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Obama's Afghanistan plan to last for years
Melbourne Age - December 8, 2009
Anne Davies, Washington – America is likely to have a substantial presence in Afghanistan for many years to come, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates says, as President Barack Obama's national security team seeks to dispel any view that a planned drawdown in July 2011 amounts to a full-scale withdrawal.
In a bid to clarify the strategy – which involves a surge of 30,000 more troops in the next six months and then a date to begin drawing down – Mr Gates, National Security adviser Jim Jones and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton each spoke on political television shows on Sunday.
There have been criticisms of the plan by Republicans and among allies that Mr Obama sent the wrong message regarding the start of the proposed drawdown.
The officials said that July 2011 was but a start date, designed to instil a sense of urgency into both the mission and the Karzai Government. The speed of the drawdown would be entirely dependent on conditions on the ground.
They said any troop pull-out beginning in July 2011 would be slow and that the Americans would only be starting to transfer security responsibilities to Afghan forces under the plan.
"We have strategic interests in South Asia that should not be measured in terms of finite times," General Jones told CNN. "We're going to be in the region for a long time."
The July 2011 date was a "ramp" rather than a "cliff"', he said, and the length of the ramp would be determined by the conditions prevailing at that time.
"There isn't a deadline," Mr Gates said on CBS. "What we have is a specific date which we will begin transferring responsibility for security district by district, province by province in Afghanistan, to the Afghans."
He conceded that the numbers leaving in July 2011 could be very small if the conditions did not allow for more.
Meanwhile both men faced questioning about whether the US knows where Osama bin Laden is. The BBC has reported that a Taliban detainee, with close connections to Bin Laden, had claimed a friend had seen the al-Qaeda leader in January or February in Afghanistan.
The detainee claims to have met Bin Laden numerous times before September 11. He claims that in January or February he met a trusted contact who had seen Bin Laden about 15 to 20 days earlier in Afghanistan.
Asked why the US and its allies faced such difficulty locating Bin Laden, General Jones said he was believed to be hiding mainly in a rugged area of western Pakistan and might periodically be slipping back into Afghanistan.
Asked on CNN whether the administration had reliable intelligence on Bin Laden's whereabouts, General Jones replied: "The best estimate is that he is somewhere in North Waziristan, sometimes on the Pakistani side of the border, sometimes on the Afghan side of the border."
He did not comment on the intelligence behind that estimate, nor did he give a time period or describe Bin Laden's border crossings more specifically.
& An estimated $US10 million ($A10.9 million) a day is smuggled out of Afghanistan, most of it through Kabul International Airport, the country's Finance Minister, Omar Zakhilwal, said.
The level of corruption makes Mr Zakhilwal embarrassed to acknowledge he is Afghan while travelling, he said.
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