Obama had put forward his withdrawal plan in June 2010. He said the 33,000 US troops that he had ordered into Afghanistan—as part of a military “surge” aimed at quashing growing resistance from the Taliban —would leave the country by summer 2011. Some 10,000 soldiers and Marines were supposed to be out of Afghanistan by the end of this year (2011), and another 23,000 by the summer of 2012.
Once this surge force leaves, 68,000 US troops would remain in Afghanistan. The second phase of Obama plan was to see the withdrawal of these forces at a “steady pace” between 2012 and 2014 and hand over of the operations to the US-trained Afghan National Army and police.
It is this second phase, namely the gradual withdrawal of the 68,000 US troops, that is facing stiff opposition from the American generals; they want no change in troop deployment till the D-day in 2014
An “internal assessment” by NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), supports this position. Influential daily, Wall Street Journal says, in ISAF view ‘cutting US troop levels below 68,000 would make it harder to clear and hold insurgent havens, and would complicate efforts to protect supply lines and bases ahead of the scheduled 2014 handover’.
Areas along the Af-Pak border have been reporting tough resistance from the Taliban groups. This challenge can be met only by a surge in troop deployment besides stepped up drone attacks. The operational plan may call for cross-border raids into Pakistan, escalating the tension between Islamabad and Washington.
This is not the first time when the ground view from Kabul differed with the strategists close to President Obama. Both Gen. Stanley McChrystal and Gen. David Petraeus, who preceded Gen Allen, differed with the plans of their supreme commander in Washington. In fact, Gen. Stanley McChrystal was replaced by General Petraeus (he has since become CIA chief) in 2010 in circumstances which are similar to what Allen finds himself in.
McChrystal favoured induction of more troops in Afghanistan. And in a speech delivered in London (2009), he had all but demanded publicly that the Obama administration accept his proposal for a larger “surge”. He found no merit in Vice President Joe Biden’s calls for a “counter-terrorism” strategy that would have cut troop deployment and relied more on drone strikes and operations by Special Forces
Adm. Mike Mullen, whose recent outburst against ISI was the first significant sign of Washington’s frustration with Islamabad, also had his reservations on President Obama’s withdrawal plan. Shortly before he bowed out as the head of Joint Chiefs of Staff, he said the White House plans incur ‘more risk than I was originally prepared to accept’.
It is too early to speak of a hidden message in the spat and it appears to be an orchestrated attempt to help President Obama to roll back his ‘withdrawal plan’ without any dent the image of anti-war candidate he had projected in the 2008 election. He needs face savour in the election year which is 2012.
Any how, while Obama may like to stick to his Afghan plan Phase II and project it along with the withdrawal from Iraq as his foreign policy achievements, the step –up in Taliban –Haqqani combine’s attacks and the violence targeted at minority Shia community don’t give him much turf space. Moreover, going against the wishes of the Commanders in Kabul, will give his Republican opposition another stick to beat him.
The Wall Street Journal summed up the White House mood saying that Obama would likely be ‘wary of a public scrape with top military commanders, which could fuel unified Republican attacks’. Because, already right –wing experts like Frederick Kagan have begun to say “if a president finds himself repeatedly overruling or rejecting the advice of commanders he himself has selected, his own judgment must start to come into question.”
Kagan, a leading figure with the American Enterprise Institute, advised General Petraeus during the 2007 “surge” in Iraq. Writing in ‘The Weekly Standard’, he remarked: ‘The situation has become very dangerous for an administration that has overruled its commanders dramatically and frequently and is reportedly considering doing so again by announcing accelerations of the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan beyond what military commanders have recommended’. He has put forward the thesis that senior US military brass should have wide autonomy once they are assigned to their command.
Obama’s race for a second term in the White House will be fought as much on his domestic achievements as overseas ‘actions’- a category that will see the Afghan war become a political football in the November 2012 election.
President Obama appears to have already put in place a safety net with his plans for a ‘strategic partnership’ agreement with President Hamid Karzai. Such a pact would call for continued presence of tens of thousands of US troops in Afghanistan after NATO’s 2014 deadline ends as ‘trainers’ and ‘advisers’. Such a rebranding offers perfect smoke screen for the continued operations by ISAF troops from ‘permanent bases’.
As an American columnist says, these bases offer the US a ‘beachhead’ in strategic, energy-rich Central Asia and a ‘potential launching pad’ for future wars in the neighbourhood. Another plus will be that the continued American presence will act as a check against sectarian violence that the Taliban and Pakistan based Lashkar-e- Jhangvi are unleashing in Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif and other places.
