Washington: A classified Pentagon report urges President Barack Obama to shift US military strategy in Afghanistan, de-emphasising democracy-building and concentrating more on targeting Taliban and al-Qaeda sanctuaries inside Pakistan with the aid of Pakistani military forces.
Defence Secretary Robert Gates has seen the report prepared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but it has not yet been presented to the White House, officials said on Tuesday.
The recommendations are one element of a broad policy reassessment under way along with recommendations to be considered by the White House from the commander of the US Central Command, General David Petraeus, and other military leaders.
A senior defence official said on Tuesday that it will likely take several weeks before the Obama administration rolls out its long-term strategy for Afghanistan.
The Joint Chiefs' plan reflects growing worries that the US military was taking on more than it could handle in Afghanistan by pursuing the Bush administration's broad goal of nurturing a thriving democratic government.
Instead, the plan calls for a more narrowly focused effort to root out militant strongholds along the Pakistani border and inside the neighbouring country, according to officials who confirmed the essence of the report.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the plan publicly.
The recommendations are broadly cast and provide limited detail, meant to help develop the overarching strategy for the Afghanistan-Pakistan region rather than propose a detailed military action plan.
During a press conference on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs noted ongoing reviews of Afghan policy, but did not say when they would be made public. Obama intends, he said, to "evaluate the current direction of our policy and make some corrections as he goes forward."
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman would not comment on Tuesday on the details of the Joint Chiefs' report, but acknowledged that the US relationship with Pakistan is a critical component for success in Afghanistan.
"When you talk about Afghanistan, you can't help but also recognise the fact that the border region with Pakistan is obviously a contributing factor to the stability and security of Afghanistan, and the work that Pakistan is doing to try to reduce and eliminate those safe havens, and the ability for people to move across that border that are engaged in hostile intentions," Whitman said.
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Part of the recommended approach is to search for ways to work more intensively and effectively with the Pakistanis to root out extremist elements in the border area, the senior defence official said.
The heightened emphasis on Pakistan reflects a realisation that the root of the problem lies in the militant havens inside its border — a concern outlined last week to Congress in grim testimony by Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen.
But the report does not imply more incursions by US combat forces inside Pakistan or accelerating other forms of US military involvement, the senior defence official emphasised.
Pakistani officials have repeatedly raised alarms after a surge of US Hellfire missile strikes from drone predators in recent months, and renewed those complaints after a new strike killed 19 people inside Pakistan days after Obama took office.
"The bottom line is we have to look at what the art of the possible is there," said a US military official who has operated in Afghanistan. The official, who has not seen the Joint Chiefs' report, said the challenge is to craft a strategy that achieves US goals of stabilising the region and constraining al-Qaida, but also takes into account the powerful tribes that resist a strong central government and the ties among ethnic Pashtuns on either side of the Afghan-Pakistan border.
The Joint Chiefs' report advises a greater emphasis on US military training of Pakistani forces for counter-terror work.
Pakistan's government is well aware of growing US interest in collaborating to improve its military's muscle against al-Qaida and Taliban elements in the border areas. The topic has been broached repeatedly by senior US officials, including Mullen.
The training efforts also would expand and develop the Afghan army and police force, while at the same time work to improve Afghan governance.
The report also stresses that Afghan strategy must be driven by what the Afghans want, and that the US cannot impose its own goals on the Afghanistan government.
During discussions about a new Afghanistan strategy, military leaders expressed worries that the US ambitions in Afghanistan — to stabilise the country and begin to build a democracy there — were beyond its ability.
And as they tried to balance military demands in both Iraq and Afghanistan, some increasingly questioned why the US continued to maintain a war-fighting force in Iraq, even though the mission there has shifted to a more support role.
Those fighting forces, they argued, were needed more urgently in Afghanistan.
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Military leaders have been signaling for weeks that the focus of US efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan would change.
Gates told armed services committees in Congress last week that the US should keep its sights on one thing: preventing Afghanistan from being used as a base for terrorists and extremists who would harm the US or its allies. He bluntly added that the military could not root out terrorists while also propping up Afghanistan's fledgling democracy.
"Afghanistan is the fourth or fifth poorest country in the world, and if we set ourselves the objective of creating some sort of Central Asian Valhalla over there, we will lose," Gates said, a mythology reference to heaven.
Senetor John McCain, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Tuesday that he was briefed last week on the military's proposed new Afghan strategy, which he called evolving but headed in the right direction.
"There will be no Anbar awakening," McCain, R-Ariz said referring to the tribal uprising against al-Qaida in Iraq's Anbar province that triggered a turnaround in that conflict. "It will be long, hard and difficult."
The Join Chiefs report's overall conclusions were first reported Saturday by The Associated Press. Politico reported additional details of the report Tuesday.
The US is considering doubling its troop presence in Afghanistan this year to roughly 60,000, in response to growing strength by the Islamic militant Taliban, fed by safe havens they and al-Qaeda have developed in an increasingly unstable Pakistan.
Obama is expected to announce soon his decision on a request for additional forces from the US commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David McKiernan. Several officials said they believe the president will approve sending three additional combat brigades to Afghanistan, totaling roughly 14,000 troops.
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