White House report claims progress, challenges in Afghanistan

A long-awaited White House review of the U.S. troop buildup in Afghanistan lays claim to progress in the fight against the Taliban insurgency, but it also acknowledges challenges to building a stable Afghan government and in eliminating militant sanctuaries in Pakistan.

The review, released Thursday, says President Obama’s military strategy is “setting the conditions” for a reduction of U.S. forces beginning in July 2011 and affirms the policy that Obama implemented just over a year ago. It suggests no changes to American troop levels in the region, according to an early summary released by the White House.

“The momentum achieved by the Taliban in recent years has been arrested in much of the country and reversed in some key areas, although these gains remain fragile and reversible,” the review adds.

The strategy “is showing progress,” but “the challenge remains to make our gains durable and sustainable,” the report concludes.

The White House acknowledges Afghanistan’s army and police will not be able to take over responsibility for security until at least 2014. It may take even longer before the government ministries are capable of providing even basic services. Even then, doing so probably will require long-term international aid.

Aides to the president called the assessment a “diagnostic” one, meant to assess the trajectory and progress of the Afghanistan mission two years into Obama’s management of the war.

The president, who met with his full war Cabinet on Wednesday, is expected to speak about the review in a scheduled news conference Thursday morning.

The White House released a five-page, unclassified version of the report early Thursday.

A year ago, after announcing that he was sending an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, Obama said this review would be a major assessment of whether the new strategy was working — a “proof of concept,” as it was called at the time.

But the portions of the report made public Thursday break little new ground and contain little detailed analysis of the strategy.

U.S. officials have said in recent weeks that the original plan for the report was scaled back in part because all the new U.S. troops finished arriving in Afghanistan only several months ago, which proved to be not enough time to fully assess how the strategy was working.

Although there are no specific recommendations for changing the strategy, the report says that there are “areas in our strategy for Pakistan that require adjustment.”

Closing down sanctuaries in Pakistan used by Al Qaeda and Afghan insurgents “will require greater cooperation with Pakistan along the border,” the report says.

In addition, the review warns that the strategy’s success will hinge on the ability of the Afghan government, which continues to be beset by corruption and poor performance, to take over responsibility for security and governance in areas cleared by troops from the U.S. and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization member countries.

“A major challenge will be demonstrating that the Afghan government has the capacity to consolidate in areas cleared by ISAF and Afghan Security Forces,” the report says.

The assessment also claims that there has been “significant progress in disrupting and dismantling” the Al Qaeda leadership hiding in Pakistan.

The losses “have diminished — but not halted — the group’s ability to advance operations against the United States,” the report says.

But the report provides no names of Al Qaeda leaders captured or killed, even though U.S. counter-terrorism officials over the last year have periodically disclosed that several senior Al Qaeda leaders have been killed in drone strikes.

There is also no mention of Osama bin Laden or Ayman Zawahiri, Al Qaeda’s two top leaders, who are believed to be hiding in Pakistan.

david.cloud@latimes.com

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