"U.S. military wants a quick boost in Afghan security forces"

This story should be read in conjunction with this post yesterday:

The U.S. commander in Afghanistan is expected to recommend a rapid increase in the size of the Afghan army and police, which could require sending more U.S. troops for training.

The U.S. military commander in Afghanistan has told top Pentagon officials that Afghan security forces must expand faster and beyond current target levels to more quickly secure the country, Defense officials said.

A dramatically stepped-up training program would probably require additional U.S. forces, but it is not clear whether American commanders in Afghanistan will request more, and if so, how many.

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, is to make a formal report with his recommendations in August. Defense officials emphasized that though McChrystal believes more Afghan security forces are needed sooner, he has not yet made formal recommendations.

U.S. military leaders in Afghanistan repeatedly have said they need more Afghan army soldiers and police officers to help secure cities and villages as they expand their operations against Taliban fighters.

The Afghan army, generally considered far more skilled than the police forces, has about 85,000 members and is scheduled to grow to 134,000.

The Pentagon already has accelerated the training schedule. Military officials are debating how much faster they can go, as well as how many more American trainers the job would require. A brigade of U.S. troops assigned to the training mission is due to arrive in August.

With about $800 million a year in overall revenue, the Afghan government cannot support the security forces it already has. Further expansion would require support for years from the United States or other nations.

"We don't want to put any numbers to it yet, but everyone knows expanding the Afghan national security forces is key to the counter-insurgency campaign," said a military official. Officials discussed the issue on condition of anonymity because McChrystal's recommendations have not been made public...

The recommendation by McChrystal was first reported Friday by the Washington Post. The Post reported that officials believe that the Afghan army might need to double its ultimate target size, to nearly 270,000.

Meanwhile, BruceR weighs in on vehicles and ANA training.

Update: Flit notes a key problem:

Afghan army size remains the elephant in the middle of the room. Rory Stewart [see also end of this post]:

Yet the current state-building project, at the heart of our policy, is justified in the most instrumental terms – not as an end in itself but as a means towards counter-terrorism. In pursuit of this objective, Obama has committed to building "an Afghan army of 134,000 and a police force of 82,000", and adds that "increases in Afghan forces may very well be needed." US generals have spoken openly about wanting a combined Afghan army-police-security apparatus of 450,000 soldiers (in a country with a population half the size of Britain's).

Such a force would cost $2 or $3 billion a year to maintain; the annual revenue of the Afghan government is just $600 million. We criticise developing countries for spending 30 per cent of their budget on defence; we are encouraging Afghanistan to spend 500 per cent of its budget.

As Colin Powell would say, there is no real "exit strategy" here. We are building an indigenous army that will only be sustainable in anything like its current form so long as it remains wholly subsidized by the west. On the other hand, although everything is paid for by someone else, the Afghan government still retains full operational and administrative control. All the best intentions in the world have been falling into that basic gap in accountability.

I would just add that the 400,000-plus ANSF would obviously be scaled down considerably once/if the insurgency is essentially under, er, control. But what then will all the demobbed, mainly young, men do? Bit of a sticky wicket, eh? And clearly a great deal of foreign money would be required for many years to maintain decent ANSF in a reasonable range of 100-150,000.