The Obama administration said Thursday it has doubled the number of civilian experts working in Afghanistan and is "on track" to meet its goal of nearly 1,000 civilians by the new year.
In unveiling his Afghan strategy in March, which is under a new review, President Barack Obama called for a sharp increase in such experts to help the Afghan government serve its people and wean the economy off opium production.
"We're on track to deploying the full 974," Jacob Lew, deputy secretary of state for management and resources, told AFP in a telephone interview on Thursday.
"We're on track to have folks in place either right at the end or right at the beginning of the year. There will be a little bit of straddling, but we're making good progress," he said.
The Obama administration had originally set March 2010 as the deadline, but moved it forward to the end of 2009.
"We started out in January with 320 civilians on the ground. As of last count last week, we have 616," Lew added.
Lew said a total of 388 experts will be deployed outside of the capital Kabul, compared to 67 who served in such positions in January this year, when Obama succeeded president George W. Bush in the White House.
The civilians are either US government employees from the State Department or seven other government agencies, including the Agriculture Department, or have been recruited outside for their special skills, such as language.
The civilians undergo various kinds of training, including in language, familiarity with Afghan culture and how to interact with the US military.
Those being deployed outside Kabul receive training at a US military base in Indiana.
Civilian workers deployed in Afghan's provinces to work on various projects, such as building an airstrip in Helmand, live on US military bases and are escorted by US troops and Afghan security forces to ensure their safety.
However, a handful of civilians will be deployed in new US consulates being set up in Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif by the end of the year, he said.
The US government has identified all but 62 of the civilians yet to be deployed to their positions in Afghanistan, Lew said.
