From Bloomberg:

President Barack Obama and top U.S. military commanders are being pressed by senators and civilian advisers to more than double the size of Afghan security forces, a move that would cost billions of dollars.

In letters and face-to-face meetings, the lawmakers and the advisers have urged Obama, National Security Advisor Jim Jones and the new U.S. commander in Afghanistan to boost the Afghan National Army and police from current levels of 175,000 to at least 400,000.

“Any further postponement” of a decision to support a surge in Afghan forces will hamper U.S. efforts to quell an insurgency in its eighth year, Senators Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, and Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, wrote to the White House in a July 21 letter obtained by Bloomberg News.

General Stanley McChrystal, the new U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, will recommend a speedier expansion of Afghan forces beyond current targets in an assessment he will give within a month to U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, according to a senior military official familiar with the review.

McChrystal’s report won’t propose how many additional U.S. or NATO troops may be needed to train those Afghan forces or to boost the U.S. fighting effort, the official said, adding that any discussion of U.S. and NATO troop strength will come later.

U.S. intelligence agencies, in a document submitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee April 24, estimated the Afghan Army alone would need to grow to 325,000 — more than triple its current strength — to mount an effective counterinsurgency.

We’ve seen all of this before.  In Iraq instead of targeting the insurgency the way it should have been in 2004 and 2005, we increased the size of the ISF and stated that we would “stand down when they stood up” (excepting the Marines in Anbar who were in a bloody counterinsurgency operation beginning in 2004).  It wouldn’t have mattered if we had increased the size of the ISF to a million troops.    With incompetence, sectarianism and desertion, it would be (and will continue to be) a long time before the ISF is a legitimate armed forces on par with the balance of the nations of the world.

A brief rundown of the problems include a culture of entitlement, culture of dishonesty, mistrust and corruption that seems to dominate the Middle East and Central Asia.  This manifests itself in an officer corps that lords it over the enlisted ranks and the lack of a viable NCO corps (see Norvelle B. De Atkine, Why Arabs Lose Wars and Concerning the Importance of NCOs).  In Afghanistan the problems appear to be even worse, with lack of a nationalistic infrastructure or culture, drug addiction, and corruption so bad that it makes the population prefer Taliban rule to the Afghan National Police.

Dr. John Nagl, no more than about six months ago, advocated approximately 600,000 troops for Afghanistan.  When CNAS (which is advising the Obama administration) released its study on Afghanistan, it became obvious that they had dropped their advocacy for large additions of U.S. troops to Afghanistan.  Instead, it now appears that the plan is to increase the total force to around 600,000 by rapidly increasing the size of the ANA and ANP.

For the record, while we have advocated larger U.S. troop additions for Afghanistan (and also did so before it was popular for Iraq), The Captain’s Journal has never believed that defeat of the insurgency in Afghanistan would require 600,000 troops, and certainly won’t require 400,000 Afghan Security Forces.  We’re pushing numbers when we should be pushing quality.  There is even question whether Afghanistan can support a national security force which requires half of its GDP.

As troop strength gradually decreases in Iraq, it will need to be increased in Afghanistan, perhaps as high as 125,000 troops or even more (at least twice the current U.S. force size), and certainly better supplied with logistics and helicopters.  But the goal should be a smaller Afghan Security Force than 400,000 troops, vetted, free of drug addiction, well trained, and disciplined to fight rather than run away from the Taliban.  Such a force would make quick work of the Taliban.  But developing this force is long term work, requiring taking and holding terrain, both physical and human.  As General Petraeus said, Afghanistan will be the longest campaign of the long war, and in order to bring it to an acceptable conclusion, the Obama administration must begin to see it that way rather than searching for a rapid exit strategy.

Prior on the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police:

The Contribution of the Afghan National Army in the Battle of Wanat

Concerning that Robust Afghan National Security Force

The Marines Must Hold Helmand

The Sorry State of the Afghan National Police

Where is the Afghan National Army?

Afghan National Army in Operation Khanjar – Or Not

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