Afghan Army soldiers attached to First Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division greet each other during a patrol in an area of Panjwai district, in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province, Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2010. – AP Photo

WASHINGTON: The training of Afghan soldiers is designed to pave the way for the exit of Nato-led troops in 2014 but the effort faces difficulties over the quality of security forces and a high attrition rate, a Pentagon report said Monday.

The United States and its allies see building up the Afghan army and police as pivotal to the war effort, and serious setbacks could jeopardize plans to hand over security to the Afghans.

Afghan security forces’ “growth and development are among Afghanistan’s most promising areas of progress, though numerous challenges persist,” said the Pentagon update on the war delivered to Congress.

The number of soldiers and police has grown by a third since November 2009.

The Afghan army, with 134,000 troops, and the police, with a force of 116,000, met their recruitment goals three months ahead of schedule, hitting the targets in July instead of October.

If the security forces manage to expand at a similar pace next year, the army will reach 171,600 and the police 134,000 personnel by October 2011, it said.

But the Afghan government is struggling to hold on to recruits, with the attrition rate rising to three percent for the army in July, putting at risk the ambitious objectives for expanding the security forces.

The causes of attrition include soldiers leaving for seasonal work in farming and construction and a lack of accountability for commanders, the report said.

Another challenge for the Afghan forces is a shortage of Pashtun recruits from the country’s south, the heartland of the mainly-Pashtun Taliban insurgency.

Only three percent of army recruits came from southern Pashtun areas this year, it said.

Recruiting goals for the police may be more difficult to attain, with an average attrition rate of 3.2 percent over a six-month period this year for the Afghan civil order police.

The attrition number is more than double the goal of 1.4 percent, and recruitment numbers for the civil order police are also below target levels.

International training efforts have also placed a priority on teaching basic literacy to Afghan troops, which Nato commanders have identified as a major problem.

With less than 20 percent of Afghan police and soldiers able to read at an elementary level, the number of troops enrolled in literacy classes has expanded from 5,700 in November to 12,000 in August. — AFP