Pentagon challenge: Build an Afghan army

Nowhere are the challenges of this strategy more pronounced than in Afghanistan, where the US and coalition allies are starting from scratch to cobble together a cohesive army, a border patrol, and a police force, experts say.

Few countries have pledged funds for these security forces, a source of exasperation for the Bush administration, which has asked Congress for $50 million to train and equip the army. Moreover, building the army is a daunting task that could take years, even as rivalrous warlords, ethnic jealousies, and remaining pockets of Al Qaeda and Taliban resistance threaten to destabilize the country, US officials and experts say.

"The trick for us in the future will be how to take from these tribal or ethnically based militias and bring forces to form a national army," Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of the US operations in Afghanistan, said.

US special forces troops are expected to arrive in Afghanistan this month to begin 10-week training cycles, teaching skills one-on-one to several hundred recruits as well as group training at the squad, platoon, company and battalion levels.

Afghan military experts estimate that the country needs about 50,000 troops.

Yet beyond basic skills and numbers, the new Afghan army must be ethnically balanced and controlled by a broad-based government in order to be accepted as legitimate by local leaders, the experts say. Members of the country's dominant Pashtun ethnic group are concerned that the smaller Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek minorities who made up the Northern Alliance will seek to control the army and government.

"It will take a lot of political savvy to make sure what is formed is an Afghan national army and the Tajiks don't dominate it," said Charles Dunbar, a former US envoy in Afghanistan.

Equally important is the need to create cohesiveness and a common esprit de corpswithin the army – which is essentially being formed by young men with weapons, recruited from local warlord militias, who have engaged in years of civil war in Afghanistan.

"The army is held together by a culture – you cannot do it in one or two years," said Ali Jalali, a former colonel in the Afghan army before the 1979 Soviet invasion who has written extensively on Afghan military affairs. "When they fight together, suffer together, enjoy things together, they become a cohesive unit. This is especially important in Afghanistan now, where there has been civil war."

"If the US pulls out before the Afghan national army is a cohesive force, then that will create a vacuum," Mr. Jalali warned.

While indicating no immediate plans to draw down American forces, US officials say some instability in Afghanistan is to be expected.

"Will there still be people moving across borders and doing bad things? Sure. But the world's not a perfectly tidy place," Rumsfeld said.

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