WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama yesterday pledged a “stronger, smarter and comprehensive” strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan and announced a new policy that will require significantly higher levels of US funding for both countries. US military expenses in Afghanistan alone would increase to over $3 billion a month.
“We have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future,” Obama announced during a speech at the White House.
“It has been more than seven years since the Taleban were removed from power, yet war rages on, and insurgents control parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Obama said. “Many people in the United States — and many in partner countries that have sacrificed so much — have a simple question: ‘What is our purpose in Afghanistan?’ After so many years, they ask: ‘Why do our men and women still fight and die there?’”
Obama said Al-Qaeda’s core leadership continues to plot against the United States from its base in Pakistan, “and will do so in Afghanistan as well if the US-backed government there falls to Taleban forces.”
As part of the strategy, Obama said he was ordering 4,000 additional US troops to help train Afghan security forces. The army trainers are in addition to the contingent of 17,000 Marines and army personnel Obama already announced he would deploy for combat and training operations in Afghanistan. Those deployments will start this spring and continue through the summer. The army trainers will focus their efforts on expanding the ranks and professionalism of the Afghan Army.
He also called on Congress to approve $1.5 billion a year in aid for Pakistan over the next five years and warned that the terrorists who plotted the Sept. 11 attacks still reside in both countries, and that intelligence estimates show Al-Qaeda is “actively planning” new attacks on the US from safe havens in Pakistan.
Obama said the two countries are “inextricably linked,” and that extremist elements in both must be confronted at once to stabilize the region.
“Al-Qaeda and its extremist allies are a cancer that risks killing Pakistan from within,” Obama said.
The president added that if the Afghan government falls to the Taleban or allows Al-Qaeda to go unchallenged, “that country will be a base for terrorists who want to kill us.”
Obama said that together with the United Nations, the United States would form a “contact group” bringing together countries with a stake in the security of the region, including Iran, Russia, India and China.
Initial overtures to Iran will begin at an international meeting next week in The Hague attended by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The new moves are part of a broad push to prevent the stalemated Afghan war from destabilizing both Afghanistan and Pakistan. “In a country that is 70 percent rural, and where the Taleban recruiting base is primarily among under-employed youths, a complete overhaul of our civilian assistance strategy is necessary; agricultural sector job creation is an essential first step to undercutting the appeal of Al-Qaeda and its allies. Our efforts will fail in Afghanistan and Pakistan if we don’t invest in their future,” said the president.
After Obama’s speech, the US envoy for South Asia said Pakistan’s border regions posed the toughest challenge in the new US plan. “We have to deal with the western Pakistan problem,” special envoy Richard Holbrooke told reporters.
Both Afghanistan and Pakistan welcomed Obama’s plan. “We welcome the statement issued by President Obama and we agree with the contents of his speech,” President Hamid Karzai’s chief spokesman, Homayun Hamidzada, said.
“We particularly appreciate the recognition that the Al-Qaeda threat mainly emanates from Pakistan and it poses a danger to Afghanistan and our international friends here,” he said.
Supporting the strategy, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said: “We also want a regional approach because regional issues can be resolved with the support of regional powers. They have accepted our position (that) army action alone is not a solution for all these problems.”
Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said: “I think the new Obama administration’s approach is very positive. They are looking toward a regional approach to the situation.
“Pakistan is willing to play an active, constructive role in this because we feel our peace and security is linked to Afghanistan’s ... there is spill-over.”
— With input from agencies
