WASHINGTON - The Barack Obama administration's long-awaited review of United
States strategy in Afghanistan will be released on December 16 and is expected
to conclude that while some progress in the country has been made, considerable
challenges remain.
President Barack Obama promised to conduct the review one year ago, after he
announced that he was sending an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan with
the goal of creating conditions that will allow the transfer of security
responsibilities to the Afghans and let US combat troops start coming home in
the summer of 2011.
And yet 2010 has been the bloodiest year so far of the nine-year-old war, with
some 700 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops - at least 475 of
them American - killed in fierce battles
with the Taliban aimed at clearing and holding areas under insurgent control.
There are some signs of success, like in Kunar province near the Pakistan
border, where some 850 insurgents have been captured or killed by coalition
forces since this summer. In Kandahar and Helmand provinces, where much of the
area has been cleared of Taliban fighters, the security situation has been
mostly stabilized.
But large areas of the country remain under Taliban rule, entrenched corruption
remains, governance is poor, and the training of Afghan security forces is
proving a bigger challenge than once thought.
Despite that pessimistic narrative, the White House review is not expected to
recommend any major strategy changes.
'Interim step'
Retired Lieutenant General Dave Barno was the commander of combined forces in
Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005 and is now with the Center for a New American
Security, a Washington-based research institute. Barno says the review is "an
interim step" in the Obama administration's evaluation of its strategy - a sort
of "mid-term report card" rather than "an end-of-the-year, major
decision-making" report.
"Primarily the reason for that is that the full complement of US troops didn't
[arrive] fully in Afghanistan, I think, until about September - early September
of this year," Barno says. "So I think everyone recognizes, for some time now,
that the impact of those forces isn't going to be fully felt until well into
next year."
He says the agreement signed by NATO allies at last month's Lisbon summit to
complete the transition to Afghan forces by 2014 has taken some of the pressure
off the White House to demonstrate major progress by now.
"That was ratified at the Lisbon conference. The US has signed on to that.
There hasn't been much debate about that here in this country," he says, "and I
think that that's indicative of the outlook now - that the report we're going
to see here this week or next week is really an interim step and that the
longer view is now extending the deadline. As a lot of people have started to
say, 2014 is the new 2011."
Indeed, in the days ahead of the review's release, US officials have downplayed
its significance, and at least one prominent military analyst, Anthony
Cordesman, has characterized it as simply "ticking a box".
'Our strategy is working'
The review will be primarily a product of evaluations and reports from the
Defense and State departments, where the death on December 13 of Obama's
special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, came as a shock.
The State Department has announced that Assistant Secretary for
Political-Military Affairs Frank Ruggiero has been appointed as Holbrooke's
temporary replacement.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates traveled to Afghanistan last week to meet with
troops and commanders, and at a December 8 press conference with President
Hamid Karzai said he was returning to Washington "convinced our strategy is
working".
"Progress, even just in the last few months, has exceeded my expectations. The
Taliban control far less territory then they did when I spoke here one year
ago," Gates said. "And as a result, more and more Afghan people are able to
live without being terrorized and are instead focusing on achieving a better
life for themselves and their families."
Obama has been meeting regularly with his National Security Council to go over
the findings in the review. On December 13, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs
said the president "feels confident that we are on track".
Bleak picture
Members of congress who have seen a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of
Afghanistan may feel differently. The NIE is the first assessment of
Afghanistan in two years and paints a bleak picture of security conditions,
according to a US official who read the report and spoke to The Associated
Press on condition of anonymity.
Apart from Kabul and parts of Helmand and Kandahar provinces, that report says
much of the rest of the country remains under Taliban control, or at least
vulnerable to Taliban infiltration. It found corruption is still an entrenched
obstacle to progress and says US efforts to build infrastructure and move
trained security forces to areas where they are needed are lagging behind.
The new Republican-dominated Congress that takes office in January is likely to
convene its own hearings on the war's progress and ask for testimony from Gates
and coalition commander General David Petraeus.
Barno predicts Obama will find support for his strategy from Republican
lawmakers, perhaps even more than he gets from members of his own Democratic
Party. But Barno said both parties will want to see measurable progress by next
summer, when Obama has said he wants to begin withdrawing combat troops.
To some, that's an unreasonable goal.
More like an escalation
Gilles Dorronsoro is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace who studies security and political development in
Afghanistan and is a critic of US strategy. Like some members of congress who
opposed Obama's announcement last year of a 2011 withdrawal scenario,
Dorronsoro fears that the United States won't be in a position to begin
bringing troops home by then.
A lack of strong government leaders in provinces like Helmand and Kandahar who
can help maintain coalition gains is one reason, he says. Another is the
growing strength of the Taliban in areas where they're still in control. A
third is the slow rate at which Afghan security forces are being trained.
He predicts that most European allies will begin withdrawing their troops
within two years. As a result, he says, "The US administration is going to face
a problem - the Taliban are stronger, the Europeans are leaving, so just to
contain the Taliban, the US military is going to [have to] ask for more troops
in 2011 and 2012. So we're not in something that could be construed as a
withdrawal with conditions, but it's much more an escalation of the war."
Pakistan's role in the Afghan insurgency will also be addressed in the review,
especially the continuing challenge faced by coalition forces battling Taliban
members who move back and forth across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border with
impunity and find sanctuary on the Pakistani side.
The new National Intelligence Estimate states unequivocally that the war in
Afghanistan cannot be won unless the Pakistani government and military flushes
out the militants on its side of the border - something the United States has
been pressuring Islamabad to do for years.
Barno calls it a "serious, serious issue" and one that doesn't have a
short-term solution.
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