Army half the needed size, official says

The Afghan army will reach a targeted strength of 70,000 within four months, but that will be insufficient to stand against internal and external threats, a government spokesman said. The Afghan National Army now stands at around 57,000. The 70,000 target was set at an international conference after the fundamentalist Taliban regime’s ouster in 2001.

“We think we need a [200,000-strong] Afghan National Army, which is in the interest of both Afghanistan and the international community,” Defense Ministry spokesman Zahir Azimi said at a news conference.

He said a force of that size was needed to deal with possible external threats and to tackle the insurgency led by the resurgent Taliban.

The United States, which provides the bulk of the foreign troops in Afghanistan, is also the lead country in funding, training and equipping the Afghan army, which disintegrated in 1992 after the collapse of Kabul’s communist-backed regime.