[R-G] Pentagon officials may beef up command role in Afghanistan

[Anthony Fenton]

Pentagon officials may beef up command role in Afghanistan

By ROBERT BURNS – 10 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Pentagon officials are quietly considering a  
significant change in the war command in Afghanistan to extend U.S.  
control of forces into the country's volatile south. The idea is  
partly linked to an expectation of a fresh infusion of U.S. combat  
troops in the south next year.

Taliban resistance has stiffened in the south since NATO took command  
there in mid-2006, and some in the Bush administration believe the  
fight against the Taliban could be strengthened if the U.S., whose  
span of control is now limited to eastern Afghanistan, were also in  
charge in part or all of the south.

The internal discussions about expanding the U.S. command role were  
described in recent Associated Press interviews with several senior  
defense officials who have direct knowledge but were not authorized to  
talk about it publicly. All said they thought it unlikely that a  
decision would be made anytime soon.

Giving the U.S. more control in the south would address one problem  
cited by U.S. officials: the NATO allies' practice of rotating  
commanders every nine months — and their fighting units every six  
months, in some cases. The 101st Airborne, by comparison, is in  
eastern Afghanistan on a 15-month deployment. In the U.S. view, nine- 
month commands are too short to maximize effectiveness.

U.S. combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq are to shrink to 12 months  
starting in August.

The idea of changing the command structure has not yet developed into  
a proposal to Defense Secretary Robert Gates. The internal discussions  
reflect concern at a lack of continuity among NATO forces and a view  
that, in the long run, NATO may be better off focusing mainly on areas  
of Afghanistan, like the north and west, where there is less fighting  
but a great need for non-combat aid.

Changing the command structure to give a U.S. general more control in  
the south would, in effect, mark a partial "re-Americanization" of the  
combat mission. That could be politically controversial, given U.S.  
interests in maintaining a close partnership with NATO in fighting  
terrorism.

NATO now has overall responsibility for the mission in Afghanistan,  
and that would not change if a U.S. general were to be put in charge  
in the southern sector. But it would give the Americans a greater  
degree of control.

Settling the command issue has implications not only for the success  
of the overall mission in Afghanistan but also for the NATO allies'  
willingness to join with the U.S. in future military ventures beyond  
Europe's borders.

The defense officials doubted a decision would be made before fall and  
possibly not until a new administration takes office in 2009. Two  
officials said there appears to be no high-level advocate for making  
such a change in the near term, although there is growing concern that  
while higher U.S. troop levels in Iraq have helped reduce violence  
there, the trends in Afghanistan are less positive.

There are now about 34,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan — the most at  
any time during the war, which began in October 2001. They include  
3,400 Marines who arrived this month as reinforcements for combat  
missions in the south and to help train Afghan security forces. Those  
Marines are scheduled to leave in October, but if replacements are not  
offered by NATO allies soon the Pentagon likely will either extend the  
Marines' deployment or tap another unit to fill the void.

At a NATO summit in early April, President Bush told the allies the  
United States would send many more troops to Afghanistan in 2009. He  
mentioned no numbers, but U.S. commanders say they need at least two  
more brigades, or 7,500 troops.

In early stages of the war, the U.S. military commanded forces across  
Afghanistan. NATO's security role initially was limited to heading an  
International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, in Kabul, the  
capital; but it spread, starting in 2004 — first to the north, then  
west and, in 2006, to the south and the east.

The overall ISAF commander is an American general, Daniel McNeill, but  
the only sector headed by a U.S. general is the eastern area, where  
the 101st Airborne is in charge. If the southern sector were to be put  
under U.S. command, the American in charge there would still be  
subordinate to NATO.

Last week Gates was asked at a news conference if he expects any  
changes in the command structure.

"If there were to be any discussion of changes in the command  
structure, it would require some pretty intensive consultations with  
our allies and discussion about what makes sense going forward," Gates  
replied. "There have been no such consultations so far."

The Pentagon chief acknowledged, however, that the subject has been  
talks about internally.

"I've made no decisions," he said. "I've made no recommendations to  
the president. We're still discussing it."

The topic is politically sensitive. A U.S. move to limit NATO's role  
in the south, where the alliance has taken its heaviest casualties  
over the past two years, could be seen by the allies as implying U.S.  
superiority. It could be seen in the same light as Gates' comments to  
the Los Angeles Times in January about the NATO allies not being as  
well trained as U.S. forces to fight an insurgency. Those remarks were  
seen in some European capitals as a slap, which Gates said was not his  
intent.

A new twist may be added with Bush's decision to nominate Gen. David  
Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, to head Central Command,  
which is responsible not only for U.S. operations in Iraq but also  
Afghanistan. Petraeus will have a chance to air his views on the troop- 
command issue in the south when he testifies at his Senate  
confirmation hearing, possibly before the end of May.

David Barno, a retired Army lieutenant general who commanded U.S.  
forces in Afghanistan from October 2003 to May 2005, has publicly  
pushed for a change in the command structure. He said in congressional  
testimony April 2 that the U.S. two-star headquarters at Bagram air  
base north of Kabul, the capital, is capable of "a broad  
counterinsurgency fight all across southern Afghanistan."

In an interview Monday, Barno said the Europeans did not get what they  
expected when NATO agreed to extend its reach in 2006 from the less- 
volatile north and west into the south, where it looked then like a  
mission focused more on economic reconstruction and humanitarian aid  
than on combat.

"NATO came into Afghanistan under one set of expectations and now is  
faced with a very different reality, and that's not playing well  
politically at home -- not terribly well with many of the governments  
but even less well with the populations in many countries," Barno said.

Among the NATO nations fighting in the south are Canada, Britain, the  
Netherlands and Denmark. A Canadian general is commander of the  
southern region now and he is scheduled to be replaced by a Dutch  
general later this year, part of a rotational pattern that Barno and  
some senior Pentagon officials believe gives the commander and his  
staff too little time on the ground to be fully effective.