KABUL — Days after President Barack Obama outlines his new war strategy in a speech Tuesday, as many as 9,000 Marines will begin begin final preparations to deploy to southern Afghanistan and renew an assault on a Taliban stronghold that stalled this year amid a troop shortage and political pressure from the Afghan government, senior U.S. officials said.
The extra Marines — the first to move into the country as part of Obama’s escalation of the 8-year-old war — will double the size of the U.S. force in the southern province of Helmand and provide a critical test for Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s struggling government and Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s counterinsurgency strategy.
“The first troops out of the door are going to be Marines,” Gen. James Conway, the Corps’ top officer, told fellow Marines in Afghanistan on Saturday.
The Marines will quickly be followed by about 1,000 U.S. Army trainers, who will deploy as early as February to speed the growth of the Afghan National Army and police force, military officials said.
The new forces will not start moving until the president formally outlines his new strategy in a speech at West Point military academy. The revised plan, which faces a war- weary and increasingly skeptical American public, is expected to call for 30,000 to 35,000 additional service members in a phased deployment over the next 12 to 18 months.
The parceling out of reinforcements is driven in part by Afghanistan’s lack of infrastructure, which can’t support a larger U.S. force immediately. The approach also will allow the president to cancel some of the reinforcements if the counterinsurgency strategy advocated by McChrystal does not show results or if the Karzai government fails to meet goals for stamping out corruption, White House officials said.
