U.S. military outlines goals for Afghan buildup

KABUL, Afghanistan -- As President Donald Trump's administration nears a decision on whether to send several thousand more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, U.S. military officials say the plan would include sending hundreds of U.S. special 0perations forces to train up to 17,000 new members of Afghan special forces.

The additional foreign troops would not be involved directly in combat, the officials said. But they believe that a burst of intensive support for the struggling Afghan defense forces, with a focus on maximizing their best assets, could break the current stalemate in the 16-year war and improve chances for a peaceful settlement -- without introducing an intrusive foreign military presence just two years after NATO combat troops withdrew.

"The end state is reconciliation with the Taliban, not a return to an ISAF and American combat role against the Taliban," said U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Patrick Donahoe, referring to the International Security Assistance Force, the previous U.S.-led NATO mission in Afghanistan. "We want the Afghan government to be in a position of authority when the talks start," said Donahoe, a senior planner in Kabul for the current NATO mission, called Resolute Support.

In describing their plans, U.S. military officials here took pains to emphasize the limited size and role of any added forces, and they noted that only about half of the new troops would be American. The rest would come from other countries that contribute to Resolute Support.

Currently, the United States contributes about 6,700 of the 12,400 foreign troops here, followed by Germany, Italy, Georgia and 35 other countries. The U.S. portion is not likely to change, meaning that if 3,000 new troops were sent to Afghanistan, about 1,500 would be from the United States.

"This is not going to be even a mini-surge," said Navy Capt. William Salvin, senior spokesman for the U.S. military here. He said that NATO officials have already approved more than 15,000 total slots for Resolute Support this year and that adding 3,000-plus would not pass that ceiling.

Resolute Support is separate from a U.S. counterterrorism mission in which about 2,100 special operations forces fight alongside Afghan commandos in raids against Islamic State militants and other international fighters. That force is not expected to grow, and new service members who join Resolute Support would not be permitted to fight.

The current orders for Resolute Support are to "train, advise and assist" Afghan security forces, and that will not change with the addition of more troops, officials here said. Their short-term goal would be to improve the combat ability of Afghanistan's 352,000-member security forces; the long-term aim would be to make them self-sufficient by 2020, a timetable set by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

The immediate need, officials said, is to push back harder against the Taliban. The Islamist insurgents have been steadily gaining territory since the departure of most foreign troops at the end of 2014, causing record casualties among Afghan civilians and security forces, and repeatedly attacking scattered provincial capitals. Efforts to hold peace talks with the Taliban have foundered.

Some Afghans have objected strongly to the possible deployment of more foreign troops, in part because their presence draws terrorist attacks and their permanent withdrawal has been a major demand by the Taliban. Ghani said recently that there is "no global appetite" and "no Afghan appetite" for the resumption of a large-scale foreign military presence, which peaked at more than 130,000 troops in 2012.

But the Afghan president has been working privately on the plan with Gen. John Nicholson, the senior U.S. commander in Afghanistan, who told the Senate Armed Services Committee in February that the Afghan war is "at a stalemate" and that "a few thousand" more troops are needed to help break it. Ghani has since said that the "numbers proposed are the right numbers," and U.S. military officials said key elements of Nicholson's plan closely track Ghani's concerns and suggestions.

There are no plans to build any new foreign military bases or compounds, or to have foreign troops stationed at dangerous remote outposts, as was often the case until 2014. The great majority would live at existing major U.S. and foreign bases in Kabul and Bagram, a huge American compound and airfield north of the capital.

"We are not expanding the military footprint, we are thickening it," Salvin said, referring to plans to have more trainers and advisers working directly with Afghan troops and officers in lower-level units, rather than being limited to dealing with senior officers. All 11 of the country's military and police academies, he said, are in the capital.

A Section on 05/24/2017

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