Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Tuesday that his country will need US and other NATO support to help pay for the development of the country's security forces over the next two decades.

At the press conference on Tuesday, Karzai said the Afghan government is working very hard now to take on responsibilities for Kabul to provide security in critical areas of the country. He said that with the country's maximum effort, Afghanistan would be able to completely rely on its armed forces in five year's time. But he added that "for an institutionalized army and police force and for an institutionalized security force it will take much longer to reach the standard that we seek and that is where we hope we will have the backing of our allies."

US President Obama's deployment plans

President Obama has announced plans to send 30,000 further troops to add to its 68,000 strong force in Afghanistan. Analyst Conrad Schetter from Germany's Center for Development Research (ZEF) argues that 30,000 more troops will not change much in Afghanistan and that the troop surge is more of a political statement than anything else. He believes US commander-in-chief General McCrystal will focus his strategy on urban areas. But he doubts if this will work. “The reason is that he believes that soldiers are not soldiers. He believes that soldiers are like friendly policemen like in Europe or in the United States. So he puts the wrong people for this strategy into place. Soldiers are trained for war and not for creating security like police forces do."

Troop withdraw from July 2011

Despite Obama's plans to start withdrawing troops deployed in Afghanistan in July 2011, Karzai says Afghanistan lacks the resources to fully depend on its security forces and this could take between 15 and 20 years. Gates stated that transition to Afghan security forces will happen when they are strong enough to take on the Taliban. And as to how long the process would take, Gates said it would be a process lasting several years, and that it remained to be seen how long foreign troops would be deployed in Afghanistan.

Gates says the United States will be with Afghanistan in a long-term commitment. "As security improves and we begin turning over responsibility to Afghans, our relationship in other areas will only grow, especially with economic and political development."

Obstacles

Washington has also warned Karzai that he must fight corruption. A senior NATO commander has warned that the current police force of around 68,000 is prone to corruption and that 15 percent of Afghanistan's armed forces are drug addicts.

NATO allies have agreed to support the US surge by dispatching another 7,000 troops. The first wave of 17,000 US troops is expected to arrive in the country early next year.

Growing violence this year has made it the deadliest year since the Taliban fell from power. On Monday there was a new wave of fighting, with NATO forces demolishing a Taliban stronghold. The fighting also saw the 100th British soldier to be killed in Afghanistan.

Author: Sarah Berning
Editor: Grahame Lucas