President settles on Afghan plan
Trump to address U.S. amid expectations he’ll authorize 4,000 additional troops
AMMAN, JORDAN — President Donald Trump has settled on a new military strategy in Afghanistan after months of bitter internal debates by his national security team and will announce a plan Monday expected to provide U.S. commanders with additional troops and broader authority to pursue militant forces.
Trump is expected to authorize about 4,000 more U.S. troops for counterterrorism missions, as well as U.S. advisers to work closer to the front lines with Afghan military officers in America’s longest war.
The new forces will join the 8,400 U.S. and 5,000 NATO troops who now train and advise Afghan security forces as they seek to quell a resurgent Taliban, Islamic State militants and other militias that have plunged the war-torn nation into deeper chaos over the last year.
The strategy also is expected to try to pressure Pakistan, a nominal U.S. ally, to take greater measures to crack down on Taliban insurgents and other militant groups that launch crossborder raids into Afghanistan.
In a statement, the White House said Trump would address the nation at 9 p.m. EDT Monday from Ft. Meyer, Va., outside Washington, instead of the White House or the New Jersey golf resort where he has spent most of the month.
Trump will “provide an update on the path forward for America’s engagement” in Afghanistan and South Asia, the statement said.
The strategy comes as U.S. military officials have warned of Afghanistan’s fast-worsening security situation. The United Nations said 11,418 civilians were killed last year – the most since the U.N. began keeping records in 2009.
Eleven U.S. troops have been killed there this year, compared with nine all last year.
Trump’s decision emerged from a meeting he held Friday with Vice President Mike Pence, Chief of Staff John Kelly, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis and other top advisers at the presidential retreat at Camp David, a rustic compound in rural Maryland.
“The process was rigorous,” Mattis said Sunday, speaking to reporters in Amman, Jordan, as he visited the region. “And it involved all members of the Cabinet, of the national security staff, writ large.”
Without going into detail, Mattis said the strategy “involves significant allies,” presumably members of the NATO coalition that have fought at America’s side in Afghanistan since the invasion that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“The president has made a decision,” Mattis said. “I am very comfortable that the strategic process was sufficiently rigorous.”
“It is a South Asia strategy,” he added. “It is not just an Afghanistan strategy.”
Adding more U.S. forces would reverse President Barack Obama’s decision last year to withdraw 1,200 troops. Obama declared an end to U.S. combat in Afghanistan in 2014.
Trump has said little in public about America’s longest war, either as a candidate or in the White House. He ran on a platform of reducing American foreign military entanglements, and during his first seven months in office, he has balked at authorizing more troops.
He repeatedly deferred making a decision as his chief advisers produced multiple proposals for resolving the long conflict.
Some in the administration, including recently ousted strategic adviser Steve Bannon, questioned the goal of sending more Americans into a war that has dragged on for nearly 16 years without producing a clear result, according to U.S. officials who asked not to be identified revealing internal discussions.
Bannon instead reportedly advocated outsourcing of the conflict to what many in the military establishment consider mercenaries, rather than sending in more troops, as Mattis and others had urged.
Bannon reportedly backed a proposal floated by Erik Prince, founder of the now-defunct private-security firm Blackwater, to hand over key elements of the U.S. military’s mission in Afghanistan to private contractors, obviating the need for major troop increases.
That idea — and Prince’s high-powered lobbying — met strong resistance in the Pentagon as well as in the circle of current and retired generals around Trump — Kelly, Mattis and McMaster. To traditionalists in the ranks of the military and the diplomatic corps, the notion of out-sourcing a core government function was deeply distasteful.
U.S. commanders say extra troops are needed help train and advise Afghan units in hopes of breaking what the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Nicholson, has termed a “stalemate.”
Over the last year, the Taliban has launched fierce attacks on government-held provincial capitals, and the growth of Islamic State in eastern Nangarhar province has triggered a sharp increase in U.S. airstrikes.
Nicholson had publicly sought 3,000 to 5,000 more troops since January to help train Afghan forces.
Although the Afghan government continues to control city centers, the Taliban holds sway over rural areas and controls more territory now than at any time since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 toppled the group from power, according to U.N. estimates.
That invasion was aimed at eradicating a sanctuary for al-Qaida, which had launched the Sept. 11 attacks. It proved relatively easy to oust the Taliban from power but difficult to pacify or unify a povertystricken country ruled by warlords.
The U.S. continues to play a large counterterrorism role in helping defend the country from the Taliban and a mosaic of Muslim extremist groups including Islamic State, providing more than $4.1 billion in annual aid to the Afghan military.