WASHINGTON — The Obama administration reaffirmed Sunday that it will begin pulling U.S. troops out of Afghanistan next summer, despite reservations expressed by top generals that absolute deadlines are a mistake.
President Barack Obama’s chief of staff said an announced plan to begin bringing forces home in July 2011 still holds.
“That’s not changing. Everybody agreed on that date,” Rahm Emanuel said, adding by name the top three officials overseeing the policy guiding the war: Gen. David Petraeus, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen.
Petraeus, the war’s top military boss, said last week that he would recommend delaying the pullout if conditions in Afghanistan warranted it. Days after the date was announced in December, Gates pointedly said it was not a deadline.
Congressional Republicans and some military leaders say a fixed date encourages the Taliban-led insurgency and undermines U.S. leverage with Afghan leaders.
Gates pledged Sunday that some troops would begin to leave in 13 months, but he was more cautious than Emanuel.
“We clearly understand that in July of 2011, we begin to draw down our forces,” Gates said. “The pace with which we draw down and how many we draw down is going to be conditions-based.”
Uniformed and civilian defense leaders accepted the announcement of a date to begin leaving as a condition of Obama’s major expansion of the war. Obama ordered an additional 30,000 troops, the last of whom are arriving now, with a mission to squeeze the Taliban on its home ground, build up Afghan security forces and improve chances that local people would swing behind the U.S.-backed central government.
POSSIBLE DELAY
Petraeus told Congress last week that he would recommend postponing the start of the withdrawal if security conditions and the capability of the Afghan government could not support it.
That does not mean Petraeus is opposed to bringing some troops home, and he said repeatedly that he supports Obama’s strategy.
The war strategy Obama adopted is based on the success of Petraeus’ counterinsurgency tactics in the Iraq war. It combines a short-term buildup of forces to blunt rising violence and a longer-term project to persuade locals to help uproot a homegrown insurgency.
Emanuel did not dispute quoted remarks from Vice President Joe Biden that “a whole lot” of forces would come home in July 2011. Biden, who argued within the administration for a narrower mission in Afghanistan involving fewer troops, was interviewed for the book The Promise, by Jonathan Alter.
Gates, however, said he had never heard Biden say such a thing, and the evaluation by the on-the-ground war commander will largely determine the scope of the withdrawal.
Interactive
“That absolutely has not been decided,” Gates said. “I’m not accepting, at face value, that ... he said those words.”
TOUGH GOING
Gates acknowledged Sunday that it is taking longer than he hoped to gain an enduring edge over the Taliban in Helmand and Kandahar provinces in the country’s south.
Gates asked for time and patience to demonstrate that the new strategy is working. He lamented that Americans are too quick to write off the war when Obama’s revamped strategy has only just begun to take hold.
“It is a tough pull,” Gates said. “We are suffering significant casualties. We expected that; we warned everybody that would be the case last winter.”
At least 34 U.S. troops have died in Afghanistan this month, making June among the deadliest months of the war. Casualties are expected to rise through the summer and fall as fighting expands in Helmand and Kandahar provinces.
On Sunday, two bombs hidden in push carts exploded less than a half hour apart in Helmand, underscoring the continued security threat despite years of trying to bring peace to the unstable south.
The double explosions in Helmand province were just two in a series of attacks reported over the weekend across the country.
The bombings occurred early Saturday morning in Lashkar Gah, the capital ofHelmand province. The first explosion in front of a bank killed a young girl and a woman and wounded at least 14 other people, the Afghan Ministry of Interior said.
“I was going to get my salary from Kabul bank and there was a blast,” Afghan policeman Abdul Tawab said at the scene.
He was among Afghan security forces who were already at the first bombing site when they heard the second blast, which occurred in front of a high school about a mile and a half away.
Five people, including an Afghan soldier, were injured in the second explosion less than a half hour after the first, according to Daoud Ahmadi, a spokesman for the provincial governor.
He said a third person had died in one of the two explosions, but it was unclear which one.
“The bomb was placed in a fruit cart,”’ said Gul Mohammad, who was injured by one of the explosions.
“We heard a big blast,” Mohammad said as he sat on a hospital bed being treated for a foot injury. “Then I saw lots of wounded people everywhere.”
North of Lashkar Gah on Saturday, two Afghan policemen were killed and five others were wounded when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb in Gereshk district, the interior ministry said.
POLICE, MILITANTS CLASH
In western Afghanistan, three Taliban militants were killed and 33 others were wounded in a clash with police Sunday morning, according to Sarajuddin Najebi, a spokesman for the provincial governor of Badghis province. He said the fighting occurred after local residents complained that insurgents were demanding taxes from farmers as they harvested their crops. He said that after a civilian was killed in the fighting, residents requested help from Afghan security forces who attacked and killed the militants.
However, Sarajuddin Khan, a tribal leader from the district, gave a different account. He said that after a private dispute on Saturday, one of the parties requested assistance from Afghan security forces, claiming that they were under attack from Taliban insurgents. He claimed 16 people from the remote village, including four women and five children, were killed in the subsequent fighting involving Afghan security forces and another 59 were wounded and taken to a hospital.
Speaking at the hospital in neighboring Herat province, the tribal leader said the injured included 12 children and four women.
In the east, rockets fired by militants over the weekend struck two homes, killing four civilians, the ministry said.
In fighting Saturday in Nangarhar, 10 militants were killed and eight others wounded in a 30-minute clash in Sherzad district, said Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, a spokesman for the provincial governor.
Emanuel spoke on ABC’s This Week. Gates appeared on Fox News Sunday.
Information for this article was contributed by Anne Gearan, Deb Riechmann, Mirwais Khan and Rahim Faiez of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 06/21/2010