"More than 100,000 U.S. troops waging a fierce counterinsurgency against a resurgent Taliban will end combat operations in Afghanistan in 2013 -- a year earlier than planned," Canada's Globe and Mail reported Tuesday.[1] -- The Los Angeles Times said the intention behind the announcement, made by U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on the eve of a NATO summit in Brussels, was "to head off a push by allies to pull out their forces more quickly."[2] -- Bloomberg indicated that the decision came despite (or perhaps because of?) a recent (classified) National Intelligence Estimate according to which "the Taliban remain resilient and determined to re-impose their brand of harsh Islamic rule on the country, and that Afghan forces and the civilian government are still plagued by corruption and ineffectiveness."[3] -- The New York Times called Panetta's announcement "a major milestone toward ending a decade of war in Afghanistan."[4] -- Elisabeth Bumiller noted that "The United States and other NATO countries support [ISAF] forces at a cost of around $6 billion a year, but financial crises in Europe are causing countries to balk at the bill." ...
1.
U.S. TROOPS TO QUIT AFGHANISTAN IN 2013
By Paul Koring and Tamara Baluja
Globe and Mail (Canada)
February 1, 2012
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/us-troops-to-quit-afghanistan-in-2013/article2323467/
More than 100,000 U.S. troops waging a fierce counterinsurgency against a resurgent Taliban will end combat operations in Afghanistan in 2013 -- a year earlier than planned -- signalling a major U.S. shift as President Barack Obama seeks to end the carnage in what he once called ‘the right war.”
In Ottawa, Defence Minister Peter MacKay said Canada’s non-combat training role will continue, as planned, until 2014.
The surprise American announcement -- made by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on the eve of a NATO meeting in Brussels -- coupled with willingness to talk to the Taliban indicates that Mr. Obama has made winding down the decade-long war a priority.
“By the mid to latter part of 2013, we’ll be able to make a transition from a combat role to a training, advise, and assist role,” Mr. Panetta said, although he added that U.S. forces would remain combat capable.
Mr. MacKay said Canada’s non-combat contingent of 950 trainers would remain -- as planned -- until 2014. Canada’s combat role ended last July, when the Harper government became the first of the major NATO allies to stop fighting the Taliban.
The American shift to pull troops currently deployed across Taliban heartlands in the south and east of Afghanistan out of combat will place huge strains on the still-ill-trained, inadequately equipped, and inexperience Afghan army.
The change in U.S. strategy follows on the heels of a French decision to pull out a year early after the killing of some of its troops by a Taliban infiltrator. It also comes in the wake of a leaked U.S. military report that concluded the Taliban are poised to retake control of war-torn Afghanistan.
That report, based on interrogations of Taliban detainees, also concluded that Pakistan’s murky and powerful intelligence agency was in close contact with the Taliban and was helping the Islamic insurgents target and kill Western troops.
Mr. MacKay dismissed the report’s conclusions as unwarranted Taliban optimism rather than a valid assessment of whether the insurgents will eventually supplant the shaky and corrupt Karzai government. “[These documents are] going to reflect, in my view, an overly optimistic view of what’s happening on the ground in Afghanistan,” the minister said Wednesday. According to Mr. MacKay, the Taliban fighting force is dwindling, its leadership is weak and its support among Afghans is in decline..
Pakistan rejected -- as it does routinely -- the accusations that it has retained influence and ties to the Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan before the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington. But many believe Islamabad’s long view is that the Western powers will tire of ‘nation-building’ in Afghanistan and that Pakistan has pragmatically positioned itself to play a major role should a Taliban regime return to power in Kabul.
Mr. MacKay said he found the latest evidence of links between Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence agency -- the feared, powerful, and secretive ISI that helped create the Taliban in the 1990s -- to be of “more concern,” than Taliban expectations of victory.
The Panetta announcement was the latest evidence of a new urgency within the Obama administration to end the war the President had long supported. While Mr. Obama opposed the Iraq war and vowed to pull U.S. troops out, he had pushed to escalate the fight against the Taliban. U.S. troops levels in Afghanistan have more than tripled since Mr. Obama reached the Oval Office.
However, the huge surge has failed to quell the insurgency, public support for the war is at an all-time low, and casualties, both among U.S. troops and Afghan civilians, have spiked.
The new Obama war-fighting strategy of using missile-firing drones and special forces to make surgical strikes -- in both Afghanistan and Pakistan -- has supplanted the manpower-intensive “boots on the ground” doctrine of classic counterinsurgency. But there’s also a clear shift to making peace with the Taliban rather than propping up the Karzai government indefinitely.
2.
