Training | 2009.11.30
Barack Obama to send two more brigades to Afghanistan
West Point speech will be one of biggest gambles of Barack Obama\'s presidency
Barack Obama will end months of uncertainty over his Afghanistan policy when he announces tonight that he is to deploy 30,000 troops from the marines and army, in a last-ditch attempt to prevent the war being lost. The extra troops, in addition to the 21,000 dispatched in March, will mean America\'s engagement in Afghanistan will have doubled since he became president in January.
Obama gave the order for deployment on Sunday at a meeting in the Oval Office with his war council. "The commander-in-chief has issued the orders," the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said yesterday.
In a highly-charged speech on primetime TV, Obama will set out the details against the dramatic backdrop of the US military academy, West Point. He will promise that the US commitment is not open-ended but he has to reconcile this with an assurance to the Afghan and Pakistani governments that he will not abandon the region any time soon.
Obama will offer a time frame for reducing forces, though without setting dates.Gibbs said: "Our time there will be limited, and I think that\'s important for people to understand." He added that the US was in year nine of the war. "We\'re not going to be there another eight or nine years." Another official said in order not to alarm the Afghan and Pakistani governments, "no one is using the \'exit strategy\' phrase".
The first 1,000 marines are expected to leave Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, for Afghanistan before the end of the month. It could take 12 to 18 months to deploy the reinforcements fully.
The number of troops in a brigade can vary from time to time, meaning that the extra deployment could be anything between 30,000 and 35,000. There are about 68,000 US troops in Afghanistan at present.
Among those at the White House meeting on Sunday were the defence secretary Robert Gates; the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Admiral Michael Mullen; the military commander in the Middle East, General David Petraeus; the White House national security adviser, General James Jones; and the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.
Obama then went on to inform the US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, who started the whole process by asking for more troops, and the US ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry.
The president spent much of yesterday briefing world leaders, including Gordon Brown, Nicolas Sarkozy of France and the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev.
One section of Obama\'s speech tonight will be devoted to Osama bin Laden, cited as one of the main reasons why the US is involved in Afghanistan. The US administration believes the al-Qaida leader is hiding in Pakistan, close to the border with Afghanistan.
According to Gibbs, Obama will say that US involvement will not be open-ended and that he expects the Afghan army and police force to gradually take over.
He said the president would also mention the cost of the war. The extra cost of the deployment is estimated at $35bn, at a time when the US is strapped for cash because of the recession.
The number of troops is fewer than the 40,000 sought by McChrystal, who was engaged in a rare public tug-of-war with Obama, and who warned that without the extra troops the Taliban would win.
As well as the extra US troops, Washington expects Nato to agree later this week to send between 3,000 and 7,000 more soldiers, which, when combined with the extra US troops, would give McChrystal the figure he asked for.
The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, last week asked Sarkozy to send 1,500 more French troops. France has 3,750 soldiers in Afghanistan.
Obama set out his strategy for Afghanistan in March, but when McChrystal took over he advocated a change of approach that would involve concentrating forces on protecting big population centres and ceding villages and lightly-populated areas to the Taliban. But analysts in Washington warned that such an approach was risky. The biggest city in the south, Kandahar, is heavily infiltrated by the Taliban, who also controls parts of the outskirts.
One of the main problems the Obama administration has identified in Afghanistan is the lack of support for President Hamid Karzai, in part because of the corruption within his government.
Obama is considering setting targets for the Afghan government, not only in tackling corruption but in training Afghan troops and police to take over from US and Nato forces. But Gibbs refused to be drawn on whether there would be sanctions if the benchmarks were not met.
McChrystal is seeking an overall Afghan security force of 400,000, made up of 240,000 soldiers and 160,000 police officers, by October 2013.
The president will also refer in the speech to Pakistan, which is seen as an integral part of the problem, not only because it may be the hideout of Bin Laden. There are fears in Washington that the collapse of the Afghan government could precipitate the fall of the Pakistani government.
The US, which is to increase aid to Pakistan, is seeking more engagement by the government in Islamabad in tackling the Taliban along the border with Afghanistan.
Before his speech Obama planned to speak to both Karzai and the Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari.
Obama is to meet about 30 members of Congress this afternoon to brief them on his speech. He faces potential problems with Congress, where there is deep scepticism about the escalation of the war and where an attempt might be made to cap spending. which might attempt to cap spending.
Gibbs said: "It\'s a million dollars a troop for a year. That\'s in addition to what we already spend in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That also does not include training, and doesn\'t include the maintaining a security force. It\'s very, very, very expensive."
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/30/obama-troops-afghanistan
