AS FUNDING INCREASES, AFGHAN FORCES RANGE FROM RAGTAG TO READY

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Faizal Karim, a sophomore at the National
Military Academy here, stood outside a classroom holding his
English-language homework assignment. For a group of cadets nearby, a
lecture in physics was ending. Skip to next paragraph Multimedia
Slide Show Building Up Afghan Forces

Bright-eyed, articulate and in a four-year course modeled after the
United States Military Academy at West Point, Mr. Karim is a hopeful
face in Afghanistan's nascent national security forces. He is 21 and
rejects the Taliban. "I want to serve my country's people," he said,
speaking in confident English.

But several days before, an altogether different side of
Afghanistan's security forces was evident when a Dutch and Afghan
patrol visited a police compound in Oruzgan Province. The police
officers there were cultivating poppy within the compound's walls,
openly participating in the heroin trade. The Afghan Army squad that
visited them, itself only partly equipped, did nothing.

These wildly contrasting glimpses of Afghanistan's security forces
illustrate the mix of achievements and frustrations that have
accompanied international efforts to create a capable Afghan Army and
a police force after decades of disorder and war. They also
underscore the urgency behind the renewed push to recruit and train
these units, which is now under way with an influx of equipment and
training approved by the Bush administration last year.

Yet, even after several years of efforts to create new army and
police units, it remains difficult to fully assess their readiness.
Some units, especially in the army, are motivated and much better
equipped than any Afghan forces were five years ago. Others,
especially in the police, remain visibly ragtag, underequipped,
disorganized, of uncertain loyalty and with links to organized drug rings.

American officials say it will take at least a few years before most
of the Afghan forces become more ready and reliable, and perhaps a
decade before they are capable of independent operations. But they
also say that the resources and plans are now in place to make such
ambitions possible.

These ambitions are important because American military officials say
a principal element of any Western exit strategy from Afghanistan
will be to create competent national security forces. Such forces are
regarded as necessary to contain, and eventually defeat, the Taliban
insurgency that expanded in 2006, and to provide stability in regions
where the government's influence remains weak.

To this end, the United States plans to spend $3.4 billion this
fiscal year on army and police units here, according to the Combined
Security Transition Command-Afghanistan, the American-led military
unit that supervises the development of the security forces.

Defense officials hope to spend an additional $5.9 billion during the
next fiscal year. Plans call for indigenous forces to grow to 132,000
soldiers and police officers, or even as many 152,000, from about
100,000 that exist on paper now, and to equip them with helicopters,
fixed-wing aircraft and armored vehicles, as well as small arms from NATO.

Signs of new programs are apparent within the capital and out. The
first armored vehicles have begun to arrive. At the military academy,
where Mr. Karim studies, an engineering laboratory was recently
built, and construction is visible on dormitories, an infirmary, a
dining center, a gymnasium and more.

But several Western officers cautioned that it would take at least
three years before the equipment and training were in place, and that
much must be done to improve units, which in many cases remain ill
led or corrupt, both in the traditional manner of shaking down
citizens and in the now pervasive poppy trade, which undermines rule of law.

There are questions as well about whether Afghanistan's government
can afford to maintain the larger and more heavily equipped forces
that it is soon to receive, and whether increases in security
spending are out of proportion with efforts to rebuild the country's
civilian infrastructure, another component of counterinsurgency planning.

For now, however, military officials and outside analysts say the
immediate steps are necessary. "Regardless of what happens in
Afghanistan, the security forces need to be beefed up," said Steven
Ross, a research consultant for the Post-Conflict Reconstruction
Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in
Washington. "It was highly underinvested in the first years after
2001, and almost everyone sees the money coming in from the big
supplemental as a positive."

As the money flow quickens, the various army and police forces on the
ground display a widely varying range of skills and abilities. For
example, during a week of foot and vehicle patrols in Oruzgan
Province, the Afghan Army captain who led the patrols, a 25-year
veteran of wars against the Soviet Union and the Taliban, was
seasoned, decisive and skilled. But the 12-man unit he led lacked any
visible sergeants. The captain led all the soldiers himself, giving
directions to each man.

In a Western unit, several noncommissioned officers would be leading
small teams within a unit of similar size. Afghan and American
officers said the absence of this core of enlisted leadership had
stemmed from high rates of illiteracy and the enduring influence of
the Soviet Union's training of its own Afghan proxies, which
emphasized centralized leadership.

The squad's equipment was also uneven. The soldiers wore Kevlar
helmets and fragmentation vests, which proved their value in an
ambush when a rocket-propelled grenade exploded near two soldiers,
who were wounded only slightly. But on the same foot patrol, an
Afghan soldier left the base with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher
without a sight, which drastically reduced his accuracy when he came
under fire.

Other equipment shortages were evident days later on a mounted
patrol, when the squad's trucks were equipped with frames for machine
guns, but did not have mounts so the weapons could be attached. The
guns were lashed onto the trucks with twine, limiting their range and mobility.

The police units in the province were in worse shape, and more poorly
led. At many remote posts few officers were on duty, and officers
wore civilian clothes, not uniforms.

Many posts also have separate tribal allegiances, and do not
cooperate tactically, Western military officials said. "They just
have their own islands, and protect their families, and protect their
villages, and that is it," said a Dutch officer, Captain Ninke.
(Dutch military rules allow most deployed soldiers to be identified
only by rank and first name.)

The Dutch were also trying to encourage the local police to act
against a group of Taliban who had stolen a police truck. Two local
chiefs, Abdul Karim and Sadiq, said their general had told them that
whoever captured the truck could keep it, so they were trying to
steal the truck back, rather than kill the Taliban driving it.

"Do you know how hard it is to capture a truck from the Taliban
without damaging it?" Sadiq said.

Poppy cultivation was also widespread at, or near, the police posts.
At best, the police were tolerating the trade, the Dutch said. At
worst, they were part of it. American officials said, however, that
more experience and training could turn many problems around.

Maj. Gen. Robert E. Durbin, who leads the American effort to reform
Afghanistan's security forces, acknowledged in an interview that
poppy production was widespread. But he said that Afghan Army units,
which have been working with American forces for several years, were
much less involved in it than were the police. With more training, he
said, the police involvement in the drug trade should decline.

"If we can do it for the army, we can do it for the police," he said.