US troop increase in Afghanistan
Updated
Barack Obama has signalled that he's boosting U-S troops in Afghanistan to over 100-thousand for the first time in one last push for some kind of victory, setting July 2011 as the goal for the beginning of withdrawal.
Presenter: Linda Mottram
Speakers: Barack Obama, US President. Jim Molan, retired Australian Major General. Dr Benjamin MacQueen, politics lecturer, Monash University.
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MOTTRAM: In a speech directed domestically as much as internationally, President Obama confirmed a further troop commitment to Afghanistan, but also a date for the beginning of the end.
OBAMA: As Commander in Chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30-thousand US troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months our troops will begin to come home. These are the resources that we need to seize the initiative, while building the Afghan capacity that can allow for a responsible transition of our forces out of Afghanistan.
MOTTRAM: The Taliban were resurgent so it was a matter of the security of the world, President Obama said. And he was confident America's allies would boost their contributions too.
OBAMA: Our friends have fought and bled and died alongside us in Afghanistan and now we must come together to end this war successfully.
MOTTRAM: The speech follows U-S General Stanley McChrystal's 60 day review of Afghanistan strategy. The overarching goal remains to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The strategy would now have three core elements, the President said.
OBAMA: A military effort to create the conditions for a transition, a civilian surge that reinforces positive action and an effective partnership with Pakistan.
MOTTRAM: He didn't agree with critics who called for the US to get out now, or risk a Vietnam-like mire. Nor did he subscribe to calls for a deeper, longer nation- building project in the country. America, President Obama said, had no interest in occupying Afghanistan.
Retired Australian major general Jim Molan was chief of operations of the Iraq multinational force in 2004-05. He says the big challenge is to get the Afghan people to side with the US-led effort, rather than the Taliban and therein lies the first of what he calls the three big risks.
MOLAN: Well the first risk is President Karzai himself, whether he can in fact unify the country around him and bring him as an effective player on our side. The second risk is that Pakistan is not able to support on their side of the border operations against the Afghan Taliban. They've done a fair bit of work now, in the Swat Valley and now in South Waziristan, but that's against their Taliban and there certainly have been reports that it may not have been as effective as we might have hoped. They've now got to apply themselves to other areas of the border further to the north wherein it's probable that there will be the headquarters of the Afghan Taliban. And the third risk I think is time. I don't imagine that the Americans or an American President will go through what President Obama has now gone through for the last four months in making a decision again to send even more troops.
MOTTRAM: Another Afghanistan watcher Monash University politics lecturer Doctor Benjamin MacQueen says a deft hand will also be needed on another front.
MACQUEEN: There was a bit of a backhand within the speech toward Karzai talking about the election as fraudulent, but we'll accept the government, then he started mentioning local authorities, ministries, etcetera who we can work with who aren't corrupt. And it was an allusion to comments made by people who were involved in McChrystal's report like Anthony Cordesman who have sort of been pushing this line for a while that there are people there we can work with, people at the local level, and we really need to focus on that.
MOTTRAM: Dr MacQueen also says the strategy could produce a lot more work on matters like agriculture, hardly the stuff of headlines, but critical in the effort to undercut the perception that foreign forces have failed to bring local benefits, a gap the Taliban has effectively exploited.
Meanwhile, there'll be greater focus on training Afghan security forces more quickly in a bid to speed up the handover of responsibilities. Australia is among those involved in that process but Canberra continues to insist that despite the looming withdrawal of the Netherlands and Canada from Afghanistan, it won't increase its troops numbers beyond the 1,500 already in place.
