A tug of war for available American troops is breaking out as the administration weighs the need to put adequate firepower into Afghanistan. It’s crucial that the Afghan deployment not be shortchanged.
On Tuesday, during Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ first visit to Afghanistan, top U.S. commander Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry said he needs 1,200 troops scheduled for deployment to Iraq in eight months to remain in Afghanistan.
For good reason. Escalating attacks by Taliban, tribal and al-Qaeda militants are raising concerns that gains following the defeat of the Taliban in 2002 are at risk of being reversed. With violence increasing from across the border with Pakistan, Gates has said he’d be “strongly inclined” to go along if commanders recommend an increase of several thousand troops. We’re confident he’ll do so. It would be foolish to jeopardize the effort in Afghanistan in order to fulfill disputed deployment goals in Iraq.
Given the growing demands on a military already stretched thin, competing deployment requests will be a headache for the administration. Gates made it clear last month when he took over from Donald Rumsfeld that he is worried about the fragile state of affairs in Afghanistan, where 24,000 American and 20,000 other foreign troops are deployed. No one disputes that the badlands between Pakistan and Afghanistan are a ground zero for the war on terrorism.
Gates is the latest of several U.S. and other officials to fret about cross-border attacks. Last week, national intelligence director John Negroponte characterized Pakistan as a base of operations for al-Qaeda and Taliban attacks against Afghanistan. Gen. David Richards, the British commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, is trying to coordinate his units with Pakistani and Afghan forces. He warned recently that if lagging economic development projects are not carried out soon, a huge segment of the Afghan population could turn against international forces and the government of President Hamid Karzai.
Two Democratic senators returned from a visit to Iraq and Afghanistan and urged an increase in the Afghan deployment. In a letter to Gates, Hillary Clinton of New York and Evan Bayh of Indiana said, “It would be tragic if we fail in Afghanistan because of an unwillingness to deploy a manageable size of additional troops.” Sen. Clinton said commanders had said they hoped for as many as 2,300 more troops.
It’s increasingly clear that U.S. forces are a finite resource. But in the difficult months ahead, the requirements in Afghanistan should not be neglected.
