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Vol. 72/No. 8      February 25, 2008

 
Report paves the way for
Afghanistan troop ‘surge’
(front page)
 
BY SAM MANUEL  
WASHINGTON—A report by the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) argues for a “surge” of U.S. forces in Afghanistan similar to what has been carried out in Iraq. It is among several reports contending that Washington and its allies are losing their war in Afghanistan.

The Pentagon is sending an additional 3,200 marines to Afghanistan. The U.S. government is also pressing NATO allies to send more troops, especially to southern Afghanistan where fighting against al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and other Islamist militias has been heaviest.

The authors of the AEI report included several specialists who shaped the escalation of U.S. troops in Iraq, including retired Army Gen. John Keane. The Iraq surge followed closely the proposals in the AEI’s “Iraq Planning Group.” The AEI is referring to those who produced the latest report as the “Afghanistan Planning Group.”

The main proposals in the report, which is to be published in March, are summarized in the February 1 Army Times.

They include deployment of an extra U.S. brigade into Kandahar and a marine battalion into Helmand this year, and two more brigade combat teams into southern Afghanistan next year.

The report calls for a more rapid expansion of the Afghan National Army (ANA) and the broader use of Commander’s Emergency Response Program money to build ANA forward operating bases in eastern and southern Afghanistan.

There are 43,250 NATO troops in Afghanistan, of which 15,000 are U.S. troops, according to NATO’s International Security Assistance Force web site. There are about another 11,000 additional U.S. troops under U.S. command. NATO troops in Afghanistan expanded by 8,000 over the last year.

U.S. Gen. Daniel McNeill, head of NATO troops in Afghanistan, says he needs at least 7,000 more troops. The British government, which has 7,800 troops in Afghanistan, plans to send an additional 600 in May.

U.S. defense secretary Robert Gates has been critical of the reluctance of NATO members to deploy larger numbers of troops and to deploy them in areas where there are likely to be higher casualties.

“I worry a great deal about the alliance evolving into a two-tiered alliance, in which you have some allies willing to fight and die to protect people’s security and others who are not,” Gates told a February 6 meeting of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He said he had written to all NATO defense ministers asking for larger commitments.

German defense minister Franz Josef Jung rejected Gates’ request to send German soldiers and helicopters to southern Afghanistan where the heaviest fighting has taken place. Jung said the German government would instead deploy a couple hundred soldiers to replace Norwegian troops in northern Afghanistan, where casualties have been lighter.

Canada’s prime minister Stephen Harper said Ottawa would withdraw its troops next year unless NATO sends additional troops to Afghanistan’s southern region of Kandahar, where 78 Canadian troops have been killed.  
 
Strategy for Pakistan
The AEI report also proposes to overhaul the U.S. strategic approach to Pakistan. “Part of the problem is we’ve never had a really consistent, clear, long-term strategic idea for Afghanistan, let alone Pashtunistan or Pakistan,” said an unnamed source cited in the Army Times. Pashtunistan is the name sometimes given to the region straddling the Afghanistan-Pakistan border inhabited by the Pashtun ethnic group.

The report says that al-Qaeda and its allies have established a major safe haven in Pakistan’s Pashtun tribal area, and concludes that an integrated strategy aimed at the entire region, not just Afghanistan, is necessary for Washington to make progress.

The report proposes that Washington threaten Islamabad with unilateral U.S. strikes into Pakistani territory unless the Pakistani government takes initiative to clear al-Qaeda strongholds. It proposes that U.S. military aid to Pakistan be contingent on the Pakistani government reasserting its control in regional tribal areas, which traditionally have been somewhat autonomous.

National intelligence director Michael McConnell and CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden visited Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf in January to press him to allow the CIA wider latitude to conduct operations against al-Qaeda. According to the New York Times, Musharraf declined to allow expanded U.S. combat presence in Pakistan but discussed increasing the number and scope of armed Predator drone operations.

A missile fired, almost certainly by a Predator drone, on a village in the Pakistani region or northern Waziristan killed senior al-Qaeda leader Abu Laith al-Libi late January, according to the Financial Times.  
 
 
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