The massive Afghan military has long struggled with mass desertions and low quality recruitment, making it hard to keep their numbers up. As they’ve been brought deeper into the fighting, they’ve got another problem with casualties.
US Army commander in Afghanistan Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson warned today that the increased casualty rate is unsustainable for the Afghan military. Recruiting simply isn’t keeping up.
And that’s not an easy fix. The Afghan military doesn’t pay recruits well, and while the planned deserters were joining up in the hopes of running off with paychecks and potentially a bit of looted equipment, the danger of getting killed in combat has many convinced it’s not worth the risk.
The influx of raw recruits wouldn’t solve all of the problems at any rate, as NATO has struggled to train them to anything resembling a level of competence in fighting, and is always pushing the unready recruits out as cannon fodder for the endless war.
The end result of foreign intervention into a class war, as the educated upper half of Afghan society does so love to hoard all the wealth, a fact well known by this General since day-one of our invasion and occupation.
A simple solution, a law requiring the educated upper half to allow a forth of the wealth to trickle down to the impoverished lower half. For since when does the upper half need or deserve more then 75% of all the land and wealth?
And the police have it even worse.