At least nobody insists that we need 580,000 American troops to defeat the Taliban in Aghanistan. But talk of expanding the Afghan army to a quarter million misses the mark for a similar reaon. The COIN fight is restricted to the southern and eastern regions of Afghanistan near the Pakistan border. There's a reason most of our NATO allies are deployed in quieter areas where they don't face combat--there are quieter areas.
But we do need numbers in order to squelch the Taliban and allied drug gangs. The numbers can be provided in part by local self defense forces that operate as static forces capable of defeating small bands of enemies and capable of calling for help if bigger bands of enemies roll through. Admiral Mullen is looking at our pilot program to do just this:
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is reviewing a new community-based defense program recently started in an increasingly violent province on the doorstep of Kabul.
Adm. Mike Mullen visited Wardak province on Wednesday, where U.S. troops deployed for the first time this year. The program he's assessing draws volunteers from Afghan communities to defend their villages against militants.
"The early reviews are positive," Mullen told The Associated Press. "We are in the beginning stages, and this is a pilot, and we chose Wardak because it is such a critical province, and that's why I came today to see how things are going on the ground."
Mullen said that Wardak was "critical for the security of Kabul."
Earlier this month in Wardak, 240 Afghans — a ragtag collection of farmers, students and other unemployed men — completed three weeks of training for the Afghan Public Protection Force. Though the program is U.S.-funded, it is overseen by the Afghan Interior Ministry, which is responsible for the country's security forces.
We couldn't win with all the security forces being this low quality. But neither do we need all the security forces to be American special forces.
