The Afghan Army lost more than 20,000 fighters and others last year largely because of desertions, discharges and deaths in combat, according to figures to be released Tuesday, casting further doubt on Afghanistan’s ability to maintain security without help from United States-led coalition forces.
The nearly 11 percent decline from January to November 2014, to roughly 169,000 uniformed and civilian members from 190,000, is now an issue of deep concern among some in the American military. For example, the former No. 2 American commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson, called the rate of combat deaths unsustainable before he departed at the end of last year.
Concern over how soon Afghan forces will be ready to stand on their own is one reason that the Obama administration is weighing whether it should slow the withdrawal of American troops, the bulk of whom are supposed to be out by the end of 2016.
The newly available numbers also lay bare the challenge faced by the 10,000 American troops and thousands of private contractors who have remained in Afghanistan since the end of the combat mission in December to help prepare Afghan forces to fight the Taliban on their own.
The American-led military coalition, citing internal figures, said the Afghan Army’s size had inched back up in the past few months, reaching about 173,000 in January. But that would still put the army at its smallest level since the fall of 2011, when the American project to build viable Afghan security forces was still in its early stages and the coalition did almost all the fighting against the Taliban militants.
More than three years on, the American combat mission is now over and the Afghan military is supposed to be fully in charge of securing its own country. But the army, along with the Afghan police, struggled last year to hold back a resurgent Taliban, and Afghan forces remain far more reliant on American air support, logistics and raids by Special Operations forces than the Obama administration had intended going into this year, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.