From Wired.com:
Obama Won’t Use Troops to Save Afghan Hellhole (Drones, Maybe)
By Spencer Ackerman
June 22, 2011
8:00 pm
Categories: Af/Pak
Follow @attackerman
The biggest news out of President Obama’s Afghanistan speech isn’t the 10,000 troops he’s withdrawing this year. It’s what Obama will — and won’t — do with the forces he’s leaving behind. Namely: the president won’t send the remainder of the surge troops into eastern Afghanistan, which has become the country’s most buck-wild region.
It’s part of a new attempt to put the uniformed military on a much tighter leash than it had in Afghanistan or Iraq. Welcome a new phase of the war, micromanaged from the White House, and heavy on the killer robots.
Here’s what the war’s going to look like instead from July 2011 to 2014, when the Afghans are supposed to take over combat: drones, drones, training Afghans, commando raids, and drones. The military build on its momentum in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, Obama aides say. But outside of that, this is going to be a counterterrorism strategy — with a lot of troops.
“The next fighting season is going to be about consolidating gains, not necessarily moving to other parts of the country,” a senior administration official who would only speak on background tells Danger Room. “And it’s going to be about transitioning and partnering, not necessarily the U.S. and ISAF [NATO's International Security Assistance Force] bearing the brunt of the burden.”
That’s a big pushback against a move the military wanted to make — back into eastern Afghanistan, the central front of the war until 2009. Last week, the Washington Post confidently reported that the military command was eyeing the east next. Not if the White House has anything to say about it.
“We don’t anticipate replicating what we did in the south in the east,” the senior administration official says. “We don’t believe that’s necessary.”
Eastern Afghanistan didn’t enjoy the fruits of either of Obama’s troop surges. While Generals Stanley McChrystal and David Petraeus focused on southern Afghanistan, al-Qaida’s allies in the Haqqani Network, based over the Pakistani border in North Waziristan, drove up violence in the east, as Danger Room’s David Axe personally experienced this spring. There were nearly 900 insurgent attacks in March 2011, nearly double the assaults in March 2010.
“The east is clearly the most dangerous part of the country now,” says retired Lt. Gen. David Barno, a former Afghanistan commander.
But it won’t be mass numbers of troops who’ll confront it. It’ll be flying robots and commandos. “We have a capability in the east to target the Taliban and the Haqqani [Network] in the east,” the official says. That is: drones and Special Operations Forces. The war in eastern Afghanistan will resemble the war in Pakistan.
Gen. John Allen, whom Obama tapped to command the war, better know what he’s in for. He’ll have “a degree of flexibility” over how to cut 10,000 troops this year and 23,000 by September 2012. (Why, that’s right in time for an election!) But Obama pointedly did not say in his speech that withdrawals will proceed as “conditions on the ground” merit — his allowance to Petraeus for preparing for the initial withdrawals, as well as to his commanders in Iraq.
“We felt it’s very important to send a signal that we’re serious about transition to the Afghans, so they’re going to have to step up, and that we’re serious about reducing the numbers of our forces,” the senior administration official says. “And it’s frankly, not necessary to have this number of forces in Afghanistan to achieve our objectives.”
We wrote on Tuesday that Obama needed to explain how his drawdown supports “reconciliation” peace talks with the Taliban — the last political strategy standing for Afghanistan. But Obama’s speech didn’t come close. It mentioned reconciliation, but didn’t condition troop reductions on it. So what, then, compels the Taliban to negotiate seriously if it sees the U.S. unilaterally withdrawing?
“The biggest leverage [on] the Taliban for reconciliation is the SOF [Special Operations Forces] operations targeting their mid-level leadership,” the official says, and the growth of the Afghan security forces.
But the Afghan forces still walk off the job in great numbers, according to their top U.S. trainer. The Joint Special Operations Command, however, honed their skills for the Osama bin Laden kill by hunting Haqqani and Taliban members. And it’s at least arguable that it took conventional forces attacking them in Helmand and Kandahar “to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table for the first time in the ten-year war,” Barno says.
But Obama’s showing that’s not a primary concern for him. Troop reductions are. “Pulling back is a strategic objective,” the official says, “not just a tactical objective.”
