Pat Dollard | Young Americans

ABC News:

Gates Delays Troop Decision

ABC News’ Luis Martinez reports: ABC News has learned that Defense Secretary Robert Gates has decided to delay a decision to send additional troops into Afghanistan until after the Obama administration concludes its ongoing review of the strategy for Afghanistan.

The surprising decision comes after the much anticipated proposal to send three additional combat brigades to Afghanistan — or 17,000 troops as reported by ABC News last week — was presented to Secretary Gates for his approval this afternoon. The Pentagon troop proposal anticipated a large Marine brigade to be followed by two Army Brigade Combat Teams, including a Stryker Brigade. The top US general in Afghanistan , Gen. David McKiernan favors using the armored vehicles as a way of extending his troops’ presence to remote regions of Afghanistan.

Gates told Congress last week that he anticipated that should a decision to send additional brigades be made, “we could have two of those brigades there probably by late spring, and potentially a third by mid-summer.”

It’s unclear how long the decision will be delayed given that the reviews are expected to go on for at least another few weeks and possibly a few months.

Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters on Tuesday that any troops decision did not hinge on the conclusion of the reviews.

“My understanding is that whatever decision is made on additional forces for Afghanistan will likely take place in advance of the conclusion of the strategy review that this White House has undertaken on Afghanistan,” said Morrell.

ABC News has learned that the review conducted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff favors a limiting of the objectives for Afghanistan, moving away from the broad goal of democracy-building in Afghanistan towards providing regional security for both Pakistan and Afghanistan and preventing al Qaeda from maintaining a safe haven in Pakistan.

The Obama administration will also receive a recommendation from Gen. David Petraeus, who heads Central Command, and from Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s civilian envoy to Afghanistan. The reviews were begun under the Bush administration last fall, one review conducted by the White House czar on Iraq and Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Doug Lute, has already been completed.

Obama seems unlikely to widen war in Afghanistan

By ANNE GEARAN – 5 days ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama, who pledged during his campaign to shift U.S. troops and resources from Iraq to Afghanistan, has done little since taking office to suggest he will significantly widen the grinding war against a resurgent Taliban.

On the contrary, Obama appears likely to streamline the U.S. focus with an eye to the worsening economy and the cautionary example of the Iraq war that sapped political support for President George W. Bush.

“There’s not simply a military solution to that problem,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said last week, adding that Obama believes “that only through long-term and sustainable development can we ever hope to turn around what’s going on there.”

Less than two weeks into the new administration, Obama has not said much in public about what his top military adviser says is the largest challenge facing the armed forces. The president did say Afghanistan and Pakistan are the central front in the struggle against terrorism, a clue to the likely shift toward a targeted counterterrorism strategy.

After Obama’s first visit to the Pentagon as president, a senior defense official said the commander in chief surveyed top uniformed officers about the strain of fighting two wars and warned that the economic crisis will limit U.S. responses. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because Obama’s meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff was private.

Obama said he wants to add troops to turn back the Taliban, but he has not gone beyond the approximately 30,000 additional forces already under consideration by the previous administration. Those troops will nearly double the U.S. presence in Afghanistan this year. But they amount to a finger in the dike while Obama recalibrates a chaotic mishmash of military and development objectives.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates last week warned of grandiose goals in Afghanistan, prescribing a single-minded strategy to prevent Afghanistan from being a terrorism launching pad.

“Afghanistan is the fourth or fifth poorest country in the world, and if we set ourselves the objective of creating some sort of Central Asian Valhalla over there, we will lose,” Gates said, referring to a haven of purity in Norse mythology. “Nobody in the world has that kind of time, patience or money, to be honest.”

Obama has ordered a fast internal review of his military, diplomatic and other options in Afghanistan before he makes decisions that define how aggressively he will answer the growing threat of failure in Afghanistan.

Along with that review, coordinated by the National Security Council, Obama will have results of a just-completed classified Joint Chiefs of Staff assessment of a largely stalemated fight against the Taliban and counterterrorism efforts against al-Qaida and affiliated groups along the Pakistan border.

That report, which has not yet gone to the White House, talks broadly about lowering expectations in the Afghan war.

Instead, it suggests that key goals should be to make modest gains to stabilize the governance and to eliminate terrorist safe havens, senior defense officials said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the report is secret.

It also calls for military commanders to better articulate what their objectives in Afghanistan are because only then can leaders determine what types of troops should be deployed and how many.

