Asia-Pacific
Official: Afghan buildup involves 30,000 troops
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-12-02 01:11
In Kabul, Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell, the new head of a US-NATO command responsible for training and developing Afghan soldiers and police, said Tuesday that although the groundwork is being laid to expand the Afghan National Army beyond the current target of 134,000 troops, to be reached by Oct. 31, 2010, no fixed higher target is set.
"Although that is a goal and where we think it could eventually go to, it's not a hard, firm, fixed number," he said in a telephone interview.
He indicated that one reason for avoiding a hard-and-fast commitment to those higher numbers is the expected cost. So his orders are to reach the targets of 134,000 soldiers and 96,800 police by next October. He intends to hold annual reviews, beginning next spring or early summer, to determine whether the notional higher targets of 240,000 soldiers and 160,000 police - for a combined total of 400,000 by 2013 - are still the right goals for Afghanistan.
"If you grow it up to 400,000 - if you did grow all the way to that number, and if it was required to help bring greater security to this country - then of course you have to sustain it at that level, too, in terms of the cost of maintaining a force that size," he said. Nearly all the cost of building Afghan forces has been borne by the US and other countries thus far.
Obama also will deliver a deeper explanation of why the US must continue to fight more than eight years after the war's start, emphasizing that Afghan security forces need more time, more schooling and more US combat backup to be up to the job on their own.
With US casualties in Afghanistan sharply increasing and little sign of progress, the war Obama once liked to call one "of necessity," not choice, has grown less popular with the public and within his own Democratic party. In recent days, leading Democrats have talked of setting tough conditions on deeper US involvement, or even staging outright opposition.
The displeasure on both sides of the aisle was likely to be on display when congressional hearings on Obama's strategy get under way later in the week on Capitol Hill.
A briefing for dozens of key lawmakers was planned for Tuesday afternoon, just before Obama was set to leave the White House for the speech against a military backdrop at West Point.
The Afghan government said Tuesday that President Hamid Karzai and Obama had an hourlong video conference. Obama was also going to speak with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.
Military officials said the speech is expected to include several references to Iraq, where the United States still has more than 100,000 forces. The strain of maintaining that overseas war machine has stretched the Army and Marine Corps and limited Obama's options.
