President Barack Obama's plan to withdraw some U.S. troopsfrom Afghanistan this year will take soldiers out of the country's restiveeast, where battles between foreign troops and militants suspected inhigh-profile attacks increasingly make it the war's focus, a top U.S. commandersaid on Tuesday.
"We're expecting to contribute a modest amount to theremaining drawdown that has to occur between now and December," U.S. ArmyMajor General Daniel Allyn, who commands about 33,000 U.S. and NATO soldiers ineastern Afghanistan, said in an interview with Reuters.
After more than a decade of war in Afghanistan, the WhiteHouse is moving ahead with plans to withdraw the more than 30,000 extra troopsObama deployed after his 2009 overhaul of U.S. policy.
The Pentagon says about 3,000 troops that comprised part ofthat troop surge already have been pulled from Afghanistan so far. A total of 10,000will leave by the end of December and another 23,000 by the close of nextsummer. There are just under 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan now.
Allyn declined to say how many of his soldiers would departRegional Command East -- a vast region including 14 provinces, a long stretchof poorly protected border with Pakistan and some of the country's most rugged,challenging terrain-- but that it would not include front-line combat soldiers.
"It will not require the loss of any of our fightingstrength," he said by phone from Bagram, Afghanistan.
Allyn's boss, the overall Afghanistan commander U.S. MarineGeneral John Allen, told the Wall Street Journal last week that he wasconsidering sending "some number" of combat battalions to easternAfghanistan as part of a bid to better secure the capital Kabul from militantswho cross the Pakistan border.
Those plans do not appear set in stone, however.
The Pentagon says the troop surge has helped bring a modicumof stability to parts of the Taliban's southern heartland and set theconditions for improvements to Afghanistan's weak governance and, hopefully,for convincing the Taliban leadership to consider a peace deal with Kabul.
GROWING HAQQANI INFLUENCE
Even as they tout the situation in places such as Helmandprovince, U.S. officials are growing more worried about the threat from theHaqqani network, an affiliated militant group they say is based across theborder in Pakistan's lawless tribal region.
They blame the Haqqani network for a series of bold attackson U.S. targets in Afghanistan, including a September 13 assault on the U.S.Embassy in Kabul and a recent truck bombing in eastern Wardak province.
U.S. officials believe the Haqqanis are responsible for thebulk of violence in the east and use lawless areas on both sides of the porousAfghanistan-Pakistan border as they plot attacks in and around Kabul.
Some in Washington now see the Haqqani group -- with itsambition to destabilize Kabul and undermine Afghans' perceptions about thegovernment's ability to keep them safe -- as an even more formidable enemy thanthe Taliban.
The Haqqani threat crystallizes the Obama administration'sdilemma: it wants to leave behind a relatively stable Afghanistan as it shrinksits military footprint but it believes doing so requires more assistance thanit is getting from neighboring Pakistan.
Washington's relationship with Islamabad has been strainedsince a Pentagon accusation linking the embassy attack with Pakistan's ISIintelligence agency.
Allyn said no final decisions had been made about how many,if any, new troops he would receive in the future to fight the Haqqani networkand other militants, presumably compensating for troops he provides for thisyear's drawdown.
The U.S. military leadership in Kabul says it has notdecided whether to formally declare the fight in Afghanistan's east the newfocus as it seeks to ensure that security gains in the south are not squanderedas the U.S. force grows smaller.
"That's clearly the decision for which when theconditions are right I'm sure General Allen will make it," Allyn said."In the meantime, it's our mission to ensure we make ... use of everyresource we have."
A senior NATO official, who declined to be named, said mostof those troops withdrawn initially would be what the military calls enablers-- support and logistical troops rather than the frontline fighting soldiers.
The official also said commanders likely would try to shiftsome military duties to civilian contractors or military personnel locatedoutside of Afghanistan.