LONDON: The Nato commander in Afghanistan has warned that the current casualty rates suffered by the Afghan army and police force are “unsustainable”, in an interview published in yesterday’s Guardian.
US General Joseph Dunford told the paper that Afghan security forces may need five more years of western support before being able to take over full responsibility.
“I view it as serious, and so do all the commanders,” Dunford said of the toll, which has often hit 100 per week.
“I’m not assuming that those casualties are sustainable.”
The general said “time is going to tell” whether Nato had been right to switch in June from playing a combat role to a “train, advise, assist” operation.
“I don’t think you can tell that today,” he added.
US President Barack Obama has promised that Afghans will take full responsibility for their security by the end of 2014, although some Nato troops will remain to provide training.
Dunford claimed that some of these soldiers may be required until 2018.
“I look at Afghan security forces development as really kind of three to five years,” he explained.
“I’m just talking about before they get to the standard where they may not need assistance and support any more.”
Yesterday, a roadside bomb killed four police officers guarding a mayor as their convoy travelled through northern Afghanistan yesterday, an official said. Elsewhere in the region, authorities arrested eight police officers accused of killing six children when they misused their weapons while fishing.
Abdul Marouf Rasekh, spokesman for the governor of Badakhshan province, says the explosion hit the convoy in Barak district. Nazer Mohammad Neyazi, mayor of Faiz Abad city, was the apparent target. He was returning from a visit to a road project when the blast hit the convoy, Rasekh said.
The mayor was not hurt in the attack.
The six children were killed on Friday in the Doshi district of Baghlan province. The police are suspected of firing rockets into a fishing pond when one rocket missed its target, hitting a crowd of children nearby.
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