WASHINGTON
Tue Dec 1, 2009 2:09pm EST
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will unveil plans on Tuesday to send some 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan over six months, a senior administration official said, an escalation he hopes will permit a quicker U.S. exit.
The six-month time frame is significantly faster than the 12-to-18 month rollout that Pentagon officials had expected.
Here are some questions and answers about the time frame:
WHY THE RUSH?
Increasing the total number of U.S. troops to 100,000 by late May or early June, from about 68,000 now, is intended to provide a quick and powerful counterpunch as a resurgent Taliban gains ground in Afghanistan.
Analysts said it made sense to get more troops in quickly to be ready for the traditional Afghan fighting season.
"On the military side of things, sooner is always better than later. The later you get around to clearing parts of Afghanistan the tighter a hold the Taliban will have secured over that area," said Stephen Biddle, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank.
The White House must also change the Taliban's perception that it is winning the war if Washington hopes to fragment the Taliban and to peel fighters away from its militant core and from al Qaeda, he added.
"You are not going to make any significant headway until and unless you can convince the Taliban the trajectory of the war has changed and isn't in their favor any longer," Biddle said. "A quick reinforcement is likelier to change their perception than a slow one."
CAN THE PENTAGON SEND SO MANY TROOPS IN SUCH A SHORT TIME?
U.S. Department of Defense officials were surprised by administration estimates that the 30,000 additional troops would be deployed within six months but said it could be done.
They had been planning for a more gradual, 12-to-18 month rollout that would give Obama the flexibility to adjust force levels before all of the troops arrive.
"It's not impossible," one senior Pentagon official said of sending that many more by the end of May or early June. "But I'm not sure that's how McChrystal is going to manage this flow," he added, referring to General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan.
The more than 20,000 additional troops sent to Iraq during the "surge" by Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, arrived there between January and July 2007.
McChrystal in August said the United States and its allies had 12 months to turn things around or risk failure. A six-month deployment would fall within that time frame.
"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," McChrystal said.
IS THE CALENDAR DRIVEN BY U.S. POLITICS?
By setting a June deadline to get the additional troops in place, Obama could have a slightly clearer picture of whether his new strategy is working before congressional midterm elections in November. The Afghan war -- especially if it is not going well -- could be a major factor in those elections, particularly if the economy is also still in trouble.
By staggering the deployments over a longer period, Obama could have been accused of not giving his military commanders the resources they needed quickly enough and fueled criticism from Republicans.
However, experts argued Obama was likely looking at the bigger picture, rather than at next year's election.
"You cannot predict in any sense if this is going to have a good or negative impact on the election. You can guess all you want but you have no way of knowing," said Anthony Cordesman, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington.
"The president is probably more concerned with a second term and history than trying to time a war to the uncertainties of a congressional election ... presidents are not congressmen," he added.
DOES THIS MEAN LOSS OF LEVERAGE OVER KARZAI?
Some experts had expected Obama to use a staggered deployment to put pressure on Afghan President Hamid Karzai's weak government to do a better job. However, this approach was seen as dangerous by some analysts who believe that U.S. troop deployments should not be tied to Karzai's performance.
(Additional reporting by Alister Bull, Sue Pleming and Adam Entous; Editing by Arshad Mohammed and Eric Beech)
(For more on Afghanistan, click on [nAFPAK])
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December 4, 2009, 1:37 pm
John Burns Q. and A. on Obama’s Afghan Plan
By JOHN F. BURNS
Ask John Burns
CAMBRIDGE, England — John Burns, the chief foreign correspondent for The New York Times, has been answering questions through the week about President Obama’s new plan in Afghanistan. To read Mr. Burns’s earlier conversations with readers, see here and here.
Q.
Obama’s plan has all the earmarks of a tragedy in the making. With an 18 month deadline, Al Qaeda and the Taliban will simply lower the level of violence so as to create a false sense of “success.” then, once the coalition forces commence their withdrawal, or shortly after they have withdrawn, they will put their own surge in effect. The 18 month deadline is nothing less than stupid….
Barkley
San Francisco
Q.
I understand the concern over the fact Obama has announced a deadline. It may give Taliban a chance to sit back and wait. But on the other hand, isn’t there a case to say that the Taliban couldn’t really afford to wait? Stopping their pressure will just mean that in 2 years time, it’ll be much harder for them to fight…
Shann Biglione
Los Angeles, Calif.
Q.
I don’t understand all this worry about 18 months. We bought our way through Afghanistan when we aligned ourselves with the northern coalition last time we purchased this country. Why the worry about 18 months? Winter not withstanding, by St. Patrick’s Day we could have the bad guys bottled up in Pakistan once again.
Vernon Brown
Greer, South Carolina
Q.
