By BJ Bjornson
My colleagues have been doing a good job keeping on top of the Afghan situation, but I had to post this little tidbit I saw in the McClatchy story regarding the costs and timelines for the war there.
The Afghan National Army is now 86,000 strong, and the national police have 81,000 members. The U.S. military has said it wants to expand the Army to 134,000 and the police to 82,000 by the end of 2011. McChrystal said he plans to boost those figures, but said he won't know by how much until he's in Afghanistan.
However, maintaining and building the security forces to the current 2011 goals is estimated to cost roughly $4 billion a year, while Afghanistan's economy generates only $800 million a year. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told McChrystal Tuesday that the U.S. would have to foot the bill for years.
"We are building an army they will never be able to afford," a senior U.S. military official told McClatchy. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to talk to reporters.
One infers the $800 million as being the legal economy, as the opium trade is suspected to pull in about $4 billion a year in exports alone, but is says something that the US is working towards building institutions that are clearly unsustainable by Afghanistan alone for the foreseeable future. The main thing being that the US has no plans to leave said country for at least the same period.
Give the Taliban the damn country already. If they need to be retaliated against in the future, we'll know where to find them because they'll have come out of the woodwork and will be inhabiting government buildings, army barracks, etc.
ReplyDeletebut is says something that the US is working towards building institutions that are clearly unsustainable by Afghanistan alone for the foreseeable future. The main thing being that the US has no plans to leave said country for at least the same period.
ReplyDeleteAw come on don`t you know how much I hate having to try and find some budget figures on the state department website? And now it turns out google doesn`t even let me use the shortcut of searching for the excel version. And then I have to go an look at arms transfers, well forget that I am just not gonna bother with it.
Bottom line: Maintaining an army that has cost 4 Billion/year to build would put Afghanistan in the top recipients of things like �foreign military aid�, but it would hardly be unthinkable.
Okay here goes: http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/124295.pdf page 12-17
Some highlights from table 2a: Country/Account Summary FY 2008 Actual
Total aid $25,207 million of which $4,548 million in the foreign military f-something column (didn`t this used to be called FMA or foreign military aid?)
Egypt $1,705 Million of which $1,289 �fmf�
Israel $2,380 Million of which $2,380 �fmf�
Pakistan $740 Million of which $297 �fmf�
Jordan $687 Million of which $289 �fmf�
Afghanistan is already budgeted for $1,118 Million, none of which marked �fmf�
Has been like that for years. All places where the US needs no troops to maintain the influence a billion gives amongst those whose power depends on the direct deterrence value of a nuclear superpower giving out such paychecks and if not then there is the uniforms they buy.
IIRC this is the more structural money. It excludes IMET (international military aid and training) because I am to lazy to add things up, excludes free used weapons, �supplemental� money like the FY09 bridge supplemental which includes $590Million for Afghanistan in mostly �economic support fund� spending, DoD spending, black budgets (especially Pakistan) and whatever the Saudis pitch in or is left of those billions in cash that went missing in Iraq.
But it isn`t the big friends for which this data interesting, its in situations where the CIA leaks to ABC just in time for Rice`s visit to Europe that the CIA prisoners have been moved out of dark site prisons in Poland to a place in northern Africa. Then you take a look a FMA/population, who signed those "no us troops to the international criminal court" waivers and where do you find contractor job openings. And then you know Djibouti may not be high in the military aid rankings, but its one hell of an interesting place.
asdf, I never said it was unthinkable. After all, the US is spending 10 or 20 times that in Iraq and Afghanistan every year already. This post is shorthand, but from much of what we all learned from "building" the Iraqi army, there is a significant difference between putting guys in uniform and building a proper military force. Even now, i would be curious to see what percentage of Iraqi forces are capable of sustaining themselves logistically.
ReplyDeleteBasically, this is one of the ways you ensure the Afghan government remains completely dependent on the US, and therefore pliable to US demands. Which is not only not unthinkable, but more or less SOP.