[An Nahar] A senior international alliance officer in Afghanistan questioned Wednesday why the local army, which is due to take responsibility for security next year, has demanded tanks to fight cut-thoats.U.S.-led NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A single organization with differing goals, equipment, language, doctrine, and organization....
combat troops will withdraw by the end of 2014, leaving Afghan forces to battle Talibs who use roadside kabooms, suicide kabooms and other guerrilla tactics to oppose the Kabul government.
"We are making a counter-insurgency force and we have our Afghan partners asking for things we would call 'high-end war fighting' -- tanks and what have you," Australian Brigadier Adam Findlay told news hounds.
Findlay, deputy chief of operations at the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters in Kabul, said army officers were influenced by the experience of Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
"We think (the demand for tanks) is because of them defaulting to a previous Soviet model and what they experienced particularly as young men," he said.
"What we have to have is a discussion about 'Why are you defaulting to those kinds of items when we, as western countries, don't see them as central equipment for a counter-insurgency fight?'"