Just a week after Gen. Lloyd Austin had expressed support for such a move, NATO is moving forward with a plan to keep the massive Afghan Army, currently at 352,000, at its present size for the foreseeable future.
The problem with such an enormous military is that the Afghan government has little to no money to pay for it, and NATO is essentially on the hook for all of the funding of the Afghan military, with the US paying the vast majority.
NATO had previously agreed to reduce the size of the Afghan military by approximately a third after the end of 2014, but officials confirm a plan is being negotiated now to abandon that agreement and keep the current size through at least 2018.
Officials say the additional funding, which will have the US shelling out several billion dollars annually pretty much forever, is important for “confidence” in the Afghan government, and vital to continuing the “success” of the past 12 years of occupation.
No. Not simply no, but hell no. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has no business in Afghanistan in the first place; and after more than a decade of NATO warfare resulting in no visible improvements, the time is long past for US taxpayers to subsidize further wasteful and counterproductive NATO operations.
Where does it say NATO's going to be paying for more boom-boom? While some of our NATO allies like Bulgaria and gallant little Georgia are hot to trot out some rent-a-troops, they can't afford the cost of that deployment. So like the drone program – hiring some mercs is a cheap out for America. Whiler American might see some sense in destroying Afghanistan in order to rebuild it, or even worse rebuilding Afghanistan only to knock it down, the Euros won't be coughing up more to have NATO doing kinetic, the reconstruction has cost a fortune already..
In fact, if all that money had been given to the Taliban they'd have been too busy spending it to be a threat to anybody.