WASHINGTON — 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.
Most of the losses in the Afghan Army over the
past year appear to be due to desertion, the
coalition said in a written response to questions
about the newly declassified data. Smaller
percentages came from ordinary discharges and,
more worryingly, from deaths in combat, of
which there were more than 1,200 last year, a
record for the army.
But no matter the reasons, the numbers cast a
harsh spotlight on one inescapable fact: The
army, the centerpiece of the American-led
campaign to stabilize Afghanistan, is losing
people far faster than it can replace them. The
rate of decline, if not reversed, could leave the
army effectively incapable of fighting the Taliban
across much of Afghanistan within the next year
or two, according to some American military
officials and analysts.
The data being released on Tuesday — a month
after the American military abruptly reversed its
decision to keep data about the Afghan security
forces classified — is being published by the
Special Inspector General for Afghanistan
Reconstruction, an American government
watchdog agency that puts out quarterly reports
on American spending in Afghanistan.
Until late last year, the inspector general’s
reports regularly included details about Afghan
forces, such as the size of the army and the
police. Then the American military command in
Afghanistan decided to classify most of the basic
data it had been supplying about the Afghan
Army and police. It argued that the public
release of the data would imperil Afghan and
coalition forces.
That decision provoked sharp criticism from
Congress and within the command itself when it
became public in January. The military reversed
itself about a week later, saying that, upon
further review, it could safely release the
information.
The American command has not elaborated
further on its decision. But ahead of the release
of the data on Tuesday it said that it was working
with the government of Afghanistan to make
leadership changes in the Afghan Army in an
effort to stem the desertion rate, which has been
a problem for years.
The coalition said it was also helping to improve
the Afghans’ ability to evacuate wounded soldiers
from the battlefield and get them properly
treated, and training and equipping Afghan
forces to better find and neutralize improvised
explosive devices, which remain the most deadly
weapon in the Taliban’s arsenal.
Since the United States and its allies began
building Afghan forces in earnest in 2009, the
size of the Afghan Army has oscillated,
sometimes falling by thousands of troops from
month to month. Desertion has been a persistent
problem, and the army has never reached its
target strength, which currently stands at 195,000
people.
But the long-term trend appeared to be generally
upward until the start of 2014, when Afghan
forces took on the lead combat role across the
country — and the army’s numbers started what
would become an 11-month decline.
The report, which was provided to The New York
Times ahead of its release, was supposed to be
published last week. But a day before its
scheduled release, the coalition command in
Afghanistan quietly informed the inspector
general that it had been supplying incorrect data
on the size of the Afghan Army through all of last
year.
The incorrect data overestimated the strength of
the army by thousands of troops. At one point
last year, the incorrect data counted nearly
14,000 more Afghan troops than there now
appears to have been at the time.
The coalition attributed the problem to what it
called an accounting error, and offered no
further explanation, the inspector general’s
report said. It remains unclear whether data for
years before 2014 was similarly corrupted.
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