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Canwest News Service
The bloodiest year of the Afghan War is about to get more violent.
After months of deliberation and fierce bureaucratic infighting, U.S. President Barack Obama is prepared to announce a dramatic new escalation in the war that will roughly double the number of troops in Afghanistan from the day he took office.
In a televised speech to the nation, scheduled for 8 p.m. on Tuesday from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Mr. Obama will announce both a new surge in troop strength, involving between 30,000 and 35,000 soldiers, and a broad exit strategy for the Afghan war.
His decision is not expected to stray far from the counter-insurgency game plan he laid down for Afghanistan eight months ago and it is unlikely to set a specific date for a troop withdrawal. But White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs says Mr. Obama will stress that U.S. involvement in Afghanistan is not open-ended.
"We are in Year Nine of our efforts in Afghanistan," he told reporters this week. "We are not going to be there another eight or nine years. Our time there will be limited and that is important for people to understand."
Overall, Mr. Obama's new strategy for Afghanistan is likely to include: an increase of 30,000 to 35,000 U.S. troops; calls for an increased NATO contribution of up to 10,000 troops; promises to increase economic development and civilian aid programs; a commitment to increase rapidly the size of Afghanistan's security forces and plans to initiate peace talks with elements of the Taliban to try and convince them to lay down their weapons in exchange for roles in local government.
Canada will be affected by Mr. Obama's decision in two ways: Washington is likely to quietly press Ottawa to delay its scheduled 2011 troop withdrawal from Afghanistan until other NATO members deploy more troops in the country and Canadian-held Kandahar province is likely to become the focal point of both the new surge and increased combat.
Kandahar, the original breeding ground of the Taliban, is the prime candidate for an early, large-scale, test of U.S. General Stanley McCrystal's counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.
Military analysts expect almost half the new U.S. troops to be posted to Kandahar to help secure the city and support a surge in economic and political assistance to the region, while most of the rest will be deployed training Afghan security forces.
In outlining his refined strategy, Mr. Obama is likely to increase pressure on Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai to speed up reforms, eliminate corruption and improve the performance of his government. Washington is expected to draw up a series of benchmarks or "performance targets" that it expects the government in Kabul to meet and Mr. Obama is likely to spread the U.S. troop build-up over several months to increase the pressure on Mr. Karzai.
By phasing in the new deployments, the Pentagon will provide Mr. Obama with natural points to review and if necessary to revise U.S. operations in Afghanistan, all the while pressing the Karzai government to do more to draw his Afghan rivals into government.
In the early days of a new Afghan surge, Gen. McCrystal's counterinsurgency strategy is likely to be matched with a stepped up counter-terrorism campaign that will see an increase in combat, a wider use of predator drones to hunt Taliban leaders and growing demands on Pakistan to do more to eliminate Taliban safe havens across the border.
In many ways, Mr. Obama seems to have tried to split the difference between the many competing voices he had to listen to during the three months and ten National Security Council meetings he spent reviewing his Afghanistan policy.
The debate over Afghanistan exposed deep divisions among Mr. Obama's advisors as the Pentagon and Gen. McCrystal favoured a reliance on "counterinsurgency" and a sizable troop increase, while Vice-President Joe Biden and others preferred a "counter-terrorism policy" that emphasized targeted strikes at terrorist leaders and their hideouts. U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, a former army commander in Afghanistan, advised against any troop increase, saying it might actually undermine efforts to build up the Afghan government. In the end, by dividing troop increases between the United States and NATO, Mr. Obama can give Gen. McChrystal most of what he originally asked for, while both stepping up counter-terrorism operations and efforts to improve the Afghan government. Mr. Obama's next big challenge is to sell his decision to an American public that is losing patience for an expensive war in a time of economic hardship. The White House Office of Management and Budget estimates the Afghan war is already costing Washington $43-billion a year and says it will cost an additional $1-million-a-year for each additional soldier sent to Afghanistan. Mr. Obama's political base, which includes many anti-war Democrats who don't want to sacrifice their domestic agenda to a troop build-up, may be his hardest sell. "I think we have to look at that war with a green eyeshade on, " Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said this week. "There is unrest in our caucus about: Can we afford this war?' " As a result, Mr. Obama plans a massive public relations campaign to sell his decision immediately after Tuesday night's speech.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will all appear before congressional committees in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives on Wednesday. Gen. McCrystal and Ambassador Eikenberry will also testify before Congress and Ms. Clinton plans to sell the new U.S. strategy to NATO officials on Thursday at a foreign minister's meeting in Brussels. NATO has already scheduled a "force generation" conference in Brussels for Dec. 7 to review troop commitments in Afghanistan. Still, no matter how well he sells his new policy, Mr. Obama's three month delay in deciding on a troop surge and his intention to phase-in the increase over several months, raises questions over whether he has left himself enough time to turn the tide of battle in Afghanistan. Last August 30, when Gen. McChrystal submitted his review of U.S. policy and asked for a troop increase, he declared flatly, "Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) — while Afghan security capacity matures — risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible." One quarter of that window of opportunity has already passed and most of the troops Gen. McCrystal asked for won't be on the ground in Afghanistan for another four or five months.
THE ENDGAME
It's almost impossible to gauge how long any Afghanistan exit strategy might take. However, some people have mentioned rough timescales as well as some benchmarks that have to be reached.
President Hamid Karzai said Afghans would be able to take over security of the country in five years, a target U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called "ambitious."
Talking about the "endgame" President Barack Obama said: "My preference would be not to hand off anything to the next president. One of the things I'd like is the next president to be able to come in and say, I've got a clean slate'"– a window of between three and seven years, depending on whether he wins a second term in 2012.
Robert Gibbs, the White House press spokesman, said: "We are not going to be there another eight or nine years."
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said an eventual drawdown would probably go region by region. "My assumption would be there will be some districts and some provinces where that handover could come relatively soon. But again in terms of specific dates I would leave that more to folks on the ground."
U.S. General Stanley McChrystal said Afghanistan would need a combined army and police force of 400,000 to be able to secure the country themselves – 240, 000 soldiers and 160,000 police. There are now about 95,000 Afghan soldiers and 93,000 police. It is hoped to bring the army up to 134,000 men by October 2010.
Retired Pakistan Air Marshal Ayaz Khan, now a defence analyst, writing in the Pakistan Observer, said a timescale of five years had been given to bring the army and police up to strength. But he wrote, "This is an impossible aim. It cannot be done. It is an impossible goal, because recruits are hard to get. The pay at $100 per month is low. The Pushtun youth are under Taliban influence, and Taliban threats intimidation and influence is pervasive."
Some experts said progress could be seen by next year if the Obama surge focuses at first on limited areas in Afghanistan, such as Kandahar. "By the middle of next year, we ought to be able to see something for our effort," said Marvin Weinbaum, a former State Department South Asia specialist now affiliated with the Middle East Institute.
National Post
