| | Petraeus Finishes Guidelines for Afghan Security Transition The New York Times
08/31/2010
By Thom Shanker
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WASHINGTON - Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top commander in Afghanistan, has completed work on new guidelines for turning some security duties over to Afghan forces in the months ahead, calling for American and allied troops to step back gradually from areas as they are pacified rather than handing off the task all at once to local units, according to senior NATO and Pentagon officials.
The guidelines envision that while some troops would leave the country when their current areas were secured, others could be reassigned new missions within Afghanistan, giving General Petraeus flexibility in troop deployments as he confronts pressure from some allies and some Democrats in Washington to begin winding down the war next year.
The emphasis in his plan would be on shifting troops to train Afghan security forces to accelerate the pace at which local police officers and soldiers could successfully take over, allowing even more of the alliance force to depart. But some remaining foreign troops could move into areas near their current operations where militants remain active.
The security transition guidelines acknowledge that progress has been slow, and that Afghan forces are nowhere near ready to take over the mission across the country. One senior NATO military officer in Kabul said there actually were a few areas in which American forces had begun thinning out and moving to neighboring regions, especially in Helmand Province, in southern Afghanistan, the focus of President Obama’s troop surge. But the officer acknowledged that areas showing such progress are few in number so far.
In another illustration of the continued challenges facing the United States and its allies, seven American service members were killed by two roadside bombs in southern Afghanistan on Monday, according to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.
The two bombings were unrelated, officials said, with one killing five service members and the other killing two. Fourteen American service members have been killed in Afghanistan, mostly in the south, since Saturday.
Pentagon and administration officials acknowledged that the guidelines drawn up by General Petraeus and his staff at their Kabul headquarters — in particular a goal of redeploying troops pulled from contested areas to other tasks — might clash with timetables set by some NATO nations to begin pulling troops from Afghanistan.
But a range of military and administration officials, who discussed the planning on the condition of anonymity, said that the guidelines developed by General Petraeus did not represent a shift in the Obama administration’s strategy for Afghanistan, and that they had the Defense Department’s strong backing.
In particular, these officials said, the guidelines were designed to set the conditions for fulfilling Mr. Obama’s pledge to begin reducing the American military presence by next July.
“It has everything to do with getting the principles and concepts for transition right,” said a senior NATO military officer in Kabul. “The transition pace will, after all, be conditions-based, and this reflects that.”
Even so, the new road map to long-term security transition does represent a substantial reorientation of how the president’s strategy of counterinsurgency would be carried out, and is being viewed as the most significant effort by General Petraeus to put his stamp on the mission since taking over last month.
Other new areas of his emphasis have been rooting out corruption across the government and increasing security operations in additional areas of the country, including Kabul, the capital.
The fear among supporters of the current strategy is that the priority in some NATO capitals — and among some in Washington — is getting out of an unpopular war, instead of committing to a patient, sustainable transition to Afghan government control.
That concern underscores another of the new Petraeus guidelines, which is to ensure that resources are not diverted simply to pursue transition as an end in itself.
In the past, in part driven by a shortage of combat forces, American and allied troops might have cleared an area of insurgents and moved on to other priority combat missions — leaving an ill-trained and insufficient number of Afghan soldiers or police officers unable to effectively hold that area from returning insurgent forces. And there was little government or financial capability to improve life in the area through rebuilding.
With the broad guidelines complete, General Petraeus and his team now are turning to the task of writing specific projections for security transition by time and region in 2011. Those projections will be completed for a NATO meeting in Lisbon in November.
In support of General Petraeus’s new guidelines, the White House, Pentagon and State Department leadership plan to continue lobbying NATO partners to take on more of the politically palatable training mission, even if they are pressured by their populations to end their combat role, officials said.
The administration’s strategy in the coming months will aim to explain to the population in NATO countries that, while the war in Afghanistan has been going on for nearly nine years, the current counterinsurgency strategy began only in the first year of the Obama administration — and that a full complement of forces has only arrived late this summer.
General Petraeus hinted at his effort to develop new plans for security transition during an interview broadcast by NBC on Aug. 15, when he said that he and his team had drawn up “principles and guidelines, which we’ve provided up our operational chain of command.” He provided further details in an interview posted on Wired.com.
A senior military officer at the Pentagon noted that of Afghanistan’s more than 300 districts, divided among 34 provinces, about two-thirds could see control turned over to local security forces without significant risk as there is little fighting now.
Most of the current insurgent effort, this officer said, is focused in about one-third of Afghanistan, mostly in the south and east, although officials acknowledge that militants are showing their numbers in the north and west.
Rod Nordland contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan.
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