Remember how the U.S. got its military out of Iraq in 2010? Us neither. But on Friday in Lisbon, NATO is going to announce a light at the end of the tunnel in Afghanistan, set to flicker in 2014. Only just like Iraq, it won't actually mean the decade-old war will end.
But that's not the message that the Obama administration is sending in the press. Facing a protracted, unpopular war, President Obama will give his NATO colleagues a plan to start withdrawing U.S. forces in July and "ending the American combat mission there by 2014," the New York Times reports. Blink and you'll miss it, but the key word there is* combat. *The U.S. does much more in Afghanistan than just fight the Taliban, like training Afghan soldiers and police. And after 2014 passes, they'll continue doing just that.
Lieutenant General William Caldwell, who oversees the training of Afghan forces, made that explicit last week. During a conference call with bloggers on Tuesday, Caldwell said that just because Karzai wants Afghan forces taking charge of security duties by the end of 2014, that "doesn't mean that there will still not be coalition forces here in support of them." In other words, this war is going to continue for a long, looooong time. And no matter what he tells reporters, that probably suits Afghan President Hamid Karzai pretty well.
In other words, the gradual process of withdrawing 100,000 troops that begins in July 2011 won't conclude in 2014. Some unspecified number of U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan, perhaps even in combat roles supporting Afghan troops if the Afghans get overwhelmed -- much like in Iraq. "Iraq is a pretty decent blueprint for how to transition in Afghanistan," an anonymous U.S. official told the Times.
That means maximum flexibility for U.S. military commanders in setting the pace of troop reductions, just as they want. In August, General David Petraeus told Danger Room that after July 2011, he's inclined to move troops from less-dangerous to more-dangerous parts of the country, rather than pulling them out of Afghanistan outright. Even after 2014, under the emerging Afghanistan plan, Petraeus or his successor wouldn't have to send them all home. That is, if Karzai doesn't insist on putting the U.S. on a stricter schedule.
Over the weekend, Karzai told the Washington Post he wantsNATO to scale back its military presence significantly, ending Special Operations Forces "night raids" on Afghan homes and becoming less visible in Afghan cities and villages. NATO troops should become something of a border protection force, keeping insurgents and terrorists from crossing the Pakistan border. That essentially reverses Petraeus' campaign plan, which has accelerated raids by elite forces to degrade the Taliban.
Unsurprisingly, the Post reports that Petraeus feels Karzai is undermining him to the point where his command might be "untenable." It's not the first rift with Karzai. Within a month of Petraeus' arrival in Afghanistan, Karzai blasted the U.S. for a Helmand rocket attack that apparently killed civilians -- before the U.S. had a chance to investigate what happened.
But if Obama isn't going as far as he appears toward actually ending the war, neither is Karzai. Nowhere in Karzai's Post interview does he call for the U.S. to actually leave Afghanistan. "We'd like to have a long-term relationship with America, a substantial relationship with America, that's what the Afghan people want," Karzai said instead. "But we'd like the Afghan countryside -- villages, homes, towns -- not to be so overwhelmed with the military presence."
It's an understandable hedge for Karzai. Force the U.S. out and the Taliban might kill him; hug the U.S. too tightly and Afghans who badly want peace become alienated. That's why he's advocated transitioning lead security responsibility to Afghan forces by 2014all year. The plan NATO embraces on Friday will largely be Karzai's plan.
The odd man out is Petraeus. However open-ended the Karzai-NATO plan for transition actually is, Karzai made clear this weekend that he's going to act more as a critic of ongoing military operations than a partner. Petraeus is unlikely to advocate any accelerated bug-out of Afghanistan. But with Karzai loudly dismissing Petraeus' Afghanistan strategy, the general may find there's a limit to what he can accomplish. And that might compel both Afghans and Americans to ask if there shouldn't be a firmer deadline to end the war than the one 2014 currently represents.
Photo: DoD
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