Afghan National Army

The Afghan National Army (ANA) is the main branch of the Afghan Armed Forces, responsible for ground warfare. It is under the Ministry of Defense in Kabul and is being heavily assisted by the United States and NATO. The ANA is divided into six regional Corps, with the 201st in Kabul followed by the 203rd in Gardez, 205th in Kandahar, 207th in Herat, 209th in Mazar-i-Sharif and the 215th in Lashkar Gah. The current Chief of Staff of the Afghan National Army is Lieutenant General Sher Mohammad Karimi.

Afghanistan's army traces its roots to the early 18th-century when the Hotaki dynasty was established in Kandahar followed by Ahmad Shah Durrani's rise to power. It was reorganized in 1880 during Emir Abdur Rahman Khan's reign. Afghanistan remained neutral during the First and Second World Wars. From the 1960s to the early 1990s, the Afghan army was equipped by the Soviet Union. After the collapse of Mohammad Najibullah's regime in 1992, the army fragmented into militias under various regional warlords. This was followed by the Taliban government in the mid-1990s. After the end of the Taliban rule in late 2001, a new army was created, trained initially by the British but then mostly by the United States, later with the assistance of ISAF participants.