World
Afghanistan war
U.S. AND ALLIES PLAN TO GIVE AFGHANISTAN FORCES LEAD ROLE IN 2013
By David S. Cloud
** By announcing a specific timetable, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is hoping to head off a push by military allies to pull out their Afghan forces more quickly. **
Los Angeles Times
February 1, 2012
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-us-afghanistan-20120202,0,4176030.story
BRUSSELS -- The U.S. and its military allies in Afghanistan intend to hand the lead combat role to Afghan forces next year, according to Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, shifting to a training and advising mission as they press ahead with their withdrawal after more than a decade of fighting.
By announcing a specific timetable, U.S. officials are hoping to head off a push by allies to pull out their forces more quickly. Public support for the war is falling in many countries, and with their economies struggling, governments are under pressure to trim their defense budgets.
The top commander in Afghanistan, U.S. Marine Corps Gen. John R. Allen, said in December that he was planning such a shift, but Panetta's comment Wednesday on his way to a NATO meeting in Brussels marked the first time a senior U.S. official had provided a timetable.
The shift to an advisory mission in Afghanistan is similar to the approach used in Iraq, where U.S. troops pulled out of major cities and focused on training Iraqi troops more than a year before leaving for good.
An emphasis on training could keep more troops on bases and help reduce U.S. casualties. The advisory effort would put small teams of U.S. troops with Afghan units to help them plan operations and to call in air support and artillery fire if needed.
It remains unclear how capable the Afghan army and police, which are plagued by corruption, operational, and personnel problems, will be to assume the main responsibility for fighting the Taliban and other insurgents.
Panetta said U.S. combat troops would remain until the end of 2014, as previously announced, but mainly in a support role.
"Our goal is to complete all of that transition in 2013, and hopefully by mid- to the latter part of 2013, we'll be able to make a transition from a combat role to a training, advise, and assist role," Panetta told reporters traveling on his plane.
The U.S. is already in the midst of a drawdown of its force in Afghanistan, which peaked at about 100,000 troops before a first contingent of 10,000 left last year. The number is to fall to 68,000 by autumn, but Panetta said President Obama had not yet decided how many U.S. troops would remain in Afghanistan in 2013 and 2014.
Afghan forces already have assumed control in Kabul, the capital, and some other areas, but those were already largely peaceful. The U.S. and its allies retain military responsibility for the most violent parts of the country.
Among Pentagon officials and commanders in the field, there is support for keeping as many U.S. troops in place for as long as possible. Even after the North Atlantic Treaty Organization shifts its main effort to training and advising, the U.S., and other allied combat troops still will be needed in case Afghan forces need assistance against Taliban insurgents
A senior Defense Department official traveling with Panetta said the U.S.-led force "still needs to be there in robust fashion to back them up" until the end of 2014.
Last week, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said his country intended to remove all its combat troops next year, instead of keeping to the previous timetable and remaining until the end of 2014.
Sarkozy, who is facing a tough reelection campaign this spring, said he would urge the rest of the alliance to speed up withdrawal as well.
The French president made his announcement after an Afghan soldier turned on his allies Jan. 19, killing four French troops and wounding more than a dozen. Western officials are worried about an increasing number of cases in which Afghan troops, motivated by personal grudges or planted by the Taliban, have attacked foreign troops.
Sarkozy's announcement caught U.S. officials by surprise, and introduced an element of uncertainty to what were expected to be low-key meetings of defense ministers at NATO headquarters. The senior Defense official said the U.S. was still trying to understand Sarkozy's proposal, but implied that there may not be as much disagreement as it appears between the U.S. and French positions.
"The discussions will reveal whether there's a serious difference or not," the official said. "We may find we can work with the French."
Panetta said there is little support among most other members of the alliance for moving up the 2014 date.
Like Sarkozy, Obama is facing reelection this year, and he is keen to show voters that the decade-long war is winding down. There are divisions within the administration about how quickly to withdraw U.S. forces, with some White House aides in favor of announcing further steep withdrawals before the November election.
Though the formal NATO timetable calls for some U.S. combat troops to remain until the end of 2014, the White House has made it clear it intends to continue bringing the U.S. troop numbers down steadily over the next three years and to put Afghan forces in the lead as much as possible.
Panetta emphasized that some U.S. troops are likely to remain in Afghanistan after 2014, to continue assisting Afghan forces and to carry out what the Pentagon calls "counter-terrorism operations": special forces raids aimed at Al Qaeda and its allies.
Violence is down in many areas of the nation, but a recent U.S. intelligence estimate concluded that the war is stalemated and that the Taliban has not abandoned its goal of retaking control of the country.
In addition to military moves, the Obama administration is seeking to start peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government. U.S. officials acknowledge that effort is still in its infancy.
According to a report by NATO forces, captured fighters express confidence that the Taliban will eventually rule Afghanistan again. A NATO spokesman said the report reflected the views of committed insurgents speaking defiantly to their captors, not those of military analysts.
