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 Since Afghanistan's general election on April 5, White House,
State Department and Pentagon officials have resumed discussions on
how many American troops should remain after the current U.S.-led
coalition ends its mission this year.
The decision to consider a small force, possibly less than 5,000
U.S. troops, reflects a belief among White House officials that
Afghan security forces have evolved into a robust enough force to
contain a still-potent Taliban-led insurgency. The small U.S. force
that would remain could focus on counter-terrorism or training
operations.
That belief, the officials say, is based partly on Afghanistan's
surprisingly smooth election, which has won international praise for
its high turnout, estimated at 60 percent of 12 million eligible
votes, and the failure of Taliban militants to stage high-profile
attacks that day.
The Obama administration has been looking at options for a possible
residual U.S. force for months.
"The discussion is very much alive," said one U.S. official who
asked not to be identified. "They're looking for additional options
under 10,000" troops.
There are now about 33,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, down from
100,000 in 2011, when troop numbers peaked a decade into a conflict
originally intended to deny al Qaeda sanctuary in Afghanistan after
the September 11, 2001, attacks.
QUESTIONS ABOUT AFGHAN FORCES
With British and other foreign troops scheduled to depart in lock
step with U.S. soldiers, the size of any residual U.S. force could
add fuel to a debate in Washington over whether Taliban-led violence
will intensify amid the vacuum left by Western forces, as some U.S.
military officials expect.
Military leaders, including American General Joe Dunford, who heads
U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, has identified 10,000 soldiers
as the minimum needed to help train and advise Afghan forces
fighting the insurgency, arguing a smaller force would struggle to
protect itself.
During a March visit to Washington, Dunford told lawmakers that
without foreign soldiers supporting them, Afghan forces would begin
to deteriorate "fairly quickly" in 2015. The Afghan air force, still
several years away from being self-sufficient, will require even
more assistance, he said.
A smaller U.S. force could have other unintended consequences,
possibly discouraging already skeptical lawmakers from fully funding
U.S. commitments to help fund Afghan forces.
At their current size, Afghan forces will cost at least $5 billion
in 2015, a sum far beyond the reach of the Afghan government. The
United States has been widely expected to be the largest outside
funder for those forces.
The Taliban and other militants have been weakened by more than 12
years of Afghan and NATO assaults, but they still can obtain
supplies and plan attacks from Afghanistan's remote mountain regions
and tribal areas of neighboring Pakistan.
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Some analysts are wary of reducing the U.S. presence to less than
10,000 troops.
"If the White House opts to keep a lower number of troops, it will
put more pressure on the Afghan forces and run the risk of
squandering their recent progress against the Taliban," said Lisa
Curtis, a former CIA analyst and State Department official now with
the conservative Heritage Foundation, a think tank in Washington.
A U.S. force significantly below 10,000 might focus almost
exclusively on counter-terrorism, tracking militants affiliated with
a greatly weakened but resilient al Qaeda insurgency based on the
Afghanistan-Pakistan border, officials said.
Debate over the size of a residual U.S. force follows the failure of
the U.S. and Afghan governments to finalize a Bilateral Security
Agreement (BSA) to authorize a U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan
beyond 2014, the deadline for U.S. and NATO troops to conclude their
fight against the Taliban.
"The longer we go without a BSA, the more challenging it will be to
plan and execute any U.S. mission," said Laura Lucas Magnuson, a
White House spokeswoman. "Furthermore, the longer we go without a
BSA, the more likely it will be that any post-2014 U.S. mission will
be smaller in scale and ambition."
Results of the recent presidential election may not be known for
weeks, or months if runoffs take place. But leading candidates have
said they will sign the agreement, which has been on hold because of
reservations from current Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
In late February, Obama announced that the United States might seek
to sign the deal with Karzai's successor and possibly keep troops
there after 2014 to train and advise Afghan forces and pursue al
Qaeda militants.
Some U.S. officials believe Afghan forces will require substantial,
hands-on support from foreign troops, in addition to help from the
United States.
(Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle;
editing by Jason Szep
and David Lindsey)
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