• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Analysis: Surging on the Afghan Front

Council on Foreign Relations

January 19, 2007
Prepared by: Eben Kaplan

The U.S. foreign policy debate these days revolves around President Bush’s “new way forward” in Iraq. While a rash of congressional hearings seek to identify the remaining options in Iraq, commanders on the less visible Afghan front say they need more troops too. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates told reporters after a recent visit to Kabul: “There’s no reason to sit back and let the Taliban regroup” (NPR). Some of the impetus for U.S. action comes from reluctance of some North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) nations to send more of their own troops to the fight. For this reason, Britain may also boost its numbers (FT) in Afghanistan.

NATO commanders in the region expect mounting clashes with the resurgent Taliban guerillas, primarily in the south of the country. Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, the outgoing top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, told reporters on January 16: “It is going to be a violent spring and we’re going to have violence into the summer.” The U.S. military released annual statistics showing a nearly five-fold increase (Globe & Mail) in direct attacks on NATO forces from 2005 to 2006.

Already at their highest levels to date, the nearly twenty-four thousand U.S. troops in Afghanistan slightly outnumber the total number of NATO forces in the country. Any increase in U.S. forces would be small in comparison to 21,500-strong “surge” President Bush plans for Iraq. One defense official told the New York Times that U.S. commanders in Afghanistan would need fewer than 3,500 more U.S. soldiers. Washington Post blogger William M. Arkin, a former Army intelligence analyst, said of the recent tough moves from Iraq to Somalia: “The new, new strategy is to pile on.”

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2007 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.