Afghanistan faces 4 billion dollar defence funding shortfall

Kabul, Dec.2 (ANI): Afghanistan's security forces face a four billion dollar funding shortfall after 2014 - when they are supposed to take over the main responsibility for fighting the insurgency.

According to the Guardian, this raises questions about whether Kabul will have the resources to keep the Taliban at bay.

The Afghan army and police combined currently number about 308,000, and are due to reach their peak strength of 352,000 by the end of next year.

The western strategy is for the Afghan national security forces (ANSF) to take on an increasing share in the fighting, allowing the US, Britain and their allies to withdraw all their troops from combat by 2014 and focus on training and counter-terrorist operations.

However, a 352,000-strong ANSF is estimated to cost eight billion dollars and US officials have told their European counterparts that Washington is only prepared to foot three billion dollars of that bill after 2014. Other donors are expected to come up with another one billion dollars, enough to finance a force of only 220,000 troops.

Foreign and Afghan officials in Kabul agree such force would only be able to hold the line against the insurgents if there was a breakthrough in peace talks, or a collapse in the Taliban, both of which currently look unlikely.

The fear that international financial support for Afghanistan will evaporate in 2014 as the West struggles to escape from chronic recession and western capitals seek to put the conflict behind them, has alarmed the Kabul government of Hamid Karzai.

Karzai will chair an international conference in Bonn on Monday designed to seek international commitments to continue to support Afghanistan long after 2014, when the country, after more than three decades of war, will continue to be an economic basket case.

A World Bank report last week projected Afghanistan's fiscal deficit by 2021-22 at 25 percent of the country's GDP.

American officials have made it clear that other countries will have to come up with more than the one billion dollars they are currently projected to contribute to the ANSF and are warning the Afghan government that it may have to make do with a significantly smaller force over the long term than had originally been planned. (ANI)