Some Afghans fear the U.S. military pullout

As President Obama prepares to announce plans on the next phase of U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan, the big question there is whether the country's military can pick up the slack as the U.S. leaves.

CBS News correspondent Mandy Clark reports that some Afghans, especially a group of students who talked to CBS News in Kabul, are not so sure.

On the campus of American University, college life goes on as it might in many places: Students meet, talk, and wander off to class. Many of the students there are the ones who will inherit the country that the coalition troops leave behind.

Two students, Nasria, 24, and Habib, 27, graduated last year. Both of them fled Afghanistan during the 1990s as the brutal civil war took hold. Now Nasria worries that U.S. troops are withdrawing too soon.

"I would call it a mistake, although mistake may not be the right word," Nasria says.

By 2011, coalition troops will have spent $40 billion to recruit, train and equip the Army forces.

The trouble is that many Afghans don't think their security forces are up for the job. In fact, a recent NATO report came to the same conclusion. It found even after 10 years of working with coalition troops Afghan forces still suffer from poor training, lack of professionalism and corruption.

With the Afghan troops not ready, and American support dwindling, there's also fear the Taliban might come back.

"What it will mean is that the blood we've shed over the past ten years will mean nothing," Habib says.

The heaviest price so far has been paid by the Afghans themselves. According to the U.N., more than 8,000 civilians have been killed in the last 4 years of this war.