Paper - The Future of the Afghan Security Forces

The Center for a New American Security, an independent, nonpartisan and nonprofit organization, has released a recently published (January 8, 2015) paper entitled Defend, Defect, or Desert?: The Future of the Afghan Security Forces. The author, Mr. Tyler Jost, is a former U.S. Army Company Commander who served two tours in Afghanistan and is currently a PhD Candidate in International Relations at Harvard University. Jost lays out how the United States can most effectively support the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). He argues that in the coming months, Afghanistan will depend on increasingly independent Afghan security forces to fight a tough insurgency; an insurgency that is as strong today as it was four years ago during the height of the Coalition surge in Afghanistan. The paper starts off with a good historical review of the previous Afghan military organizations and then proceeds to examine the current state of the ANSF and what needs to be done for the future in order to sustain the ANSF. At the end of the paper Jost provides a conclusion and some recommendations.

www.cnas.org/future-of-aghan-security-forces