Afghan build-up involves 30,000 troops in 6 months
In this file photograph taken on November 11, 2009 US Army soldiers from 2-506 Infantry 101st Airborne Division and Afghan National Army soldiers race to get out of the way of a CH-47 Chinook helicopter landing in hostile territory during a launch of an operation in Khost province, five km from the Afghan-Pakistan Border. US President Barack Obama yesterday made a globally awaited address on his new Afghan war plan and big troop surge strategy. Photo: AFP
A senior administration official told The Associated Press yesterday that President Barack Obama is sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan to be deployed over six months.
In his speech to the nation Tuesday night, Obama also will lay out a rough timeframe, including some dates, for when the main US military mission will end. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the details had not yet been announced.
The 30,000 new troops will bring the total in Afghanistan to more than 100,000 US forces. The main mission of the new troops will be to reverse Taliban gains and secure population centres in the volatile south and east parts of the country.
New infusions of US Marines will begin moving into Afghanistan almost as soon as President Barack Obama announces a redrawn battle strategy, a plan widely expected to include more than 30,000 additional US forces.
Obama will try to sell a sceptical public on his bigger, costlier war plan Tuesday by coupling the large new troop infusion with an emphasis on stepped-up training for Afghan forces that he says will allow the US to leave.
Obama formally ends a 92-day review of the war in Afghanistan Tuesday night with a nationally broadcast address in which he will lay out his revamped strategy from the US Military Academy at West Point, NY He began rolling out his decision Sunday night, informing key administration officials, military advisers and foreign allies in a series of private meetings and phone calls that stretched into Monday.
Military officials said at least one group of Marines is expected to deploy within two or three weeks of Obama's announcement, and would be in Afghanistan by Christmas. Larger deployments wouldn't be able to follow until early in 2010.
The initial infusion is recognition by the administration that something tangible needs to happen quickly, officials said. The quick addition of Marines would provide badly needed reinforcements to those fighting against Taliban gains in the southern Helmand province, and could lend reassurance to both Afghans and a war-weary US public.
The war escalation includes sending 30,000 to 35,000 more American forces into Afghanistan in a graduated deployment over the next year, on top of the 71,000 already there. Obama's announcement is the culmination of more than three months of debate over whether and how to expand US. military involvement in a war that has turned worse this year despite Obama's previous infusion of 21,000 forces.
But the numbers of fresh troops don't tell the whole story, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Tuesday. "It's what their mission is," he told ABC's "Good Morning America." "We're going to accelerate going after al-Qaida and its extremist allies. We'll accelerate the training of an Afghan national security force, a police and an army."
In Kabul, Lt Gen William B Caldwell, the new head of a US-Nato command responsible for training and developing Afghan soldiers and police, said Tuesday that although the groundwork is being laid to expand the Afghan National Army beyond the current target of 134,000 troops, to be reached by Oct 31, 2010, no fixed higher target is set.
There is a notional goal of eventually fielding 240,000 soldiers and 160,000 police, but Caldwell said that could change.
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