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FUTURE [CONTINUED FROMPAGE 99]


Leave Dr. M.


Chris Mason


racy in Afghanistan is a fantasy. Magical thinking


aside, the military reality is even worse.


Afghanistan is four times larger than South Vietnam. The Taliban is still a de facto expeditionary division of the Pakistani army. The Afghan Na- tional Army (ANA) is an eighth the size of the South Vietnamese military and has a twentieth the capability. South Vietnam had 1,050,000 soldiers counting regional and popular forces and not counting police; the truth is the ANA today has perhaps 120,000 men actually present for duty. The rest are “ghost soldiers” counted by their Afghan officers in order to col- lect and sell their rations. (We don’t know the actual number because U.S. personnel don’t count them.) The ARVN had a large modern air force and a working logistics system; the ANA has none. After 12 years, not one single infantry battalion is able to op- erate without U.S. support. Our advisors say three-quarters of the men are on drugs, and nearly half the army (42 percent) evaporates every 12 months from desertions and non-reenlistments. The entire annual Afghan defense budget does not cover one month of ANA expenditures. For every two square miles of South Viet- nam, the ARVN had 18 soldiers. For every two square miles of Afghanistan, the ANA has one. Its units already are cutting deals with the Taliban. There is nothing in Kabul most of those sol-


Stay


Gen. John R. Allen, USMC (Ret)


tion. Then there’s the so-called “zero option,” which is not a credible option at all but rather an exit


strategy. It sets the entire outcome of the campaign at risk and poten- tially leaves for naught all for which we have paid so heavily and all we and the Afghans have accomplished. Persistent debate over whether or not the follow-on force should only be a counterterrorism force misses the larger issue of why we’ve been at war for 13 years. Third, at less than 10 percent of the troops and dollar investment at the height of the cam- paign, this resource investment after 2014 is extraordinarily modest. Fi- nally, this is simply more than about Afghan security and stability. A well- advised and resourced ANSF can pro- vide the platform for the emergence of credible, post-Karzai government for which the Afghans yearn. It also will provide the security for the Af- ghan economy to move toward nor- malcy and equilibrium. All this is clearly to the good of


Afghanistan, but a continued U.S. and Western advisory presence plays well regionally. While I once thought the road to peace in Afghanistan ran through Islamabad and Rawalpindi, Pakistan, I now believe a stable post- 2014 Afghanistan will play significant- ly in Pakistan’s own stability. Other neighbors also will benefit directly from a stable Afghanistan, and that stability and regional prosperity can only be assured through the security provided by a competent and profes-


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