Which NATO members can not provide 30 trainers?

NATO

From William Caldwell, NATO Training Mission Afghanistan:  Tactical gains on the battlefield will not be enduring without a self-sustaining Afghan Security Force. To create this force, we must professionalize the police, army, and air forces; create viable logistics and medical systems; and improve the infrastructure and the institutions that train and educate them…above all, we MUST have the trainers to develop them. We cannot meet our goals without the resources to achieve them. As our Secretary General said recently, ―no trainers, no transition. …

As SACEUR said earlier this month while visiting us in Afghanistan, ―Training is Job One. Our most urgent need to accomplish this job is getting the coalition trainers required. We are at a critical stage in the development of the Afghan National Security Force. This past year our focus was on generating quantity…combat formations, battalions that we sent into the fight. But now, we must create a force that can generate, equip, and sustain itself to serve and protect its people; therefore, we must build the critical support formations over the next year, and professionalize this force.

Accomplishing this will require additional NATO institutional trainers with special skill sets…skill sets to create and develop Afghan logisticians, maintainers, communicators, intel analysts, and the leaders this security force requires. The majority of this increase occurs in the six month period between this December… and next May. If we do not resource this critical phase of the mission…and resource it soon…the Afghan National Security Force will not be self-sufficient… in time to begin the process of transition next year. If they are not self-sufficient, then we… cannot transition…

To address this, we have identified 15 priority capabilities that we believe you can reasonably pledge against and begin filling by this winter and next spring. These requirements represent half of the total current trainer shortfall, but most importantly represent the gendarmes, pilots, doctors, and other key enablers that will get us through a critical and exponential growth period. If these commitments are pledged and fulfilled with boots on the ground, it would cover our critical needs through the summer of 2011…and further… allows us to begin the process of transition. Each of you possesses a capability that exists right now that can fill these requirements…each of you can make an even greater contribution today to greater Afghan stability and our shared security. …

If everyone at this table made a pledge of 30 trainers with the required skill sets, we would have all that is required for us to accomplish our mission.

Excerpts from address by Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell, IV (Commander of the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan), to the NATO Military Committee.  (photo: Reuters)

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