Afghan National Security Forces: Actions Needed to Improve Plans for Sustaining Capability Assessment Efforts.

摘要

Since 2005, Congress has appropriated almost $53 billion for the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund -- the single largest U.S. fund for the reconstruction of Afghanistan -- to train, equip, and sustain the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). The process of transferring security responsibility to the Afghans is expected to be completed by the end of 2014, which will coincide with the completion of the current drawdown of U.S. and coalition forces. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization's Strategic Plan for Afghanistan calls for the Afghan army and police to achieve a combined surge strength of 352,000 personnel by the end of 2013, and to remain at that level through at least 2015, to allow for continued progress toward a sustainable, secure environment in Afghanistan. SIGAR's prior work and the work of others have expressed concern with the reliability and consistency of ANSF assessments. Reliable measures of the ANSF's progress toward becoming a self- sustaining force that is capable of assuming full security responsibility for Afghanistan are critical as the ANSF assume increasing responsibility for their country's security from U.S. and coalition forces. The objectives of this audit were to assess the extent to which the following have been accomplished: (1) the International Security Assistance Force's (ISAF) tool for evaluating the manning, training, and equipping capacity of the ANSF -- the Commander's Unit Assessment Tool (CUAT) -- was consistently applied to assess ANSF units; and (2) the ISAF is taking steps to plan for the continued collection, validation, analysis, and reporting of ANSF capacity assessments during the military drawdown and the transition of security responsibility to the Afghan government.