Pentagon wants to speed up training of Afghan's army

KABUL, Afghanistan -- The United States would like to speed up training of the new Afghan National Army, Pentagon officials said Wednesday after pressing Afghan officials for help in equipping the new forces.

Now that the U.S. focus in Afghanistan has shifted from fighting the Taliban and al-Qaida to helping to rebuild the shattered country, the Pentagon also is looking at expanding its relief projects, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said.

"There's no way to go too fast," Wolfowitz said on a tour of a women's hospital being rebuilt with help from the U.S. Army. "The faster the better."

Wolfowitz said both the Afghan government and the United States want to train more soldiers more quickly. Currently, two battalions of about 600 soldiers each can take a 10-week basic training course at a time -- one battalion trained by the United States, one by the French.

Wolfowitz said he pressed in meetings with President Hamid Karzai and Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim for the government to turn over some weapons stocks for the new national army, as opposed to allowing private militias keep most of them. The Afghan government has military equipment seized from the Taliban as well as weapons from former Northern Alliance troops and some of the regional warlords who have pledged allegiance to the central government.

Afghan officials didn't make any commitments to do so, Wolfowitz said. After the meeting with Karzai, Foreign Minister Abdullah told reporters that Afghans "can be assured of continued support of the United States in nation-building, in the reconstruction of Afghanistan."

The Afghan National Army now has about 1,800 soldiers, and plans call for between 9,000 and 12,000 to be trained by the spring of 2004, said Lt. Gen. Dan McNeill, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan. Those troops, drawn from Afghanistan's many and sometimes fractious ethnic groups, are key to a secure and developing Afghanistan, McNeill and Wolfowitz said.

Border patrol

One unit of the new army patrolled in November and December in and around a town called Orugan-e in southern Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan. The troops dismantled two illegal checkpoints and arrested five men with forged papers claiming to be Afghan customs agents, military officials said.

Wolfowitz's delegation watched Wednesday as a company of the Afghan army performed a live-fire exercise -- a mock assault on an enemy compound. The Afghan troops pounded the compound with mortar and rocket fire, then attacked with machine guns.

After declaring the effort a success, Wolfowitz chatted with Fahim through an interpreter as the troops looked on.

"We are very optimistic that in the very near future, Afghanistan will make more positive contributions," Fahim said.

"The other part of the equation is making good jobs for people who are not in the army," Wolfowitz replied.

Fahim agreed, adding, "It is very important that we forget the mentality of confrontation. That will convince the people to opt for civilian life."

Wolfowitz later said he also suggested that Fahim -- an ethnic Tajik powerful in the former Northern Alliance -- should move soldiers loyal to him outside of Kabul. He called Fahim's forces part of a "leftover army that's quite large and a bit of a security problem."

Fahim's response, Wolfowitz said, was that those men need something to do instead of just leaving Kabul with guns in hand. McNeill said he has suggested to Karzai that at least some former soldiers could be put to work on a massive road reconstruction project.

That project, with funding from the United States, Japan and Saudi Arabia, aims to level and pave the 750-mile highway linking Kabul with Kandahar and Herat.

Wolfowitz also visited that construction project, about 50 miles south of Kabul. He spoke with members of an Afghan mine-clearing team that works ahead of the road crews, clearing booby traps and unexploded bombs.

The team's leader, Sardarwalley, said his crews had found six anti-tank mines, two booby traps and 32 pieces of unexploded ordnance in less than a mile.