One of the key questions in this week's congressional hearings with Gen. David Petraeus won't be answered. Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he hasn't yet decided how many troops he'll recommend to President Obama should come home from the Afghanistan war starting in July.
Petraeus said that he'll "provide options and a recommendation" to President Obama for numbers of troops to come home this year. He cautioned that as the transition to Afghan control for security in 2014 commences, "we'll get one shot at transition, and we need to get it right." Petraeus repeated his mantra -- well-known from Iraq before Afghanistan -- that security gains in Afghanistan are real but "fragile and reversible."
By next week, though, there will be some clarity about where U.S. troops won't be, even if there won't necessarily be clarity on whether those troops will come home. On March 21, President Hamid Karzai will announce the "commencement of transition in select provinces in the next two months," Petraeus said.
Sen. John McCain, the top Republican on the committee, said it would be wiser for the U.S. to "reinvest troops from secure to insecure regions in Afghanistan." Petraeus first hinted that he'd adopt such an approach in an August interview with Danger Room to troop drawdowns. Testifying next to Petraeus, Michele Flournoy, the undersecretary of defense for policy, told the committee that some troops will "likely be reinvested in other geographic or functional areas such as training" the Afghan security forces.
And those forces are set to grow -- yet again. Right now, Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, in charge of training the Afghan soldiers and cops, intends to get 305,600 Afghans in uniform by October. Petraeus said that he was recommending to President Obama a big increase in those Afghan forces: a total of at least 352,000 and possibly as much as 378,000. Flournoy said that Defense Secretary Robert Gates is on board with that increase, which he's just sent to Obama. (Gates and Petraeus met with the president on Monday.)
That's going to be a costly increase. The Pentagon asked for over $11 billion last year to get the Afghans ready to take over security by 2014. Sustaining an Afghan force of just over 300,000 will cost $6 billion a year; and Afghanistan is a financial ward of the international community. There was no estimate on offer for what 378,000 Afghan soldiers and cops will cost.
"As we embark on the process of transition," Petraeus said, "we should keep in mind the imperative of ensuring that the transition actions we take will be irreversible." Translation: don't expect many troops to come home from Afghanistan in 2011.
Photo: ISAF
See Also:- What Congress Should Ask Petraeus | Danger Room | Wired.com