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3.
INTELLIGENCE DOESN'T SUPPORT OBAMA's UPBEAT VIEW OF AFGHANISTAN
By John Walcott
Bloomberg
February 1, 2012
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-02-01/intelligence-doesn-t-support-obama-s-upbeat-view-of-afghanistan.html
U.S. and other intelligence reports are at odds with claims by President Barack Obama and other top U.S. officials that the Taliban are in retreat, Afghan security forces are growing stronger, and the Afghan government is becoming more effective.
A National Intelligence Estimate given to Obama last month concluded that the Taliban remain resilient and determined to re-impose their brand of harsh Islamic rule on the country, and that Afghan forces and the civilian government are still plagued by corruption and ineffectiveness. The estimate, the consensus view of the intelligence community, was described by two U.S. officials who have read it and agreed to discuss it only anonymously because it’s classified.
In his Jan. 24 State of the Union message to Congress, Obama said the “the Taliban’s momentum has been broken,” enabling a transition to the Afghan government and security forces.
“We’ve begun to wind down the war in Afghanistan,” Obama said, drawing applause from lawmakers. “Ten thousand of our troops have come home. Twenty-three thousand more will leave by the end of this summer. The transition to Afghan lead will continue, and we will build an enduring partnership with Afghanistan, so that it is never again a source of attacks against America.”
Other top American officials have underscored the White House message. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta yesterday said the U.S.-led NATO coalition in Afghanistan aims to end most of its combat role starting in the middle of next year, ahead of the planned withdrawal of all U.S. forces by the end of 2014.
ATLANTIC ALLIANCE
Much of the Atlantic alliance is saying the same thing, as Panetta and other NATO defense ministers gather today in Brussels. Coalition forces are making good progress in Afghanistan and their Afghan counterparts will take responsibility for all security by the end of 2014, a senior NATO official told reporters yesterday.
Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Jan. 30, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, whose office prepares all National Intelligence Estimates, was less optimistic.
The Taliban’s losses have come mainly in areas where coalition forces are concentrated, he said, and the militant Islamist group “remains resilient and capable of challenging U.S. and international goals.”
“Taliban senior leaders continue to enjoy safe haven in Pakistan, which enables them to provide strategic direction to the insurgency and not fear for their safety,” he said.
While coalition assistance has begun to show “signs of sustainable progress at the tactical and ministerial levels,” Clapper said, “corruption as well as poor leadership and management will threaten Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) operational effectiveness.”
‘INCREMENTAL IMPROVEMENTS’
The Afghan government has made only “incremental improvements extending the rule of law” and provinces still struggle to provide essential service, he said.
Moreover, “2 access to official governance is primarily limited to urban areas, such as district and provincial capitals, leaving much of the rural population isolated from the government,” he said.
As for its economy, Clapper said, “Afghanistan is the largest supplier of illicit opium to the world market and probably produces enough to fulfill yearly global demand for illicit opiates. Afghans earned $1.8 billion from the opiate trade, equivalent to 12 percent of the licit GDP in 2010, according to the U.S. government, International Monetary Fund and United Nations estimates.”
Other intelligence reports are similarly downbeat.
TALIBAN VICTORY 'INEVITABLE'
“State of the Taliban,” a NATO report based on interrogations of thousands of captured Taliban prisoners, said that some Afghan soldiers are collaborating with the Taliban, even selling weapons and vehicles and providing intelligence on coalition forces, the BBC reported yesterday.
Once the coalition withdraws, “the Taliban considers victory inevitable,” according to an excerpt of the report posted on the BBC website.
NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu declined to comment on a classified document during a briefing in Brussels yesterday.
Separately, a U.S. Defense Department report provided to the U.S. House Armed Services Committee yesterday said that Afghan army and police forces or civilian contractors have attacked U.S.-led coalition forces at least 46 times since May 2007, including an attack yesterday in which an Afghan soldier shot and killed a U.S. Marine in the southern province of Helmand.
‘THE INSIDER THREAT’
“The insider threat is an issue of increasing significance to coalition forces and Afghan national security forces operating in Afghanistan,” David Sedney, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia, and other Pentagon officials said in prepared testimony. “It creates distrust between our forces and their Afghan counterparts during a critical juncture in Afghanistan.”
Panetta and other officials don’t dispute the intelligence estimates. They argue instead that the latest is already outdated because such documents take months to prepare. In addition, they said, the National Intelligence Estimate doesn’t include a look at what might happen if the U.S. and its allies provide more support to the Afghan government and security forces after 2014.
“The problem with an NIE is that you basically take a picture of a situation at a given time, and sometimes it doesn’t take into consideration what’s happening at the moment,” Panetta told reporters yesterday.
