| Illustrations by Bilash Rai |
Afghanistan
Fight and flight
RAs US-led forces in Helmand province are in the midst of Operation Moshtarak (Pashto and Dari for 'together'), battling in the Taliban stronghold of Marjah, another significant large-scale military-related move is in the works. According to President Hamid Karzai, the government is looking at the possibility of making military service compulsory for Afghans. The embattled leader broached the issue at a recent conference in Munich, which brought together top defence officials from across the world to discuss the situation in Afghanistan. At the gathering, US General Stanley McCrystal, who heads NATO forces in Afghanistan, said that the Afghan National Army would strengthen to some 134,000 troops over the coming year, up from the current 92,000. Ultimately, he added, the force should be aiming for around 240,000 members as soon as possible. These are ambitious numbers indeed, and it is reported that Washington is putting pressure on the Karzai government to deliver.
Defence strategists in Kabul thus appear to be looking to conscription as the solution. Addressing the Munich conference, President Karzai justified a possible draft as a means to get the country to shoulder the responsibility of protecting its people as independently as is practical. Afghanistan no longer wants to be a "burden" on the international community that currently supports it, he said. A number of Afghan community leaders have reportedly urged the president to consider conscription for the same reason. A presidential spokesman, however, clarified that Karzai had only raised the issue in the form of suggestions which had come to him from groups of elders. Just a week before the president spoke in Munich, his defence minister, Abdul Rahim Wardak, said there was no need for conscription because the Afghan Army was not suffering from a shortage of recruits. Wardak also said that conscription would be difficult to implement in the absence of any country-wide census that would provide the numbers and age of youth in the desired age group.Clearly the disagreement does little to settle the debate on whether conscription is actually necessary in today's Afghanistan, though it does demonstrate the civilian government's communication problem. Ultimately, the political shortcomings are going to be far more damaging than personnel shortages in the armed forces.