Categories: Need to know

How big an army would be needed to calm Afghanistan?

As Canada mourns the loss of three soldiers, an expert says it’ll take 600,000 troops to finish the job

by macleans.ca on Wednesday, March 4, 2009 9:00am - 5 Comments

This morning brings dispiriting news of another three Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan. Another bomb blast struck just outside the main U.S. Afghan base, injuring several, and suggesting no place in the troubled country is safe. What would it take to end violence in Afghanistan? John Murtha, the top Democrat on the U.S. House of Representatives committee overseeing defence spending, offers his opinion in this story: 600,000 troops. That makes the 17,000 President Barack Obama is sending, to bolster the 38,000 U.S. forces already there, look like barely a start–and the 2,500 Canadian troops serving in Afghanistan appear almost negligible.

Associated Press

http://www.jackmitchell.ca Jack Mitchell

USSR had 100 000, IIRC, with another 100 000 in reserve.

http://macleans.ca kc

They did have the cia opposing them. No comparable force for ‘good’ is opposing us. It does seem a bit of a no brainer to cut off the supply of drug money to the taliban. Is it so very hard? Even if we have to “subsidize” farmers or buy up their crop for morphine[ ?] All kinds of lives are at stake here. Nothing is easy over there, but this would seem to be something proactive we should be doing, right!.

http://www.jackmitchell.ca Jack Mitchell

Good point about the CIA. Actually it’s kind of surprising that the Taliban haven’t been able to buy heavy weaponry, with their drug money and support from Arabian extremists; i.e. surface-to-air missiles, which would seriously compromise us. I don’t recall a single report of a NATO helicopter being shot down. That’s what really turned the tide against the Soviets. Couldn’t agree more about the poppy farmers — we need to get seriously CWB on their ass.

Mike T.

You need three times the population of Afghanistan itself, with three soldiers assigned to each citizen for 8 hour shifts. Anything less, they just sneak away when you’re not lookin’!
Greg

The wrong question is being asked. The issue is not how many troops are required, but how many troops are needed to enable a particular military strategy that uses an operational doctrine which allows tactical defeat of Taliban. What is the NATO military strategy in Afghanistan? What is its operational doctrine, and what tactics are intended to defeat Taliban? These questions do not to my mind have clear answers. Primarily NATO and its non-NATO allies have a ‘presence’ all over Afghanistan, but so did the Soviet Army when it was there. The Soviet Army had some 150,000 troops at its peak of deployment, with a clear strategy or securing the borders while it engaged with the civilian population while denying freedom of movement to the enemy. Their most successful tactics were the short sharp raids by special forces which operated very much like the enemy.

It seems that the withdrawal of the Soviet Army was seen as a defeat, and therefore the assumption is that NATO has nothing to learn from them, but that may not be true. The Soviet Army withdrew primarily because of the political and economic change ushered in by the Gorbachev era, and not due to any specific military reason. Militarily speaking it was winning the tactical and operational goals and objectives, but only locally due to the inability to close the borders, notably with Pakistan.