US President Barack Obama is set to claim progress this week for a legacy-defining bid to salvage the Afghan war, after a year of sapping bloodshed and public spats with uneasy allies in Kabul and Islamabad.
Obama was due to hold a meeting with his war Cabinet yesterday before unveiling a strategy review two days later, assessing results a year after making a high stakes bet on a troop surge to crush al-Qaeda and thwart Taliban momentum.
The White House has yet to reveal details of the review, but has spent months dismissing expectations of a change in approach, and Obama’s target to begin troop withdrawals next year is now seen as more symbolic than a military shift.
PHOTO: AFP
“We have progress and we have challenges,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Monday, assessing Obama’s decision to surge 30,000 troops into a conflict — that at nine years — is now the US’ longest hot war abroad.
“We have many challenges in both security and governance,” Gibbs said, after a year in which US and allied forces have taken heavy losses in fights with the Taliban and US officials have repeatedly complained about Afghan corruption.
Obama signaled his likely approach during a visit to Afghanistan this month, telling troops they were achieving their objectives and would succeed.
“We said we were going to break the Taliban’s momentum. That’s what you’re doing,” Obama said, though admitted there would be difficult days ahead in a war that has claimed nearly 700 foreign troops in its bloodiest year so far.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates says that the US strategy had exceeded his expectations — with the US military claiming success in wiping out Taliban mid-level commanders and in operations its eastern and southern bastions.
However, there is some evidence of rising Taliban strength in northern districts where there is less of a US troop footprint.
And the review may leave fundamental questions over the future of the war unanswered: including; are US gains sustainable? Will Afghan forces merge into a true fighting force? Will the Taliban simply outwait foreign soldiers?
Obama’s administration has also endured a tortured year of dealing with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, amid leaked claims the Afghan leader is an erratic manic depressive mired in a government-wide pool of corruption.
Both sides have been forced into stage-managed shows of unity, after repeated public bust-ups, and mutual trust is clearly limited.
Legendary reporter Bob Woodward quoted US ambassador to Kabul Karl Eikenberry as saying Karzai was “off his meds” while documents leaked by the Wikileaks Web site suggested the Afghan leader was corrupt and paranoid.
Obama’s statement tomorrow will come a year after a more high profile appearance at West Point military academy, where he redefined US war aims and unveiled a high-risk after exhaustive soul-searching.
Since then, Obama has sacked his former top war general Stanley McChrystal for insubordination, seen his administration wage public spats with Karzai and traveled twice to Afghanistan, to honor the sacrifice of US soldiers.
And though the war has not been the prime issue for recession-weary US voters, its heavy toll has been a constant strain on the president.
Obama, who maintained the Afghan war was neglected as his predecessor George W. Bush’s fixated on Iraq, walked a tightrope last December when he announced a surge, but a certain date for troops to come home.
Keen to head off claims he was sending US soldiers into an open-ended, ill-defined, Vietnam-style quagmire, Obama pledged last year that “after 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.”
While the White House insists the war is going well enough to enable some transitions to Afghan forces and for some Americans to leave the battlefield, the date that counts now appears to be the end of 2014.
That is the target endorsed at a NATO summit last month for Washington and its allies to cede full control to Afghan security forces.
A vital plank of Obama’s new strategy was reinvigorating Pakistan’s efforts to crack down on al-Qaeda militants in lawless northwest border regions — from where they can slip across the rugged Afghan border to attack US troops.
Obama’s report will be closely parsed for its stance towards Islamabad after an administration report to Congress this year charged its forces were avoiding “direct conflict” with the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda.
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