Adviser: 2 more tough years in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON (AP) — An incoming adviser to the top U.S. general in Afghanistan predicted Thursday that the United States will see about two more years of heavy fighting and then either hand off to a much-improved Afghan fighting force or “lose and go home.”

David Kilcullen, a counterinsurgency expert who will assume a role as a senior adviser to Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has been highly critical of the war’s management to date. He outlined a “best-case scenario” for a decade of further U.S. and NATO involvement in Afghanistan during an appearance at the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Under that time line, the allied forces would turn the corner in those two years, followed by about three years of transition to a newly capable Afghan force and about five years of “overwatch.”

“We’ll fight for two years and then a successful transition, or we’ll fight for two years and we’ll lose and go home,” Kilcullen said.

“I think we need to persist,” he said, but with “some pretty significant limits on how much we’re prepared to spend, how many troops we’re prepared to send, how long we can do this for.”

Kilcullen was speaking for himself, and it is not clear that McChrystal shares his dark assessment. McChrystal is assembling what aides describe as a blunt summing up of a war his predecessor called a stalemate. That review is due within weeks and may lead to a request for additional U.S. forces beyond those President Barack Obama already has sent to Afghanistan this year.