It seems to me that beating the Taliban in Afghanistan is impossible unless the safe haven in Pakistan is eliminated. But what is the chance that Pakistan is willing and capable of doing this? And is an 18 month commitment to short to induce them to do so?…and why 18 months?… …you’d think that if politics is the reason he’d have gone for 30 months, getting us out in mid-’12 (just in time for our elections, not mid-’11).
bruce the geek
Palo Alto, Calif.
Q.
The support of the Afghan people will not be won in a few months…however, i do support the president setting a timetable for withdrawal beginning 18 months from now. …seven years of no timetable under bush just dragged out the process. By giving the afghanis notice of a withdrawal, Obama will motivate them to accomplish the changes they want to make in the allotted time…
Mark Pine
Md and ma
Q.
Do you think there is an advantage to setting a timeline from the following standpoint: if the Taliban pulls back and waits as some predict, that could provide more security and “breathing room” for accomplishing our stated goals such as training the Afghans and solidifying relationships with local tribal leaders?
Mike K
San Geronimo, Calif.
Q.
I believe that the 18 month deadline would have been better directed at the Afghan government. If there is no measurable action on cleaning up corruption in the government by June 2011 then the U.S. would start drawing down the troops….
Bob
Boise
Q.
The two questions i have in mind since i heard the speech, what if America really wins this war ? Do you believe that this victory could be sustainable with substantial troops cut, newly formed Afghan government and only after 18 months!!!?
samer
Egypt
Q.
The battle ground is not Kandahar or Helmand but the public opinion of streets of America. Taliban understand this very well as well as their handlers in Pakistan. They have to send more body bags to America may be one per week at a time till exit date and they have won the war.
captainjohann
Bangalore, India
A.
After 72 hours, it’s clear that Mr. Obama’s carefully hedged surge plan has satisfied neither the hawks nor the doves, just as he must have known when he decided to deploy 30,000 more troops but to couple that with a pledge that the first of the 100,000 troops America will now have in Afghanistan would begin to come home after 18 months. Others who have wrestled with the policy options have found much to welcome in the plan. But the balance the president has chosen has puzzled, unsettled and in some cases infuriated the two poles of opinion: those who favor a more determined American military commitment, and those who believe the war is already all but lost and the troops should be hastened home now.
The median approach taken by Mr. Obama has been a point of contention on Capitol Hill and, though less obtrusively, among government leaders in allied capitals and allied military commanders, at least some of whom, in Britain at least, worry that 18 months is much too short a time to accomplish the goals Mr. Obama has set, of halting and reversing the Taliban gains in the war, securing Afghan population centers and developing Afghan security forces to the point where they can begin to take over from international troops. Judging from their guarded comments in the last two days, these commanders see little prospect of a significant drawdown of allied troops until well beyond mid-2011, and possibly not until two or three years beyond that – the time frame that senior American commanders, including Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, set out during the months when Mr. Obama’s plans were under exhaustive discussion in Washington.
General McChrystal, the American commander in Afghanistan, has endorsed Mr. Obama’s 18-month deadline in remarks to reporters in Kabul, as you would expect, but he has added a note of reservation by saying that the time line is flexible and “not an absolute.” A similar approach has been evident at hearings on Capitol Hill, where Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said Wednesday that it made “no sense” to set an exit date if the withdrawal was going to be based on conditions on the ground. That drew a cautiously-worded reassurance from Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, who told the senators that he, too, “adamantly opposed” deadlines. “I opposed them in Iraq, and I oppose deadlines in Afghanistan,” he said. “This will be a gradual process.” Small wonder that many hearing these exchanges were left asking themselves whether mid-2011 was as significant a date as it had seemed listening to the president on Tuesday night.
Patrick Mercer, a retired British army colonel who is a defense spokesman for the opposition Conservatives, encapsulated concerns many in the British forces have about the mid-2011 deadline when he told the BBC it would be wise to remember an old warning that Afghan jihadists have offered to their foreign foes. “They like to say, ‘You in the West have the watches, but we have the time,’ ” he said. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who had announced last weekend that he would aim at setting a time line for withdrawing the first of Britain’s 10,000 troops by mid-2010, appeared to modify that undertaking under Conservative fire on Wednesday in the House of Commons when he said that British withdrawals would be tied closely to conditions on the ground.
The jihadist polemics have been predictable, as always. Al Qaeda Web sites have revived their mantra about more American boys arriving home in coffins, a line used prominently after President Bush announced the troop surge in Iraq. The Afghan surge, the Afghan Taliban said in a Web site posting on Wednesday, “is a strategy doomed to fail,” paving the way for “more attacks by the mujahedeen” and further damage to “the already trembling economy” of the United States.
