsed by Gates, the Afghan National Army will nearly double in size over the next five years to more than 120,000 active duty troops. Of course, such a large increase would not be possible without American money, which will pay for weapons, equipment, food, housing and training of Afghan troops.
In fact, one of most important priorities of the US and coalition forces in Afghanistan since 2002 has been to build up an Afghan National Army that is capable of defeating the insurgents and defending the country. Important progress has been made in this regard. The Afghan National Army, with the help of the US and NATO, stands at about 60,000 now. However, due to the growing insurgency and size of area to be covered, this number is not even close to enough. Even one of the largest military contributors in Afghanistan, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, acknowledged last month that an additional 40,000 or so troops in the Afghan army would not be enough to meet Afghanistan's security needs, adding that the army may have to be even larger.
''I believe that in time the figure for the Afghan army, given the size of this country, may need to be even higher than 120,000,'' said Brown during a joint press conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul.
Afghan officials also think a 120,000-strong army will not be enough to face the challenges and defeat the insurgents. In fact, Afghan Defense Minister Abdur Rahim Wardak, who knows the threats his country faces better than anyone else, repeated many times that 60-70,000 troops would not be able to end the Taliban threat and defend the county from external forces. Wardak indicated that an army of at least 150-200,000 is required to do the job.
Considering the facts with regards to the growing insurgency and the necessary size of the Afghan National Army to counter the insurgency, the US and NATO have no credible option but to increase the size of the army. How and when this can be achieved will determine the outcome of the Afghan war and success of the coalition forces.
Therefore, the key to the end of the war is a strong, large and determined Afghan National Army, nothing else.
