Source: More forces to Afghanistan
Announcement could be made this week
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon will send almost 4,000 additional American forces to Afghanistan, a Trump administration official said, hoping to break a stalemate in a war that has now passed to a third U.S. commander in chief.
The deployment would be the largest of American manpower under Donald Trump’s young presidency.
The decision by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis could be announced as early as this week, the official said late last week. It follows Trump’s move to give Mattis the authority to set troop levels and seeks to address assertions by the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan that he doesn’t have enough forces to help Afghanistan’s army against a resurgent Taliban insurgency.
The rising threat posed by Islamic State extremists, evidenced in a rash of deadly attacks in the capital city of Kabul, has only fueled calls for a stronger U.S. presence, as have several recent American combat deaths.
The bulk of the additional troops would train and advise Afghan forces, according to the administration official, who wasn’t authorized to discuss details of the decision publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. A smaller number would be assigned to counterterror operations against the Taliban and IS, the official said.
Asked for comment, a Pentagon spokesman, Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, said, “No decisions have been made.”
Daulat Waziri, spokesman for Afghanistan’s defense ministry, was reluctant to comment on specifics Friday but said the Afghan government supports the U.S. decision to send more troops.
“The United States knows we are in the fight against terrorism, ” he said. “We want to finish this war in Afghanistan with the help of the NATO alliance.”
An Afghan lawmaker, Nasrullah Sadeqizada, however, was skeptical about additional troops and cautioned that the troop surge should be coordinated with the Afghan government and should not be done unilaterally by the United States.
“The security situation continues to deteriorate in Afghanistan and the foreign troops who are here are not making it better,” he said.
Trump’s decision Tuesday to give Mattis authority to set force levels in Afghanistan mirrored similar powers he handed over earlier this year for U.S. fights in Iraq and Syria.
The change was made public hours after Sen. John Mccain, R-ariz., the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, blasted Mattis for the administration’s failure to present an overarching strategy for Afghanistan. Mccain said the U.S. is “not winning” in Afghanistan, and Mattis agreed.
The finality of the decision isn’t entirely clear. While Trump has handed over the troop level decision-making, there is nothing preventing him from taking it back.
Mattis has repeatedly stressed that increasing the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan would take place within a broader, long-term strategy for stabilizing Afghanistan.
In congressional testimony this past week, he said the strategy will take into account regional influences, such as Pakistan’s role as a Taliban sanctuary. Regional powers Iran, India and China, which all have political stakes in the fate of Afghanistan, also must be considered.