KABUL - The United States and its NATO allies plan to spend $11.6 billion this year building Afghanistan's security forces, the largest yearly sum to date, as pressure mounts to shift responsibility for fighting the Taliban from the U.S.-led force toward local troops.
The new funding pushes the total for 2010 and 2011 to nearly $20 billion, as much as in the seven previous years combined, said Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell, the commander of NATO's training mission in Afghanistan. Funds already spent have purchased, among other things, 24,000 Ford Rangers, 108,000 9mm pistols, 74,000 handheld radios, 44 helicopters and four bomb-sniffing robots.
"It's an enormous undertaking that we do," Caldwell said.
NATO's decision to offer details Wednesday about the vast quantity of equipment provided and the steep cost to foreign taxpayers follows public criticism by Afghan officials that the West has not given Afghan troops and police officers adequate weaponry. Last month, President Hamid Karzai's spokesman, Waheed Omer, said he agreed that time and effort had been expended training the Afghan national security forces.
"But we will not agree that a lot of time and effort was spent in equipping" the forces, Omer said, a day after 14 Afghan soldiers and police were killed in separate attacks.
Defense Minister Rahim Wardak, a former mujaheddin commander, said in an interview last fall that "when I was fighting the Soviets, I had much better, more sophisticated, more heavy weapons than the [Afghan National Army] today."