McChrystal backs Obama’s Afghan strategy - General vows to beat back Taliban insurgency by mid-2011

McChrystal backs Obama’s Afghan strategy - General vows to beat back Taliban insurgency by mid-2011
By Daniel Dombey in Washington
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: December 8 2009 14:51 | Last updated: December 8 2009 15:37
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3a464d70-e407-11de-b2a9-00144feab49a.html


General Stanley McChrystal, the top US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, has promised members of Congress that he will beat back the Taliban insurgency by mid-2011 and has pledged full support for President Barack Obama’s strategy.

Appearing before the House of Representatives on Tuesday – after months in which Republican legislators called for him to testify – Gen McChrystal painted a picture of a daunting but surmountable challenge in Afghanistan.

“By the summer of 2011 it will be clear to the Afghan people that the insurgency will not win,” he said in his statement to the House Armed Services committee, the first of a series of Congressional panels at which he was due to appear with Karl Eikenberry, US ambassador to Afghanistan.

He added that the US and its allies would already have made measurable security gains by this time next year – when Mr Obama is planning to hold a review on whether the Afghanistan strategy is working.

Gen McChrystal’s testimony came as part of an administration push to convince Congress and the US people of the merits of Mr Obama’s strategy – which includes an attempt to deploy 30,000 troops in Afghanistan by summer next year and a promise to begin transferring responsibility to Afghan forces by July 2011.

His appearance was eagerly awaited, not least because many Republicans had rallied round his call for 40,000 extra troops after an earlier leaked assessment in which he warned the war could be lost over the next 12 months.

In his statement on Tuesday, Gen McChrystal said Mr Obama’s troop surge – together with additional forces from Nato and non-Nato partners – would be enough to turn the tide.

“The President’s decision rapidly resources our strategy, recognises that the next 18 months will likely be decisive and ultimately enables success,” he said. “I fully support the President’s decision.”

Gen McChrystal said he did not anticipate asking for more military forces beyond the 30,000 committed by Mr Obama last week - an apparent recognition of the administration line that the troop surge is the US’s last shot at overcoming the Taliban.

But in a comment that could increase scepticism about the significance of the handover timetable – which US officials depict as merely the start of a process – he said the July 2011 date was not a major factor in his military strategy, adding ”It’s just a natural part of the evolution of what we are doing.”

Gen McChrystal devoted almost all of his comments to the fight against the Taliban, which some commentators say poses much less of a risk to the US than does al-Qaeda. But he argued that “rolling back the Taliban is a pre-requisite to the ultimate defeat of al-Qaeda.”

He added that from the summer of 2011, the US plans to have “fewer combat forces in harm’s way” but would “remain partnered with the Afghan security forces in a supporting role to consolidate and solidify their gains.”

Highlighting that the Afghans themselves will largely determine the outcome of the conflict, Gen McChrystal spoke of a “war of perceptions where the battlefield is the mind of an Afghan elder, the hope of an Afghan mother, the aspirations of an Afghan child.” He added that the additional credibility the troop surge gave the US-led effort in the eyes of the Afghans could be “decisive”.

But he also acknowledged three factors which are still farther outside US control. These included what he called the Afghan government’s “credibility deficit”, the challenge of accelerating the training of the Afghan national army and police – which are still not up to the task of leading the fight against the Taliban – and “the hazard posed by extremists that operate on both sides of the border with Pakistan.”

Acknowledging such challenges, Mr Eikenberry said that ”in spite of everything we do, Afghanistan may struggle to take over the essential tasks of governance” and also noted that the US’s relationship with Pakistan was ”inextricably linked to our success in Afghanistan”.

He added: ”Though these risks cannot be discounted, if the main elements of the President’s plan are executed, and if our Afghan partners and our allies do their part, I am confident we can achieve our strategic objectives.”

Attempting to counter the effect of reports of a rift between him and Gen McChrystal over the utility of more troops, Mr Eikenberry said that he wholly backed the new strategy and that the two men were completely ”in line” with each other.