KABUL (AFP) — The Afghan army should have nearly doubled to 134,000 soldiers in four years and is already taking on a large part of the fight against insurgents, the US commander in charge of training said Thursday.
The government and its international partners formally agreed in Kabul on Wednesday to enlarge the army, now at about 80,000 soldiers, so it can better deal with the threat from a growing Taliban-led insurgency.
"The Afghans want to accelerate this as quickly as possible," Brigadier-General Robert Cone, US commander for training the Afghan security forces, told AFP at a ceremony to mark the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
"To finish out with all the essential equipment, bells and whistles, will be about 2014, but the reality is the force will be in being, we believe, much earlier that that," he said.
"I'm hopeful that we can grow their army at a faster rate than 2012."
Cone said the security situation in the country meant that a much bigger army was necessary than the 70,000-strong force earlier envisaged.
"The people who can best defend Afghanistan are Afghans so the more of the fight that they take, the better it is for Afghanistan," he said.
"This year the Afghans, by all accounts, are taking at least 60 percent of the combat action that we see today."
While even a force of 134,000 might not be considered enough for a country as large as Afghanistan, it "has to have the right-sized army given its economy," the general added.
The Afghan army, destroyed during the civil war of the 1990s which was then followed by the 1996-2001 rule of the Taliban, is being trained and equipped with international help, mainly from the United States.
There is new emphasis this year on stepping up this training so the Afghan forces can take over from their international allies in a NATO-led force and separate US-led coalition.
Many of the country's nearly 40 international allies are eyeing an exit date, with Canada saying its troops will leave by 2011.
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