Obama Takes Gamble With New Afghan Strategy

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama's plan to rush 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan may be too little, too late as domestic pressure grows to withdraw altogether.

Experts said Obama's plan unveiled on Tuesday is a bold gamble as he contends with a weak Afghan government and growing skepticism both from his own Democratic Party and the American public over whether the eight-year war is winnable anyway.

"It is in a way shock therapy for Afghanistan. It is a bold approach and there is no guarantee of success," said former CIA analyst Bruce Riedel, who oversaw Obama's March review of U.S. strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Sending more troops is a tough sell for Obama domestically amid growing pressure to give a fixed timetable for soldiers to come home, particularly as the United States tries to get out of the deepest recession since the Great Depression.

"Wars tend to consume presidencies and this is now Obama's war," Riedel said.

Obama is making clear the U.S. commitment to Afghanistan is not "open-ended" and, while not offering fixed timetables or dates, officials said the aim is for U.S. troops to start coming home by July 2011.

Several analysts said it was a dangerous game to speak of any sort of exit strategy at this point. It could backfire by emboldening the Taliban and annoying ally Pakistan, which fears Washington will cut and run as the Soviets did in Afghanistan.

"If he (Obama) spends the majority of the time talking about off-ramps and an exit strategy, then we risk the benefits of those extra troops," said Lisa Curtis of the Heritage Foundation thinktank.

"He is signaling to the enemy that it is just a matter of time before we leave."

PRESSURE ON KARZAI

With about 100,000 U.S. troops now set to be in Afghanistan by next summer, Obama is also taking a tougher line with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, whose legitimacy was compromised in August's fraud-plagued election.

U.S. officials, including Obama, have told Karzai they expect him to do more to fight corruption, govern better and speed up training of Afghan security forces so they can take over from international troops.

In his conversation with Karzai on Monday, Obama said U.S. efforts in Afghanistan would be measured against goals over a two-year period and clear benchmarks are expected to be set with the weak Afghan leader.

The Obama administration has had a prickly relationship with Karzai, who has in turn blamed the West for some of his country's corruption problems,

In recent months, U.S. officials have been looking at how to work around Karzai if needed, focusing on provincial and local leaders with a record for fighting corruption and tying civilian aid to a better performance by his government.

Several analysts suggested Obama could have used additional troops as leverage, staggering their arrival according to how much progress is made by Karzai.

"I hope that Obama recognizes if you put more troops into protecting a government that continues to be perceived as predatory and abusive, then we are really in real trouble," said Caroline Wadhams of the Center for American Progress.

Afghan expert Alexander Thier said Obama's decision to send in troops quickly was a good one but there needed to be measurable progress within 18 months in key areas such as security, tackling corruption and rebuilding agriculture.

No matter which benchmarks are used to measure progress, analysts said Obama must be able to show some signs of success by next summer ahead of November's midterm congressional elections where Republicans will cash in on any war failure.

"There is a clock ticking," said Brian Katulis of the Center for American Progress. "The real timeline is trying to get a sense of some progress by next summer. Otherwise you are looking at a very ugly political situation back home."

Christine Fair, a professor at Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Security Studies, questioned why the United States still had forces in Afghanistan and was pessimistic about Obama's plan working.

"I think everyone realizes that this is not about picking a winning solution versus a losing solution but optimizing a bunch of really bad options," she said.

Source : Reuters