WASHINGTON — Afghanistan’s disputed election and Iraq’s unraveling are giving members of Congress and U.S. allies in the region reason to think President Barack Obama should rethink his decision to withdraw virtually all Americans troops from Afghanistan by the close of 2016.
The White House says Afghanistan is different from Iraq, mired in sectarian violence since shortly after U.S. troops left, and that the drawdown decision is a done deal.
Some lawmakers are uncomfortable with Obama’s plan, which responds to the American public’s war fatigue and his desire to be credited with pulling the U.S. from two conflicts. Ten senators, Republicans and Democrats, raised the drawdown issue at a congressional hearing Thursday.
They argued that it’s too risky to withdraw American troops so quickly, especially with the Afghan presidential election in the balance. They don’t want to see Afghanistan go the way of Iraq, and they fear that the Afghan security force, while making substantial gains, won’t be ready for solo duty by the end of 2016.
Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, testified this past week before the Senate Armed Services Committee. He spoke highly of the 352,000-strong Afghan security force that assumed responsibility for the country in June 2013 and lauded them for keeping violence down during the recent election.
“We had over 300 campaign events involving thousands of people, some as large as 20,000,” Dunford said. “The Afghan forces secured all of those campaign events.”
The U.S. withdrawal plan, however, is based on being able to fix the Afghan security force’s shortcomings by the end of 2016.
Dunford described gaps in planning, programming, budgeting, delivering spare parts, fuel payment systems — things the U.S. military takes for granted. Afghanistan also needs to brush up its intelligence operation and develop the nascent air force.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a critic of Obama’s plan, said trying to get a successful outcome was like “kicking a 65-yard field goal into the wind.”
Earlier this month, Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, James Dobbins, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that despite declining security in Iraq, the president was not “presently disposed to reconsider the decision.”
Troop numbers
Under President Barack Obama’s plan, announced in May before Sunni militants seized control of much of Iraq, about 20,200 American service members will leave Afghanistan during the next five months, dropping the U.S. force to 9,800 by year’s end. That number would be cut in half by the end of 2015, with only about 1,000 remaining in Kabul after the end of 2016.
