Obama wants to shift burden of fight to Afghans

The United States will deploy 4,000 extra troops to train Afghan security forces and  shift the burden from US troops in a revamped Afghan strategy that aims to disrupt al Qaeda and roll back the advances of the Taliban, US officials said on Thursday.

Obama will announce he is ordering the deployment of 4,000 extra troops to embed and partner with the Afghan military, while hundreds of US government civilian personnel are to be dispatched to ramp up under-resourced reconstruction and development programs, US officials said on Thursday.

The announcement of the new strategy, due at 9.25am (1325 GMT), comes at a time when violence in Afghanistan is at its highest level since US-led forces invaded in 2001 to topple the Taliban. The Islamist militia has staged a strong comeback and sharply escalated its attacks.

Obama, who criticized his predecessor George W Bush for becoming distracted by the Iraq war and allowing security to deteriorate in Afghanistan, ordered a review of US policy as one of his first official acts after taking office on January 20.

The new US strategy will focus on Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, where the Taliban has safe havens in tribal areas along the border, three senior Obama administration officials said in a briefing for journalists before Friday's announcement.

"For the first time, we are approaching this problem as two countries – Afghanistan, Pakistan – but one challenge and one theater for our diplomacy and our reconstruction efforts to work in. We see this as an integrated problem," said one of the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The new strategy will have a unified military goal – to disrupt, dismantle and eventually destroy al Qaeda's sanctuaries in Pakistan and its support network and prevent it from establishing safe havens in Afghanistan.

The officials said al Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden, were believed to be in an unknown location in Pakistan plotting fresh attacks on the United States and its allies. US-led forces invaded Afghanistan after al Qaeda militants launched the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Under the new strategy, the United States will also "aggressively" pursue a regional diplomatic effort; set benchmarks to measure its performance as well as those of Nato member states, Afghanistan and Pakistan; and boost economic aid to Pakistan to shore up the weak civilian government.

 

NATO TO SEND MORE TROOPS

As part of the new diplomatic effort, the United States will engage India, Russia, China and Iran, and Obama's special envoy to the region, Richard Holbrooke, will hold bilateral meetings with Afghanistan and Pakistan every six to eight weeks, the officials said.

The 4,000 military trainers will be in addition to the 17,000 troops Obama has already ordered sent to Afghanistan to help stabilise the country ahead of an election in August.

"We want to move as aggressively and as quickly as possible to build up an Afghan army that is capable of defending its country and defeating the Taliban and al Qaeda," one of the US officials said.

"We know from the past the risk of abandoning Afghanistan and letting the Taliban fill that vacuum. They will come back and bring with them al Qaeda," he said.

The United States plans to expand the size of the Afghan army from about 80,000 to 134,000 and the police force from 78,000 to about 82,000. The US officials said further increases were possible if necessary.

"It is much cheaper in the long run to train Afghans to fight this war than it is to send Americans half way around the globe," one of the US officials said.

In the short-term, however, the current $2 billion (Dh7.4 billion) a month cost of US military operations in Afghanistan are projected to increase 60 per cent, another official said.

The officials said an announcement would be made at Nato’s 60th anniversary summit next week on Nato member states sending more troops to Afghanistan for elections due in August. France will say it plans to send more police trainers, they said.

Obama briefed Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari on the new strategy but told them there would be "no blank checks" for the two countries, the officials said.

They said the Obama administration fully supported Zardari's government, which is weak and beset by political turmoil that has distracted it from tackling the Taliban more effectively. But economic aid would be tied to performance "and changes in behavior", they said.

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Kerry, said earlier he would introduce a bill with the ranking Republican on his committee, Senator Richard Lugar, probably next week, proposing to triple non-military aid to Pakistan, to $1.5 billion every year for five years.

 

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