The Joint Chiefs review also stresses that the strategy must be driven by what the Afghans want and that the U.S. cannot impose its own goals on the Afghan government.

Also ahead is Army Gen. David Petraeus’ wider survey of both the Afghan and Iraq wars and other issues in the Middle East. Petraeus, military architect of the troop increase of U.S. troops in Iraq, is not likely to recommend a similar one in Afghanistan.

Pakistan Militant Attack Halts U.S., NATO Supplies

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Militants blew up a bridge in northwest Pakistan on Tuesday, cutting the major supply line for U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan with an explosion that turned the narrow span into a jagged metal “V.”

It was the latest, and perhaps most serious, attempt to block supplies to the U.S.-led mission against the Taliban.

The length of the slender metal bridge slanted to one side and was blocked by an overturned truck that spilled dozens of dusty bags into the pavement. Traffic from the bare hills continued on foot, with Afghans and Pakistanis, including women in burqas, hurrying their baggage over the dry riverbed.

A NATO spokesman in Afghanistan said supplies along the route had been halted “for the time being,” but stressed the alliance was in no danger of running out of food, equipment or fuel.

The latest attack on the famous Khyber Pass highlights the urgent need NATO and the U.S. have for alternative supply routes to landlocked Afghanistan through nations to its north, especially as the U.S. plans to double its troop numbers in the country this year.

Up to 75 percent of the fuel and supplies destined for U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan travel through Pakistan after being unloaded at the port of Karachi, and most are driven along the Khyber Pass.

It was not immediately clear whether supply convoys could reach Afghanistan through alternative, smaller routes in the region. An official in the area, Fazal Mahmood, said repair work had begun on the bridge.

Hidayat Ullah, a government official in the Khyber tribal area, said the 32-foot-long bridge was about 15 miles northwest of the main city of Peshawar.

Pakistan has dispatched paramilitary escorts for supply convoys and cracked down on militants in Khyber, but attacks have persisted in an area that up to three years ago was largely free of violence.

U.S. Central Command chief Gen. David Petraeus said last month that agreements are in place to use supply routes that cut through Central Asia, but details have yet to be announced.

Underscoring the insecurity that plagues other parts of Pakistan, authorities said they were questioning 15 people in connection with Monday’s abduction of an American U.N. worker John Solecki in the southwest.

They said the men, including several Afghans, were not considered suspects in Monday’s kidnapping.

Solecki was kidnapped as he traveled to work in Quetta city in Baluchistan, a province that partly borders Afghanistan but has largely been spared the Al Qaeda and Taliban insurgency in the northwest.

The government called the abduction a “dastardly terrorist act.” But police said it was not clear whether Islamist militants, criminals seeking a ransom payment or members of a regional separatist group were responsible.

“We have opened investigations, and our various teams are working on this case and the effort is to safely recover the man,” said senior police officer Wazir Khan.

Solecki headed the Quetta office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which has worked for three decades in the region helping hundreds of thousands of Afghans fleeing violence in their homeland.

The man who answered the door at the New Jersey home of Ralph Solecki, the father of John Solecki, said Tuesday the family would not grant any interviews.

Suspected militants have attacked or kidnapped several foreigners in recent months.

In August, Lynne Tracy, the top U.S. diplomat in the northwest, narrowly survived an attack on her vehicle in Peshawar by suspected militants. In November, also in Peshawar, gunmen shot and killed American aid worker Stephen Vance.

Quetta has been mentioned by Afghan officials as a likely hiding place for Mullah Omar and other Taliban leaders thought to have fled Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion in 2001.

Baluchistan is also the scene of a low-level insurgency driven by nationalist groups wanting more regional autonomy. They are not known to target foreigners.

Also Tuesday, someone threw a grenade inside a mosque in the northwestern town of Dera Ismail Khan, killing at least two people and wounding eight, officials said.

The grenade attack occurred in the evening as worshippers prayed, police officer Jehangir Khattak said. The city has witnessed increasing Taliban activity, but it also has a history of sectarian clashes between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.

At least two people died and eight others were wounded, said Ashiq Saleem, a doctor at a local hospital.

Meanwhile, at least 35 Islamist militants were killed in an overnight operation in Swat Valley, a former tourist area in the northwest that has been increasingly overrun with insurgents, Pakistan’s military said in a statement.
(AP)