Challenges lie ahead in Obama’s war plan

Los Angeles Times

KRAKOW, Poland — U.S. President Barack Obama’s war strategy began to take shape with his recent announcement that 17,000 additional U.S. troops are headed to Afghanistan. But the thorniest problems still await him: persuading militants to lay down their arms, coaxing help from allies and eliminating extremist havens on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Many officials believe Obama has one primary shot at remaking Washington’s war strategy and overhauling its policy in the region. Recently, the administration announced it would open up that review, which is due in April, to Afghans, Pakistanis and European allies.

Administration officials hope that a deliberative and inclusive look can turn up new ideas, even for seemingly intractable problems.

“We have learned that Obama is not going to make policy on the fly,” said Karin von Hippel, a former U.N. and European Union conflict expert now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

But already, the administration has confronted a pair of unsettling realizations: America’s allies are unwilling to supply many additional troops, and a deal between Afghan authorities and militants, even the Taliban, is necessary for stability and peace.

The obstacles in Afghanistan are compounded by other well-known problems: a weak government, widespread public corruption and an economy bound to heroin. Meanwhile, U.S.-Afghan tensions have risen over civilian casualties.

Still, military commanders and strategy experts said the extra U.S. troops, used carefully, could help shift impressions in the country by making residents feel safer and militants more fearful.

“You can’t look like the likely loser of the war,” said Stephen Biddle, a Council on Foreign Relations scholar who has advised the military on Afghanistan. “No warlord is going to change sides to join the loser.”

After Obama’s troop deployment announcement, military officials began to sketch out how extra units would be used.

Gen. David D. McKiernan, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said the new troops would apply variations of counterinsurgency strategies that proved useful in areas in Iraq, first studying an area, then clearing it of militants.