Military works on new strategy for Afghanistan

Christian science monitor

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military is working to put a new strategy in place for Afghanistan and Pakistan that could allow it to expand airfields, preposition military forces and equipment and prepare for a more robust effort soon against Islamist extremists in the region.

Frustrated for years by a lack of direction from the White House on Afghanistan, many defense officials say time is of the essence in developing a new way forward and having it ready to implement as soon as a new president is seated and can agree to it.

The military sees this period — as one administration is ending and another is set to begin — as an opportunity to offer the next president an Afghanistan strategy less shaped by lofty democratic ideals and more by what Pentagon strategists believe can actually be achieved there.

The aim for now is to put the pieces in place so that a new strategy can be “turned on” as soon as possible.

“The worst thing for us would be a gap in administrations, a period of indecision,” says one senior military officer who spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans are still under development. “You can put the wheels in motion.”

Seven years into the war in Afghanistan, President Bush has directed a comprehensive review of U.S. policy there and in neighboring Pakistan, a U.S. ally attempting to confront its own terrorist insurgency. He has demanded an accelerated timetable for an assessment over the next few weeks, prompting some critics to wonder why the hurry now that the Bush administration is drawing to a close.

The overall review is led by Lt. Gen. Doug Lute, Bush’s so-called war czar. General Lute’s recommendations to the president will include views from Central Command, as well as the Joint Staff at the Pentagon and Gen. David McKiernan, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, defense officials say. Another piece to the review will be led by Gen. David Petraeus, former top U.S. commander in Iraq who is now headed to U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla. But his recommendations may not surface until next year under a new president.

Those inside and outside the military who saw the Bush White House as too intently focused on Iraq, hope the next administration will put fresh eyes on Afghanistan.

Now there is “more confidence that changing strategies can change outcomes,” says John Nagl, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a think tank in Washington. The U.S. military has “an opportunity to fundamentally rethink our Afghanistan strategy.”

Improved security in Iraq allows the U.S. military more flexibility in addressing deteriorating conditions in Afghanistan, where the eastern sector, which is under American control, has seen a 40 percent increase in violence this year over last.