Ten years after the US-led military campaign that drove the Taleban from power, appetite among Western voters for engagement in Afghanistan is also waning, prompting donors to consider trimming the size of the Afghan army and police force they will fund once foreign combat troops have gone home.

A senior European diplomat said a study was being conducted that would take into account expected changes in the nature and the level of the security threat — as well as budgetary restrictions in the United States and Europe — and would present a number of scenarios for the Afghan security forces.

These could include force numbers “that may be lower than now,” he said.

Still desperately poor even after receiving billions of dollars in aid from the West over the past decade, Afghanistan will rely on foreign governments to pay for its security forces well beyond the end of 2014, the deadline agreed between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) for foreign combat troops to leave.

An ISAF spokesman declined to comment on the possibility of a smaller Afghan force.

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh-Rasmussen said this month that Afghan forces were increasingly showing they could cope with the insurgency, but NATO forces would continue to play a supporting role after 2014, principally in training Afghan troops.

The move to hand responsibility for security to Afghans from foreigners began this summer, when Afghan forces were officially put in charge of a handful of provinces and cities.

The Afghan army and police may soon be in charge of security for nearly half of the population, sources said recently, under plans for the second stage of the handover that NATO nations hope will be seen as evidence that their troops can come home on deadline.
 

Post-pullout, a full Afghan national security force including army and police would cost about $5 billion a year, the Afghan defense minister said last week.

That would amount to more than three times the Afghan government’s domestic revenue in 2010.

It is relying on attracting overseas investment in its nascent mining sector to pay for security and other government functions, but the mines are in a very early stage of development and may take years to provide income, analysts say.

Reduction of the force may be depend on the ferocity of the insurgency lessening.

“There’s nothing to stop it going below that (352,000-strong Afghan forces) if there were to be progress in the security situation, if there were to be reconciliation, even a partial end to the insurgency, an internal political settlement,” said a senior Western official, without giving details of the size of a potential reduction.

“The level of troops they will need to contain the insurgency is unknown.”

Despite the presence of more than 130,000 foreign troops, violence is at its worst since the start of the war ten years ago, according to the United Nations.

ISAF says there has recently been a fall in attacks initiated by insurgents, but this data excludes attacks that kill only civilians and attacks on Afghan security forces operating without international troops.

As well as day-to-day attacks by insurgents, there has been a series of high-profile assassinations over the last year, while in September, insurgents launched a 20-hour assault on the diplomatic quarter of Kabul, killing more than a dozen people.