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THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW - November 11, 2010

Obama Officials Moving Away from 2011 Afghan Date
by: Nancy A. Youssef
McClatchy Newspapers - Report

Washington - The Obama administration has decided to begin
publicly walking away from what it once touted as key
deadlines in the war in Afghanistan in an effort to de-
emphasize President Barack Obama's pledge that he'd begin
withdrawing U.S. forces in July 2011, administration and
military officials have told McClatchy.

The new policy will be on display next week during a
conference of NATO countries in Lisbon, Portugal, where
the administration hopes to introduce a timeline that
calls for the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces from
Afghanistan by 2014, the year when Afghan President
Hamid Karzai once said Afghan troops could provide their
own security, three senior officials told McClatchy, along
with others speaking anonymously as a matter of policy.

The Pentagon also has decided not to announce specific
dates for handing security responsibility for several
Afghan provinces to local officials and instead intends
to work out a more vague definition of transition when
it meets with its NATO allies.

What a year ago had been touted as an extensive December
review of the strategy now also will be less expansive
and will offer no major changes in strategy, the officials
told McClatchy. So far, the U.S. Central Command, the
military division that oversees Afghanistan operations,
hasn't submitted any kind of withdrawal order for forces
for the July deadline, two of those officials told
McClatchy.

The shift already has begun privately and came in part
because U.S. officials realized that conditions in
Afghanistan were unlikely to allow a speedy withdrawal.

"During our assessments, we looked at if we continue to
move forward at this pace, how long before we can fully
transition to the Afghans? And we found that we cannot
fully transition to the Afghans by July 2011," said one
senior administration official. "So we felt we couldn't
focus on July 2011 but the period it will take to make
the full transition."

Another official said the administration also realized in
contacts with Pakistani officials that the Pakistanis had
concluded wrongly that July 2011 would mark the beginning
of the end of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan.

That perception, one Pentagon adviser said, has convinced
Pakistan's military ? which is key to preventing Taliban
sympathizers from infiltrating Afghanistan ? to continue
to press for a political settlement instead of military
action.

"This administration now understands that it cannot shift
Pakistani approaches to safeguarding its interests in
Afghanistan with this date being perceived as a walk-away
date," the adviser said.

Last week's midterm elections also have eased pressure
on the Obama administration to begin an early withdrawal.
Earlier this year, some Democrats in Congress pressed
to cut off funding for Afghanistan operations. With
Republicans in control of the House of Representatives
beginning in January, however, there'll be less push for
a drawdown. The incoming House Armed Services chairman,
Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif., told Reuters last
week that he opposed setting the date.

The White House vehemently denies that there is any change
in policy. "The president has been crystal clear that we
will begin drawing down troops in July of 2011. There is
absolutely no change to that policy," said Tommy Vietor,
a White House spokesman.

On Tuesday, a White House official who spoke with reporters
in a conference call arranged to discuss the December
review, said the administration might withdraw some troops
next July and may hand some communities over to Afghan
authorities. But he said a withdrawal from Afghanistan
could take "years," depending on the capability of the
Afghan national security forces.

He also said the December review would measure progress in
eight areas, though he declined to specify what those are.
Congress will get a report by early next year, but Army
Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S.-led internat-
ional forces in Afghanistan, will not testify.

"This is designed to be an inside the administration
perspective," he said, adding it will "set the policymaking
calendar" for the Obama administration's first six months
of next year.

De-emphasizing deadlines also allows the administration
greater flexibility in responding to conditions in
Afghanistan, officials said.

While the Taliban are facing increasing coalition air-
strikes, they have no driving incentive to negotiate with
an unpopular government. Officials here quietly worry that
while they, too, are seeing some drops in violence and the
Taliban's hold in pockets of Afghanistan, those limited
improvements aren't leading to better governance.

A U.N. report issued in August showed that civilian
casualties rose 31 percent during the first half of the
year compared with the previous year, 76 percent were
caused by the Taliban, it said. So far, more than 400
U.S. troops have been killed this year.

Many officials here privately worry that talk of a with-
drawal without results will cost the military credibility,
with Americans and Afghans alike.

"What we ultimately need in Afghanistan is good govern-
ance," said one senior military officer. "Right now
there is a gap" between security gains and governance.

Christopher Preble, the director for foreign policy studies
at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washing-
ton, said he's not surprised that the scope of the December
review has narrowed and that Obama administration officials
are no longer highlighting the July 2011 date.

"The very players who were arguing so strenuously for a
deepening of our involvement in Afghanistan a year ago
are unlikely to now declare that their earlier recommend-
ations were faulty," he said.

(Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay contributed to
this article.)

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