WASHINGTON – Barack Obama and John McCain say more U.S. troops should be sent to Afghanistan, and President Bush agrees.
Deploying additional forces could backfire, however, if the United States and its allies don't devise a coherent strategy to defeat the Taliban insurgency, strengthen the Afghan government, bolster the country's economy and deprive Islamic militants of their safe haven in neighboring Pakistan.
The calls for reinforcing the U.S.-led military coalition come amid the worst violence since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, with the 7-year-old "forgotten war" claiming more U.S. dead than Iraq for the first time in both May and June.
Obama on Friday called for beefing up the 71,000-strong U.S. and NATO contingents by at least two U.S. brigades, roughly 7,500 troops, and pressing NATO allies to send more soldiers, as well.
McCain, who had opposed more forces, responded by saying that he would send the three brigades U.S. commanders are requesting. Bush agreed that more forces should go, but it's unclear if he'll send them before his term ends in January.
But additional foreign troops will do little more than turn more war-weary Afghans against U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai if they aren't part of a broader and more effective counter-insurgency strategy, some experts and U.S. officials warned.
"There is not one strategy with one person in charge," complained a U.S. defense official who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly. "If we had asked the Taliban to draw an organizational chart for allied forces in Afghanistan, they would have drawn this one."
A more coherent approach, officials said, would be to streamline the U.S. and NATO chains of command, end restrictions that some allies place on their soldiers and use force far more judiciously to reduce civilian casualties.
There also must be better coordination between military and international reconstruction efforts so that more Afghans see benefits in their daily lives, experts and U.S. officials agreed.
In addition, Karzai's government requires more help – and more pressure – to deliver basic services to its impoverished people, build competent police and reform the dysfunctional legal system. It must also do much more to root out corruption, especially among senior officials profiting from the world's largest opium crop, the experts said.
While progress has been made in training and rebuilding the Afghan army, the 63,000-strong force lacks logistics, transportation, air power and other capabilities.
An even greater challenge is to develop an effective policy to end the refuge that the Taliban, al-Qaida and other groups enjoy along Afghanistan's border with Pakistan, the experts and U.S. officials said.
Call Jonathan S. Landay, McClatchy Washington Bureau, (202) 383-6012.
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