Afghans bury the coffin containing body of a lawmaker Dad Mohammad Khan, during his funeral in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital of Helmand province south of Kabul, Afghanistan, Friday, March 20, 2009. The lawmaker, who was a vocal Taliban critic in Afghanistan's insurgency-plagued south, was killed Thursday by a roadside bomb, family and officials said. (AP Photo)
White House (CNSNews.com) – The Obama administration has no exit strategy for the conflict in Afghanistan, White House officials said Friday, as it escalates forces in the country announcing another 4,000 troops for security training on top of the 17,000 additional troops already approved.
 
President Barack Obama’s goal in the escalation is “disrupting, dismantling and defeating” al Qaeda operations in Afghanistan as well as western Pakistan, officials told reporters after the formal announcement.
 
“The only exit strategy will be to leave the Afghan people to deal with their security problem,” said Richard Holbrooke, an Obama foreign policy adviser who served on the interagency review panel on Afghanistan and Pakistan.
 
Priorities would be ensuring that the Afghan army and the national police are trained, address corruption in the national government and reduce the level of violence.
 
The most significant mark of success might not happen in Afghanistan, Holbrooke said.
 
“You can have a great government in Kabul that fits every definition of democratic government,” Holbrooke said. “But if the situation in Pakistan continues, the situation in Afghanistan will continue to have instability. We have to deal with the western Pakistan problem.”
 
The Taliban, which was deposed from power after the initial U.S. invasion in 2001, issued a statement Friday warning the United States that if an occupation plan were effective, then the Soviet Union would be running the country today. (The Soviet war in Afghanistan lasted a little over nine years, starting in December 1979 and ending with Soviet forces finally withdrawing from the country in February 1989 – two years later, the USSR collapsed, which led to the creation of the Russian Federation.)
 
Bruce Riedel, chairman of the interagency review panel, said the Taliban response was no surprise.
 
“These Taliban leaders are determined to reject anybody that doesn’t want to take that country back to the medieval hell-hole they created in the 1990s,” Riedel said.
 
Comparing the Soviet occupation to the U.S. action in Afghanistan is not appropriate, said Michelle Flournoy, a co-chair of the interagency review panel.
 
“The Soviets were there to try to control that country,” she said. “We are there to combat terrorism.”
 
Gen. David McKiernan, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, had asked for 10,000 or 11,000 more troops in addition to the approved 17,000. During questions, members of the interagency panel did not rule out increasing troop levels.
 
Obama said 2008 marked the worst year for U.S. casualties to date. The U.S. invaded the country to overthrow the Taliban, which was harboring al Qaeda terrorists, including Osama bin Laden, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Military deaths rose 35 percent last year in Afghanistan as the United States gained better control of Iraq, where casualties plummeted.
 
“Al Qaeda and its allies, the terrorists who planned and supported the 9/11 attacks, are in Pakistan and Afghanistan,” Obama said Friday. “Multiple intelligence estimates have warned that al Qaeda is actively planning attacks on the United States homeland from its safe haven in Pakistan.
 
“And if the Afghan government falls to the Taliban, or allows Al Qaeda to go unchallenged, the country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can,” Obama said.
 
Currently, 65,000 combat troops are based in Afghanistan, about half from the United States. On Tuesday, March 31, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will join diplomats from 80 countries at a United Nations conference on the future of Afghanistan.
 
The broad plan seems to be cohesive, but it is important that the administration sticks to it for the long haul, said Thomas Donnelly, defense and national security expert for the American Enterprise Institute.
 
“The reason Gen. McKiernan asked for larger troop increases is that he knows they are in there for the long term,” Donnelly told CNSNews.com. “We are in the theater there for 2009, but that is just table setting to get through the Afghan elections. Time is at least as important, if not more important, than troops and funding.”
 
Obama’s intent is to use civilian training and diplomatic efforts, as well as the military. Riedel said the administration worked closely with various agencies, as well as think tanks and experts on eastern Asia in drafting the plan. He also called the proposal a “roadmap” rather than a concrete set of goals to be achieved.
 
“We very deliberately do not have a timeline in the study so as not to impose artificial constraints,” Riedel said.