Photo: Flickr/ISAF
Obama Won’t Use Troops to Save Afghan Hellhole (Drones, Maybe)
By Spencer Ackerman
June 22, 2011
8:00 pm
Categories: Af/Pak
Follow @attackerman
The biggest news out of President Obama’s Afghanistan speech isn’t the 10,000 troops he’s withdrawing this year. It’s what Obama will — and won’t — do with the forces he’s leaving behind. Namely: the president won’t send the remainder of the surge troops into eastern Afghanistan, which has become the country’s most buck-wild region.
It’s part of a new attempt to put the uniformed military on a much tighter leash than it had in Afghanistan or Iraq. Welcome a new phase of the war, micromanaged from the White House, and heavy on the killer robots.
Here’s what the war’s going to look like instead from July 2011 to 2014, when the Afghans are supposed to take over combat: drones, drones, training Afghans, commando raids, and drones. The military build on its momentum in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, Obama aides say. But outside of that, this is going to be a counterterrorism strategy — with a lot of troops.
“The next fighting season is going to be about consolidating gains, not necessarily moving to other parts of the country,” a senior administration official who would only speak on background tells Danger Room. “And it’s going to be about transitioning and partnering, not necessarily the U.S. and ISAF [NATO's International Security Assistance Force] bearing the brunt of the burden.”
That’s a big pushback against a move the military wanted to make — back into eastern Afghanistan, the central front of the war until 2009. Last week, the Washington Post confidently reported that the military command was eyeing the east next. Not if the White House has anything to say about it.
“We don’t anticipate replicating what we did in the south in the east,” the senior administration official says. “We don’t believe that’s necessary.”
Eastern Afghanistan didn’t enjoy the fruits of either of Obama’s troop surges. While Generals Stanley McChrystal and David Petraeus focused on southern Afghanistan, al-Qaida’s allies in the Haqqani Network, based over the Pakistani border in North Waziristan, drove up violence in the east, as Danger Room’s David Axe personally experienced this spring. There were nearly 900 insurgent attacks in March 2011, nearly double the assaults in March 2010.
“The east is clearly the most dangerous part of the country now,” says retired Lt. Gen. David Barno, a former Afghanistan commander.
But it won’t be mass numbers of troops who’ll confront it. It’ll be flying robots and commandos. “We have a capability in the east to target the Taliban and the Haqqani [Network] in the east,” the official says. That is: drones and Special Operations Forces. The war in eastern Afghanistan will resemble the war in Pakistan.
Gen. John Allen, whom Obama tapped to command the war, better know what he’s in for. He’ll have “a degree of flexibility” over how to cut 10,000 troops this year and 23,000 by September 2012. (Why, that’s right in time for an election!) But Obama pointedly did not say in his speech that withdrawals will proceed as “conditions on the ground” merit — his allowance to Petraeus for preparing for the initial withdrawals, as well as to his commanders in Iraq.
“We felt it’s very important to send a signal that we’re serious about transition to the Afghans, so they’re going to have to step up, and that we’re serious about reducing the numbers of our forces,” the senior administration official says. “And it’s frankly, not necessary to have this number of forces in Afghanistan to achieve our objectives.”
We wrote on Tuesday that Obama needed to explain how his drawdown supports “reconciliation” peace talks with the Taliban — the last political strategy standing for Afghanistan. But Obama’s speech didn’t come close. It mentioned reconciliation, but didn’t condition troop reductions on it. So what, then, compels the Taliban to negotiate seriously if it sees the U.S. unilaterally withdrawing?
“The biggest leverage [on] the Taliban for reconciliation is the SOF [Special Operations Forces] operations targeting their mid-level leadership,” the official says, and the growth of the Afghan security forces.
But the Afghan forces still walk off the job in great numbers, according to their top U.S. trainer. The Joint Special Operations Command, however, honed their skills for the Osama bin Laden kill by hunting Haqqani and Taliban members. And it’s at least arguable that it took conventional forces attacking them in Helmand and Kandahar “to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table for the first time in the ten-year war,” Barno says.
But Obama’s showing that’s not a primary concern for him. Troop reductions are. “Pulling back is a strategic objective,” the official says, “not just a tactical objective.”
Photo: Flickr/ISAF
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