By PETER BAKER and ERIC SCHMITT
Published: September 30, 2009
Source New York Times
The president, vice president and an array of cabinet secretaries,
intelligence chiefs, generals, diplomats and advisers gathered in a
windowless basement room of the White House for three hours on
Wednesday to chart a new course in Afghanistan.
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The one thing everyone could agree on: None of the choices is easy.
Just six months after President Obama adopted what he called a
“stronger, smarter and comprehensive strategy” for Afghanistan and
Pakistan, he is back at the same table starting from scratch. The
choices available to him are both disparate and not particularly
palatable.
He could stick with his March strategy, but his commander wants as
many as 40,000 more troops to make it work. He could go radically
in the other direction and embrace Vice President Joseph R. Biden
Jr.’s idea of using fewer troops, focused more on hunting down
leaders of Al Qaeda, but risk the collapse of the Afghan
government. Or he could search for some middle-ground option that
avoids the risks of the other two, but potentially find himself in
a quagmire.
“He’s doing what he has to do: before you make a decision, you
better scrub all your alternative options,” said Brett H. McGurk,
who worked on Afghanistan and Iraq at the National Security Council
under President George W. Bush and briefly under Mr. Obama. “I just
suspect they’ll find, like we found with Iraq, that it’s two
imperfect choices.”
At the heart of the decision is defining America’s strategic
interest in the region. Mr. Obama has called Afghanistan a “war of
necessity” to stop it from becoming a haven again for Al Qaeda to
attack America. The question is, how much danger is there and how
many lives can be lost and dollars spent to minimize it?
Stephen Biddle, a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations who
has advised Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the commander in
Afghanistan, said the chances of a new Qaeda stronghold that could
threaten American territory was relatively low but that even a
small risk was a concern.
“It’s like buying life insurance for a 50-year-old,” Mr. Biddle
said. “The odds of a 50-year-old dying in the next year in America
are substantially less than 1 percent. And yet most Americans buy
life insurance.”
The meeting on Wednesday was one of five planned as the president
rethinks his approach in response to a dire report by General
McChrystal. The session was meant to review the worsening political
and security situation, while future meetings will examine options
in detail.
General McChrystal’s preferred option builds on the strategy
outlined by Mr. Obama in March with a substantial infusion of new
troops. The counterinsurgency strategy emphasized protecting
civilians over just engaging insurgents, restricting airstrikes to
reduce civilian casualties and sharply expanding the Afghan
security forces through accelerated training.
Most counterinsurgency specialists say a larger ground force is
needed to clear Taliban-held territory and hold it while
instructors train enough competent Afghan soldiers and police
officers, and Afghan leaders build an effective government.
“Without more troops, the insurgents can continue to maneuver
around us and set I.E.D.’s, which kill our people,” said Peter
Gilchrist, a retired British major general and a former senior
commander in Afghanistan, referring to improvised explosive
devices.
“There’s no question that more forces will buy more space and time,
and that will translate into an effort to get more Afghan police
into the hinterlands and more Afghan National Army soldiers through
training,” said Gen. Dan K. McNeill, the NATO commander in
Afghanistan until June 2008.
Critics argue that foreign forces have never pacified Afghanistan
and that more troops will only increase the perception of them
being occupiers. The result would be a long, drawn-out war with
many more American casualties. They say that though the Taliban are
ruthless, they do not pose a danger to America, while Al Qaeda,
which is a threat, is located primarily in Pakistan.
Moreover, widespread allegations of fraud in Afghanistan’s
presidential election have left the country’s leadership uncertain
and underscored that America does not have a partner in Kabul with
broad public legitimacy.
At the other end of the spectrum is Mr. Biden’s approach. Rather
than try to protect the Afghan population from the Taliban,
American forces would concentrate on eliminating the Qaeda
leadership, primarily in Pakistan, using Special Operations forces,
Predator missile strikes and other surgical tactics. The Americans
would also accelerate training of Afghan forces and provide support
as they took the lead against the Taliban.
This counterterrorism strategy, as opposed to a counterinsurgency
strategy, is predicated on the theory that the real threat to
American national security lies in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. Some
call this proposal the “Pakistan First” option.
“Pakistan is the critical focus, the greatest security risk for the
United States,” said Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts
and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. “And all of this
exercise, after all, is about our security.”
Administration officials lately have been pointing to what they
call great success in working with Pakistani authorities to
decapitate Al Qaeda and other extremist cells.
Yet critics note that successful drone attacks require good
intelligence on the ground, something that may be lost without
enough forces. After Mr. Bush sent more troops to Iraq in early
2007, tips about enemy locations soared, a development some
attributed to a larger American presence.
Moreover, a greater reliance on air power could mean more civilian
deaths, making enemies of the very people American commanders are
trying to sway.
In between those two approaches is a menu of options not especially
satisfying to either side of the debate. Mr. Biddle estimates there
are about a half-dozen variants in this territory, from negotiating
a power-sharing arrangement with the Taliban to paying off local
warlords.
Most of these options envision roughly the same number of troops as
are in the country now or a smaller increase than General
McChrystal’s maximum request. With the reinforcements Mr. Obama
ordered earlier this year, the United States will have 68,000
troops on the ground this fall. The Pentagon still has a request
for another 10,000 that was deferred last spring.
Substantially expanding Afghan security forces would be critical.
Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who heads the Armed
Services Committee, has said that by 2012 the Afghan Army should be
increased to 240,000 troops from 92,000 and police forces to
160,000 officers from 84,000.
General McChrystal’s troop request, said one administration
official, offers alternatives requiring fewer than 40,000 more
troops. If the goal is recalibrated to secure Afghan cities but not
the countryside, then not as many more troops would be needed. And
if the goal is scaled back even further, then the additional 10,000
troops previously requested could be enough.
These ideas, though, may not be big enough to change the trajectory
of an effort that has muddled along for eight years. Critics on
both sides said the worst of all options would be some version of
staying the course.
“The middle options,” Mr. McGurk said, “are either high risk or
they’re status quo or they’re unworkable.”
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