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These Are The 11,000 Who Might Just Save Afghanistan
Topic Started: Mar 9 2016, 02:13 PM (25 Views)
Webster
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MSN News: These Are The 11,000 Who Might Just Save Afghanistan

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CAMP MOREHEAD, Afghanistan —Sgt. Jawed Hazara, with an elite Afghan army commando unit, chugged an energy drink, grabbed his M-4 assault rifle and hopped into the driver’s seat of a military pickup truck. The 24-year-old was directing a convoy of commandos on night patrol in the southern outskirts of Kabul.

“Now, we do my job,” Hazara said as he fumbled with his radio and sped off the base. “By the grace of God, I will do a good job.”

Indeed, if large swaths of Afghanistan are to be saved this year, that responsibility is likely to rest on how Hazara and 11,500 other Afghan commandos perform as their country staggers into the 15th year of the Taliban insurgency.

Despite more than $35 billion in U.S. support since the Taliban was driven from power here in 2001, the regular Afghan army is still broadly criticized as ineffective because of defections, timidity and an inconsistent command-and-control network. But U.S. and Afghan officials believe that the army’s commando and ­special-forces units can fill the void and should be sufficient to reassure nervous Afghans that the Taliban won’t be able to fight its way back into power.

“All of the things you read about in the news — the units keeping things from going very wrong” — are the commandos and special forces, said U.S. Army Col. Joe Duncan, commander of the Special Operations Advisory Group, which supports the Afghan National Army’s Special Operations Command (ANASOC). “You won’t find commandos laying down their arms and refusing to fight.”

But the Afghan army’s heavy reliance on its commandos is controversial, amid sharp disagreements over the effective deployment of elite forces. And especially this year, the stakes could not be higher for the commandos, as well as Afghanistan’s broader security forces, which comprise about 320,000 soldiers and police officers.

Afghan intelligence assessments suggest that the Taliban has 45,000 to 65,000 fighters.

And the Taliban is not the only problem. Security forces will be tested by Islamic State efforts to gain a foothold even as older militant groups — most notably al-Qaeda — show signs of reestablishing bases here. Afghan security forces are at the same time being thrust into bloody battles over the country’s billion-dollar opium trade.

Last spring, after President Obama withdrew most U.S. forces from Afghanistan, the Taliban ­repeatedly overran or outsmarted Afghan army units in rural southern and eastern provinces. Then, in late September, in a humiliating setback for the Afghan army and police forces, the Taliban seized control of Kunduz, a major city in northern Afghanistan.

Within days, however, Afghan commandos fought their way back into the city. Commandos were also instrumental in retaking territory in Badakhshan, Konar and Nangahar provinces last year.

“We can’t do anything without them,” said Abdul Qahar Aram, spokesman for the Afghan army’s 209th Corps in northern Afghanistan.

-Read more: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/these-are-the-11000-soldiers-who-might-save-afghanistan/ar-AAgw0ms
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