Afghan training force short 3,500

[unhappycamper]

Afghan training force short 3,500
By Lisa Burgess, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Saturday, March 29, 2008

ARLINGTON, Va. — The international task force building Afghanistan’s new police and military is short almost half the trainers plans call for, said its commander, Army Brig. Gen. Robert Livingston.

“Task Force Phoenix is currently about 53 percent strength of what we have documented to be our need,” Livingston told Pentagon reporters Friday during a briefing from Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital.

“We’re about 3,500 short, total,” said Livingston, who is also deputy commanding general of Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan.

Task force leaders have managed to “cover the army units” by reducing the size of the training teams, Livingston said.

But with just one-third the needed police trainers and 395 police districts to cover, “the police effort is not moving as fast as we would like it to,” he said.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=53672