U.S. GENERAL CITES GOALS TO TRAIN AFGHAN FORCES

WASHINGTON -- The American commander in charge of building up
Afghanistan's security forces said Monday that in the next 15 months
he would have to recruit and train 141,000 new soldiers and police
officers -- more than the current size of the Afghan Army -- to meet
President Obama's ambitious goals for getting Afghan forces to fight
the war on their own.

The commander, Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, said the large
recruiting number was to allow for attrition rates in some units of
nearly 50 percent.

Over all, General Caldwell said it would not be until October 2011 --
three months after the deadline for the start of American withdrawals
set by Mr. Obama -- that he will have finished building the Afghan
security forces to their full capacity. For now, he said, "they
cannot operate independently."

General Caldwell's remarks, made by video feed from Kabul, the Afghan
capital, to reporters at the Pentagon, underscored the challenge the
Obama administration faces in trying to turn around the nine-year-old
war, which has deteriorated on the ground and become increasingly
unpopular among Americans. Training Afghan security forces to defend
their own country remains at the heart of Mr. Obama's strategy for
ending the United States' involvement in the war.

Despite the challenges, General Caldwell said he had made progress
and had so far met his recruiting targets. Currently, the Afghan Army
numbers 134,000, with a goal of 171,600 by October 2011. The Afghan
National Police has 115,500 officers, with a goal of 134,000 by October 2011.

Desertions and resignations continue to be a problem. "In the Afghan
National Police, the attrition rate is unacceptable," General
Caldwell said, citing a current rate of 47 percent, down from a peak
of 70 percent.

Another major problem, he said, is illiteracy. The vast majority of
Afghan recruits cannot read and write in their own language, meaning
that basic tasks, like knowing the serial numbers of their weapons,
are impossible. As a result, the United States has started a basic
literacy program, with 27,000 recruits currently enrolled and an
expectation that 100,000 will be in the program by next summer.

"We're not trying to make high school graduates," General Caldwell
said. "Our intent is to give them enough to have the ability to do
certain key things for the professionalization of the force."

For example, he said, "if they're issued equipment and told that
they're supposed to have four shirts, three pairs of pants and two
pairs of boots on a piece of paper, they can actually read that and
then look at the equipment instead of being reliant on somebody else
to do that for them."

General Caldwell said illiteracy had created a problem among Afghan
soldiers in the north last week, when 90 out of a group of 100
soldiers told American commanders they had not been properly paid by
electronic funds transfer, the system now used for most of the Afghan
Army payroll.

"The money was in fact in their accounts -- they just had no ability
to, in fact, look at a bank statement or read the A.T.M. machine to
understand they had been paid," General Caldwell said. "Had they had
some basic literacy training, they would have known that."

One factor that has helped recruiting this year, the general said, is
a raise. Base pay for an Afghan soldier or police officer is now $165
a month, and in a high-combat area like Helmand Province in southern
Afghanistan a soldier can make a starting salary of $240 a month, up
from $180. General Caldwell has said in the past that the Taliban
often pays insurgents $250 to $300 a month.

James M. Dubik, an author of a recent report on Afghan military
training and a retired Army three-star general who oversaw the
training of Iraqi security forces in 2007 and 2008, said he was
optimistic about General Caldwell's mission. General Dubik said
General Caldwell had greatly expanded the capacity to train Afghans
by increasing the number of instructors and training locations and
changing the training week from five 8-hour days to six 12-hour days.

General Caldwell said drug abuse remained a problem, particularly
among the police. He said drug use on average in the police was found
to be 9 percent, although in certain areas it was much higher. He did
not specify the type of drug abuse.

At an Afghan police training facility outside Camp Leatherneck in
Helmand Province, the American Marine commander, Lt. Col. Gerard
Wynn, said in April that American trainers had immediately rejected
10 percent of Afghan recruits because of opium use. But the trainers
did not turn away recruits who showed evidence of marijuana use
because, he said, "it's so prevalent in society that we'd be kicking
everybody out."