On the Center’s website, John and I have published a long piece on what’s in store for the last two years of NATO-led combat operations in Afghanistan. In the essay, we focus on the effort to build up the Afghan National Security Forces, and point at a number of troubling signs that highlight the difficulty of building up a self-sufficient Afghan army.
Here’s a short excerpt:
“…if we have not succeeded so far, why does that mean we should stay longer and continue a failed strategy? Why should we not instead reevaluate whether it is, indeed, plausible to build a foreign army in Afghanistan? Indeed, a close look at what ISAF is up against suggests that training the Afghan army isn’t just a matter of having enough troops and time – it may simply be a fool’s errand.
Read the rest of the piece, here.
