BRUSSELS — NATO, criticized by the United States for not doing enough in Afghanistan, will start training the Afghan police in the coming weeks, the alliance’s new leader said.
A German soldier near Kunduz, Afghanistan, in September. NATO will train the Afghan police.
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The move by NATO, which said in April that it would take on such a role but did not provide details until now, is aimed at “transferring the lead responsibility for security to the Afghans themselves,” Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO’s new secretary general, said in an interview at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Monday. “The training mission is absolutely crucial.”
The effort is a major shift for NATO, which had kept clear of civilian training missions, fearing they would undermine its military role. NATO said it would also increase training of the Afghan National Army.
Mr. Rasmussen said the training was also part of an attempt to make NATO’s contributions more helpful to the United States, which supplies the lion’s share of troops and resources in Afghanistan. NATO has 35,000 troops there, while the United States has 65,000.
“From the long-term perspective, it is essential to ensure the right military balance inside NATO in order to make sure that the Americans will still consider NATO a military alliance which is relevant for them,” Mr. Rasmussen said. “We should acknowledge and recognize the huge efforts the Americans are making and in exchange, we need to ensure that the European side of NATO also makes a balanced effort.”
NATO’s decision comes as the Obama administration is in the midst of a major review of its efforts in Afghanistan.
A three-star American general, who will be appointed this month, will command the police and army training missions. The United States will pay most of the bill for 2009, which will total $7 billion. NATO diplomats said the cost for 2010 would be about $17 billion.
Mr. Rasmussen, who spent last week in Washington meeting President Obama and senior Defense and State Department officials, said the current goal was to increase the number of Afghan soldiers to 130,000 by 2011 from about 93,000 today, and the Afghan police force to 84,500 from about 77,000 now.
Although no NATO country has called on the alliance to set a date for ending its mission in Afghanistan, there is a consensus building up in European capitals that the sooner the Afghan security forces are trained the sooner NATO troops can be withdrawn.
Mr. Rasmussen, the former prime minister of Denmark who took over the job of secretary general in August, would not say how many trainers NATO would request from its 28 members. He said NATO was waiting for the full assessment by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the American commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, who has been in discussions with Washington over questions of broad military strategy.
