Obama approves another 13,000 troops for Afghanistan, beyond 21,000 approved in March

[Naveed Yaseen]

* US president weighing options for new Afghanistan strategy, decision expected in next several weeks

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama has approved the deployment of an additional 13,000 US troops to Afghanistan beyond the 21,000 he announced publicly in March, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

The additional troops are primarily support forces – such as engineers, medical specialists, intelligence experts and military police – the paper said, bringing the total build-up approved by Obama to 34,000. “Obama authorised the whole thing. The only thing you saw announced in a press release was the 21,000,” an unnamed defence official familiar to the report told the paper.

The maximum number of US forces expected in Afghanistan by year’s end – 68,000 – would remain the same, the paper said.

Defence Secretary Robert Gates had previously said that he would be sending more support troops or ‘enablers’ to Afghanistan even as Obama weighs the best war strategy going forward, amid an appeal for tens of thousands of additional combat forces from the commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal.

The Pentagon had said at least 4,000 support troops were heading Afghanistan, including experts to help counter the threat from improvised explosives.

The report came as Obama faces a crucial decision on McChrystal’s request for more combat, training and support troops, including one reported option of an additional 40,000 forces.

Decision: Obama is weighing different options for a new Afghanistan strategy and was expected to make a decision over the next several weeks. In an interview with the US television network ABC on Tuesday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he would welcome more US troops but did not specify how many were needed. “I’m not a military expert... What I’m concerned about is the protection of the Afghan people,” Karzai said.

Major deployments of support troops have not been publicised by the Pentagon and the White House in the past.

When former president George W Bush announced a US troop ‘surge’ in Iraq, he only mentioned 20,000 combat troops and not the accompanying 8,000 support troops.

The troop increase approved by Obama means that there are more US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan than during the peak of the surge in Iraq in late 2007 and early 2008.

About 65,000 US forces are currently in Afghanistan and about 124,000 in Iraq. At the height of the Iraq surge, 26,000 US troops were in Afghanistan and 160,000 in Iraq, according to a troop count by The Post.

The stretched US military has had to balance competing demands from commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan for support troops, which provide crucial backup for combat forces.

The top US commander in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, has said he is moving to free up troops, aircraft and equipment for the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan. afp

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp...009_pg7_25