NO RAPID IMPROVEMENT
The other problem “is that I think their conclusion was based on the fact that we would have no presence beyond 2014, which is not going to be the case, and we pointed that out as well,” he said.
Still, the NIE doesn’t forecast rapid improvements in Afghan security forces or governance, or a Taliban defeat, even at the current levels of foreign assistance, said the two U.S. officials. Both domestic politics and budget pressures in the U.S. and Europe make it unclear whether even those levels can be sustained, they said.
Last week, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said his nation will withdraw its troops a year before the 2014 date that NATO set at a 2010 meeting in Lisbon.
Sticking with the plan to pull out most coalition forces on schedule is a more popular course in the U.S. and Western Europe than trying to slow the withdrawal, given waning public, congressional, and European support for the war.
“Absent some big set of events in Afghanistan, I think the withdrawal narrative is a positive one for the president,” said Democratic political consultant Tad Devine in a telephone interview. “If nothing big happens, he can talk about how he oversaw the end of the war in Iraq and now is ending the war in Afghanistan.”
--With assistance from Viola Gienger in Washington and James G. Neuger in Brussels. Editors: Terry Atlas, Jim Rubin.
To contact the reporter on this story: John Walcott in Washington at
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4.
PANETTA SAYS U.S. TO END AFGHAN COMBAT ROLE AS SOON AS 2013
By Elisabeth Bumiller
New York Times
February 2, 2012 (posted Feb. 1)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/02/world/asia/panetta-moves-up-end-to-us-combat-role-in-afghanistan.html
In a major milestone toward ending a decade of war in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said Wednesday that American forces would step back from a combat role there as early as mid-2013, more than a year before all American troops are scheduled to come home.
Mr. Panetta cast the decision as an orderly step in a withdrawal process long planned by the United States and its allies, but his comments were the first time that the United States had put a date on stepping back from its central role in the war. The defense secretary’s words reflected the Obama administration’s eagerness to bring to a close the second of two grinding ground wars it inherited from the Bush administration.
Promising the end of the American combat mission in Afghanistan next year would also give Mr. Obama a certain applause line in his re-election stump speech this year.
Mr. Panetta said no decisions had been made about the number of American troops to be withdrawn in 2013, and he made clear that substantial fighting lies ahead. “It doesn’t mean that we’re not going to be combat-ready; we will be, because we always have to be in order to defend ourselves,” he told reporters on his plane on his way to a NATO meeting in Brussels, where Afghanistan is to be a central focus.
The United States has about 90,000 troops in Afghanistan, but 22,000 of them are due home by this fall. There has been no schedule set for the pace of the withdrawal of the 68,000 American troops who will remain, only that all are to be out by the end of 2014.
Mr. Panetta offered no details of what stepping back from combat would mean, saying only that the troops would move into an “advise and assist” role to Afghanistan’s security forces. Such definitions are typically murky, particularly in a country like Afghanistan, where American forces are spread widely among small bases across the desert, farmland, and mountains, and where the native security forces have a mixed record of success at best.
The defense secretary offered the withdrawal of the United States from Iraq as a model. American troops there eventually pulled back to large bases and left the bulk of the fighting to the Iraqis.
At the same time, Mr. Panetta said the NATO discussions would also focus on a potential downsizing of Afghan security forces from 350,000 troops, largely because of the expense of maintaining such a large army. The United States and other NATO countries support those forces at a cost of around $6 billion a year, but financial crises in Europe are causing countries to balk at the bill.
“The funding is going to largely determine the kind of force we can sustain in the future,” Mr. Panetta said.
He and his team played down last week’s announcement by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France that his country would break with its NATO allies and accelerate the withdrawal of its forces in Afghanistan by pulling back its troops a year early, by the end of 2013. Pentagon officials said Mr. Sarkozy and the United States might be more in tune than it appeared, although they acknowledged confusion about the French president’s statement and said their goal was to sort it out at the NATO meeting.
“A lot of policy officials in Paris were scrambling” after Mr. Sarkozy’s announcement, a senior American defense official said. “So getting exactly to what the French bottom line is hasn’t been easy for them, much less for us.” The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was discussing the internal deliberations of another country.
Mr. Sarkozy made the announcement after an attack by a rogue Afghan soldier who killed four unarmed French soldiers on a training mission. There have been similar episodes of Afghan troops’ killing of American forces, most recently involving the death of a Marine in Helmand Province this week.
The senior defense official said the Americans considered the attacks as “isolated incidents,” although “obviously very disturbing.” He said vetting procedures for Afghan security forces were being reviewed.
Mr. Panetta said he would also seek to reassure NATO that although budget constraints and a focus on Asia were forcing the United States to withdraw two combat brigades -- as many as 10,000 troops -- from Europe, it was not abandoning its allies. The United States, he said, would try to make up some of the difference by rotating more troops in for training exercises in Europe.
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