US eyes faster pullout of troops from Afghanistan

NEW YORK: The crippling of al-Qaeda's original network in the Afghan-Pak region provides a rationale for an accelerated reduction of US combat troops from Afghanistan, high-ranking American officials say. The Obama administration is currently debating about how many troops to withdraw as the process is set to begin next month.

The officials emphasized that President Obama had not yet made a determination on that question. Fighting Al Qaeda, they noted, was the main reason Obama agreed to deploy 30,000 more troops last year, even as he adopted a broader, more troop-intensive and time-consuming strategy of making key towns in Afghanistan safe from the Taliban and helping the Afghans to build up security forces and a better-functioning government.

The military has been pressing for a plan under which only a few thousands troops out of the 100,000 currently in Afghanistan would come home immediately, with the bulk of the 30,000 troops sent last year remaining for another year or more.

The officials declined to discuss Mr. Obama's views on how many troops should be withdrawn, or how quickly. The White House appears to be moving swiftly to conclude the internal debate, with officials saying that the president may announce a decision as early as next week, avoiding the kind of drawn-out deliberations that preceded Obama's decision in late 2009 to increase troop levels in Afghanistan by 30,000.

The outgoing Defence Secretary Robert Gates, in an interview with The New York Times on Friday, said: "This was a much more abbreviated process. Nobody wanted to go through what we went through in the fall of 2009." Meanwhile, Obama is facing pressure from two Democratic allies who want up to 50,000 troops withdrawn from Afghanistan this year.

Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer called for Obama to withdraw 30,000 troops by year's end, with Congresswoman Barbara Lee, also a Democrat, calling for 50,000 withdrawals, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Saturday. Ms. Boxer, a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, said the United States should shift to "a different mission focused on targeted counter-terrorism operations, the protection of American coalition personnel and the continued training of Afghan security forces."

In a Los Angeles Times report, Ms. Lee said anything less than halving the 100,000 US troop presence in Afghanistan is too little. "As the president contemplates this decision, I urge him to hold true to his comments that he will seriously consider a 'significant' reduction of US troops in Afghanistan," Ms. Lee said.

"A more significant and reasonable goal would be the withdrawal of 50,000 combat troops," she said. "Any withdrawal plan should begin immediately and be conducted swiftly, not dragged out over years."

Copyright APP (Associated Press of Pakistan), 2011