Among our readers, at least those who have posted their views on this Web site, views are as divided as they are elsewhere. Many have focused on the 18-month commitment to begin withdrawals, some thinking it may be enough time to strike decisive blows to the Taliban, others that the Taliban will simply wait the period out; some seeing the deadline as just the jolt the Karzai government needs to shake itself out of its indolence and corruption, others viewing it as unrealistic to think anything decisive can be accomplished within the president’s time line, either in building credible Afghan security forces or improving the standards of Afghan government. If the range of these opinions is any guide to what the American public at large are thinking, Mr. Obama could be excused for thinking he has fashioned a policy that has threaded the needle politically at home, however effective it may prove in Afghanistan.
Speaking for myself, and as I suspect for many others outside of government who have firsthand experience of the conflict in Afghanistan, I think that there could be worse policies than one that holds open the American options in the war, as Mr. Obama seems to have done, given the web of political and military complexities in Afghanistan that defy simple, straight-line solutions. Some of our readers have noted that the mid-2011 date he has set for beginning a troop drawdown coincides with the American political calendar, coming as it will about 16 months before the 2012 presidential election; but even if that was a consideration in the White House – and it would be an unusual president who discounted the weight of so momentous an issue in domestic politics – it will not be a bad thing for Mr. Karzai to be reminded that American presidents are ultimately accountable to voters at home, and that Mr. Obama’s patience, and the American people’s, may be at risk of running out.
Q.
Does anybody really believe that a fractured and “tribal” society is going to come together to form a national army. Are they supposed to turn around and kill men from their own “tribe”? And who the heck is going to pay them enough not to take bribes?
David G Brown
Los Angeles
Q.
What on earth is taking so long to “train” sufficient numbers of people in Afghanistan to defend their own country ? Is it a question of will–that the American military cannot find afghanis willing to be “trained” and then willing to do whatever we are asking them to do ? …
Back to basics rob
New York
Q.
Build an Afghan army? There has never been a true national army.
Our interests (a national state that can hold the center and keep the Taliban at the fringes) run counter to Afghan history (strong regions with a weak center). U.S. forces are the ring of the donut. There is no center to hold.
trimtrim22
California
A.
With so much hinging on the success coalition forces have recruiting, training and deploying expanded Afghan security forces, and mentoring them in the field to assume responsibility for the war, Americans will be hearing much more of another senior United States officer in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, an old West Point classmate of General McChrystal’s who took command of the Afghan army and police training mission two weeks ago.
That is likely to be one of the Pentagon’s toughest assignments in years, starting with the goal already set before Mr. Obama announced his new plan, under which the Afghan army will be expanded to 134,000 troops from its present 98,000 by the end of October next year. Beyond that, the general will face a Sisyphean task(Match: Sisyphus and others.
Sisyphus
(European mythology)
‘The craftiest of men’, according to the ancient Greeks, and punished for his trickery by endless labour in the underworld. Throughout eternity he was required to roll a marble block to the top of a hill only to have it plunge back down just as it reached the crest. The symbol of futility, Sisyphus had been an avaricious King of Corinth.) in what amounts to a retrofit of the Afghan forces already deployed. Their performance so far has hardly encouraged confidence that they will be ready next year, as the coalition plan envisages, to begin the district-by-district, province-by-province takeover in heavily contested battle zones like Helmand Province that will be necessary if coalition troops are to start coming home.
But like General McChrystal, General Caldwell starts into his task with the advantage of having served in Iraq during the height of the war there, and of having experienced the dangers of illusionism. It may be no more than a footnote in the history of that war, but it was General Caldwell, as command spokesman in Baghdad for 13 months in 2006 and 2007 – (Americans may remember him, too, from his command of the 82nd Airborne Division when it was deployed to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to help evacuate residents trapped by the floods and clear a vast area of the city of debris) — who was the first American general to signal plainly, in public, that the coalition effort in Iraq was in danger of failing.
He did that at a critical moment in October 2006 — three months before President Bush ordered his military surge, but at a time when the idea of deploying extra troops into the Iraq conflict was still highly contentious, within the Baghdad command as much as it was in Washington. At a news conference, he told reporters that the failure of an American offensive to win back control of areas of Baghdad from sectarian death squads and insurgents was, as he put it, “disheartening.” It was a word he told me later he had settled on only after hours of careful review with officers on his staff.
By any reckoning, the general seems likely to face more disheartening days in Afghanistan. But he was only days into his new job before he told this reporter that, for all the difficulties, he believed the task he has been set was achievable.
“Ample challenges, but amongst it all, hope, too,”he said in an e-mail message from Kabul. Much will now depend on the general — and the president whose plans rest so heavily on his success — being proved right.
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