Filed by KOSU News in US News.
December 1, 2009

As he prepares to address the nation in a prime-time speech Tuesday night, President Obama is trying to strike a delicate balance by announcing a significant strategic short-term strategic surge in Afghanistan while also laying out a start date for an eventual withdrawal.

Obama is using the speech at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point to explain to a skeptical American public why he is ordering an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to be deployed to Afghanistan by next summer to reverse the sharply deteriorating security situation there. The increase will bring the total of U.S. troops to around 100,000.

But for the first time, Obama will also lay down a partial timetable for withdrawal, saying that troops will begin leaving Afghanistan in 19 months.

“The strategy that he outlines will accelerate handing over security responsibility to Afghan forces and thus allow the United States to begin to transfer our forces out of Afghanistan beginning in July 2011,” says a senior administration official who briefed reporters Tuesday afternoon. “The slope thereafter is something that will be determined by the commander in chief.”

Aides stress that the pace and eventual end date of that departure remain undetermined and will be adjusted according to conditions on the ground.

By setting a start date for withdrawal, Obama is trying to create a sense of urgency for building up the capacity of the Afghan government and its security forces.

“There is a value in setting a date like this … because it does put everyone under pressure to do more sooner,” says a senior administration official. “That pressure of the timeline begins with the U.S. government itself, but it also extends to our allies and our Afghan and Pakistani partners.”

The influx of 30,000 troops has three main aims: to reverse the Taliban’s momentum, to secure major towns and cities and to train Afghan forces as quickly as possible. The additional troops will include at least two or three combat brigades, as well as a large contingent of soldiers dedicated to training Afghan security forces.

In one key change, the president is ordering all U.S. forces in Afghanistan to partner full-time with the Afghan army and police to help them with training. The aim is to jump-start the transfer of responsibility for securing Afghanistan to the Afghan government, officials say.

The deployment of 30,000 more troops is fewer than the 40,000 that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, recommended in a confidential report to Obama in September.

Officials say they expect NATO to offer additional troops by the end of the week, but they declined to offer any specific numbers. Pentagon sources told NPR that Obama has asked NATO members to contribute an additional 5,000 troops.

The strategic overhaul is the result of a three-month White House policy review that was prompted by sharply rising violence amid a Taliban resurgence and a flawed presidential election that undermined the Afghan government’s credibility. It also follows Obama’s decision in February to send 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan during his first strategic review.

But during the first eight months of 2009, there were nearly 13,000 enemy-initiated attacks — more than 2 1/2 times the number reported in the same period in 2008, according to Pentagon data.

Obama’s new strategy will shift the focus of the U.S. military away from pursuing Taliban extremists into the most remote corners of the country. Instead, U.S. and NATO soldiers will guard the more heavily populated towns and cities to better protect the Afghan people and try to build zones of stability.

The strategic overhaul will also focus on new civilian initiatives, including the deployment of additional civilian experts to Afghanistan. The Obama administration is setting agriculture as its top development priority there.

Obama presented his planned overhaul to his top advisers on Sunday and to close foreign allies on Monday. He briefed Afghan President Hamid Karzai during a one-hour secure video teleconference session on Monday night and called Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari on Tuesday morning.

In the speech, one of Obama’s many challenges will be to explain how the U.S. will plausibly be able to hand over more and more responsibility for Afghanistan’s security to Karzai’s partially discredited government.

“This is not an open-ended commitment on behalf of the president,” says a senior administration official.

Obama will also try to demonstrate that the U.S. is working toward a broad exit strategy without sparking fear in Afghanistan, Pakistan or elsewhere that Washington is planning a precipitous withdrawal. Copyright 2009 National Public Radio