[A-List] Afghanistan: US, NATO Shift War Focus To Afghanistan, Pakistan

["Tony B." <tal1@xxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Rick Rozoff
To: Stop NATO
Sent: Sunday, January 27, 2008 11:00 AM
Subject: [stopnato] Profound Implications: US, NATO Shift War Focus To 
Afghanistan, Pakistan


http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jQJEZlMGnXwpEsVBykmCoAILHovAD8UEA2N00

Associated Press
January 27, 2008

US Shift Seen to Pakistan, Afghanistan
By ROBERT BURNS

-The U.S. military has used other means, including
aerial surveillance by drones....Ground troops on the
Afghan side sometimes fire artillery across the
border...and U.S. officials have said special
operations forces are poised to strike across the
border under certain circumstances.
-The number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan has grown
over the past two years from about 20,000 to the
current total of 28,000. That is the highest number of
the war, which began in October 2001. The total is to
jump by 3,200 this spring with a new influx of Marine
reinforcements, including 2,200 combat troops who will
bolster a NATO-led counterinsurgency force in the
south.
-Gates is leading a NATO effort to produce a statement
of goals for Afghanistan that spells out clearly what
is at stake....The statement is supposed to be ready
for adoption by President Bush and other NATO leaders
at a summit meeting in April.

WASHINGTON - In a shift with profound implications,
the Bush administration is attempting to re-energize
its terrorism-fighting war efforts in Afghanistan, the
original target of a post-Sept. 11 offensive. The U.S.
also is refocusing on Pakistan, where a regenerating
al-Qaida is posing fresh threats.

There is growing recognition that the United States
risks further setbacks, if not deepening conflict or
even defeat, in Afghanistan, and that success in that
country hinges on stopping Pakistan from descending
into disorder.

Privately, some senior U.S. military commanders say
Pakistan's tribal areas are at the center of the fight
against Islamic extremism; more so than Iraq, or even
Afghanistan. These areas border on eastern Afghanistan
and provide haven for al-Qaida and Taliban fighters to
regroup, rearm and reorganize.

This view may explain, at least in part, the
administration's increasingly public expressions of
concern.

At a Pentagon news conference last week, Defense
Secretary Robert Gates said that while the U.S.
respects the Pakistani government's right to decide
what actions are needed to defeat extremists on its
soil, there are reasons to worry that al-Qaida poses
more than an internal threat to Pakistan.

"I think we are all concerned about the
re-establishment of al-Qaida safe havens in the border
area," Gates said. "I think it would be unrealistic to
assume that all of the planning that they're doing is
focused strictly on Pakistan. So I think that that is
a continuing threat to Europe as well as to us."

The Pentagon says it has fewer than 100 troops in
Pakistan, including personnel who are training
Pakistan's paramilitary Frontier Corps in the western
tribal region along the Afghanistan border.

The U.S. military has used other means, including
aerial surveillance by drones, to hunt Osama bin Laden
and other senior al-Qaida leaders believed to be
hiding near the Afghan border. Ground troops on the
Afghan side sometimes fire artillery across the border
at known Taliban or al-Qaida targets, and U.S.
officials have said special operations forces are
poised to strike across the border under certain
circumstances.

In recent days, administration officials have said
they would send more U.S. forces, including small
numbers of combat troops, if the Pakistani government
decided it wanted to collaborate more closely.

It is far from certain that U.S. combat troops will
set foot in Pakistan in any substantial numbers. On
Friday, Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, said
his country opposes any foreign forces on its soil.
"The man in the street will not allow this - he will
come out and agitate," he said. Musharraf said the
U.S. instead should bolster its combat forces in
Afghanistan.

The number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan has grown
over the past two years from about 20,000 to the
current total of 28,000. That is the highest number of
the war, which began in October 2001. The total is to
jump by 3,200 this spring with a new influx of Marine
reinforcements, including 2,200 combat troops who will
bolster a NATO-led counterinsurgency force in the
south.

"There is strong pressure now from the international
community [sic] to find some solution to Afghanistan
because of the fear that this could quickly go south,"
said Ashley J. Tellis, a senior associate at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In
2006-07, he was an adviser to Nicholas Burns, the
undersecretary of state for political affairs.

"We haven't lost the war yet, but we could be on our
way to doing so," Tellis said in a telephone interview
Friday. He strongly recommends strengthening the U.S.
military presence in southern Afghanistan.

The vast majority of deployed U.S. troops are still in
Iraq, although the force of nearly 160,000 is set on a
downward trend. In recent weeks U.S. officials have
spoken of Iraq as moving toward stability, with
al-Qaida-affiliated fighters weakened and possibly
forced to make a last stand.

So there is no wholesale shift of U.S. military
firepower from Iraq to Afghanistan. Gates recently
rejected a Marine Corps proposal to move the
20,000-plus Marine contingent in Iraq to Afghanistan,
reflecting a worry that Iraq's progress is still
fragile.

Just last month Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress that the war in
Afghanistan is a secondary priority. "In Afghanistan
we do what we can. In Iraq we do what we must," he
said.

Yet it is apparent that as security conditions in Iraq
improve, the administration is looking closer at what
needs to be done in Afghanistan to counter recent
gains by the Taliban....

Gates is leading a NATO effort to produce a statement
of goals for Afghanistan that spells out clearly what
is at stake.

The purpose is to bolster NATO governments' efforts to
convince their publics that fighting and dying in
Afghanistan is an investment worth making. The
statement is supposed to be ready for adoption by
President Bush and other NATO leaders at a summit
meeting in April.

Also, the administration is showing more interest in
deepening its involvement in Pakistan.

Teresita C. Schaffer, director for South Asia at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies, said
Friday that an important indicator of that approach
was the recent visit to Pakistan by Adm. William J.
Fallon, the commander of American forces in that
region. Fallon met with senior officials, including
the new chief of the Pakistani army, Gen. Ashfaq
Kayani.

"Why is that happening now?" Schaffer asked. "It
suggests to me that the administration is taking this
much more seriously than it was." That has meant more
attentiveness to the needs of U.S. commanders in
Afghanistan, including officers' concerns about
countering the threat inside Pakistan.

"The sense I get is that at least in military terms
they are getting a response from Washington which they
weren't getting all along," said Schaffer, a career
foreign service officer who was deputy assistant
secretary of state for South Asia in the
administration of former President Bush.

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