The NATO Afghan summit: Reality and illusion

In fact, it is far more likely that Afghanistan will lapse again into civil war. And yet, the US administration acts as though it genuinely believes that by training and equipping an unsustainably large Afghan force, it can somehow shift all security responsibilities and defeat the Taliban by 2017, at which point Afghan security forces will drop to 230,000. Senior Afghan officials are unhelpfully pointing out that the $4.1bn nominally budgeted for the Afghan security forces can only maintain the smaller 230,000-man force. - News for The NATO Afghan summit: Reality and illusion - Robert Grenier