WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama introduced his new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan on Friday with a threat assessment familiar to every American who lived through the Bush administration.
“The terrorists who planned and supported the 9/11 attacks,” he said, continue to devise plots designed to “kill as many of our people as they possibly can.”
Elements of the Obama plan to “disrupt, dismantle and defeat” al-Qaeda in Pakistan and vanquish its Taliban allies in Afghanistan also struck notes from the past. More U.S. troops, civilian officials and money will be needed, he said. Allies will be asked for additional help, and local forces will be trained to take over the fight. Benchmarks will be set to measure progress.
But Obama sought to separate his approach from what he has described as years of unfocused, failed policy while President George W. Bush directed his attention and U.S. resources toward Iraq.
Obama pledged to tighten U.S. focus on Pakistan and build a better “partnership” with its government and military. Beyond stepping up the ground fight against the Taliban, he said, he plans to target far more resources toward a narrower set of Afghan problems: government incompetence, opium cultivation and heroin trafficking, and a poorly equipped and trained army.
Bush spoke regularly of establishing a “flourishing democracy” in Afghanistan. But Obama, flanked during a White House speech by his top national security Cabinet members and advisers, made clear that his primary objective is to create a country stable and strong enough to prevent al-Qaeda from re-occupying Afghan territory.
“To succeed, we and our friends and allies must reverse the Taliban’s gains and promote a more capable and accountable Afghan government,” he said. “. . . Afghanistan has an elected government, but it is undermined by corruption and has difficulty delivering basic services to its people.”
He indicated that the United States expects to continue to carry the bulk of the combat load and would seek other forms of assistance from allies, a departure from the Bush administration’s effort over the past two years to persuade NATO partners to send more combat troops to Afghanistan.
Obama said he would send 4,000 U.S. troops — beyond the additional 17,000 he authorized last month — to work as trainers and advisers to the Afghan army, and hundreds more civilian officials and diplomats to help improve governance and the country’s agriculture-based economy. When currently scheduled deployments are completed late this summer, U.S. troops in Afghanistan will total more than 60,000, twice as many as the non-U.S. NATO contingent.
Obama said that events in Pakistan are “inextricably linked” to success in Afghanistan. Pakistan, he said, “needs our help in going after al-Qaeda,” whose leadership, along with a network of other insurgent groups, is in the rugged mountains on the Afghan border.
Reaction
“An extraordinarily positive sign that the Obama administration is thoroughly re-examining its policy toward our region.” — Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai
“The war there is one that we can and must win.” — Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who welcomed Obama’s revamped strategy as long overdue
“We’ve said for some time that we must refocus our resources on threats like al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.” — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
“Europe should do more.” — Franco Frattini, Italy’s foreign minister, who with other European Union foreign officials pledged to send more police trainers and cash to Afghanistan
But “after years of mixed results, we will not provide a blank check. Pakistan must demonstrate its commitment to rooting out al-Qaeda and the violent extremists within its borders,” the president said. “And we will insist that action be taken — one way or the other — when we have intelligence about high-level terrorist targets.”
