BAGRAM, Afghanistan — Commanders say they need them. Both presidential candidates promise to send them. But how much difference will more U.S. troops make in Afghanistan?
The answer, commanders on the ground say, is a lot.
But there are differences of opinion over where the troops are most badly needed. And while something of a political consensus seems to have emerged in the U.S. over the need for an "Afghan surge," commanders warn not to expect the kinds of dramatic security gains that followed the U.S. troop "surge" in Iraq.
And don’t call it a "surge," they say.
"We don’t need a ‘surge’; what we need is a sustained increase," said Brig. Gen. Mark Milley, the deputy commander for U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan.
Name a U.S. mission in Afghanistan, and you can find officers who believe they are undermanned, often critically so.
Commanders in the east say they would use the bulk of additional troops to bolster efforts along the border with Pakistan. Though they acknowledge they could never entirely shut down illegal crossings along the rugged border, they believe they could make it significantly harder for insurgents to move weapons and fighters.
And as the insurgency has spread across southern Afghanistan and, in the east, into provinces near Kabul, U.S. and NATO officers openly acknowledge that there are critical areas where they can’t maintain a sustained presence.
Commanders say increased numbers would allow them to beef up their presence in the countryside where the insurgency is at its strongest. At many U.S. outposts, under-strength units are only able to patrol a few hours a day, if that, and officers say insurgents simply blend in with the population or hide in the hills, returning to reassert themselves when the patrols return home.
As a result, according to a broad consensus of military officers, most Afghan civilians remain "on the fence," unable to openly oppose the insurgency.
"You have to be here for real and for the long haul, and the people in the villages need to know that," Milley said. "They need to see you all the time like a cop on a beat. Otherwise, the insurgent waits an hour and he’s back in. In order to maintain that sort of persistent presence, you have to have the numbers."
Some officers, however, believe that simply sending additional combat brigades to Afghanistan isn’t the answer. Instead, they say the U.S. should focus on bolstering efforts to train Afghan soldiers and policemen.
"We can’t win this war for them," said Capt. Jack Nothstine, with a police mentoring team in southern Afghanistan. "The Afghans are going to be the ones who have to win it for themselves."
Plans are already under way to nearly double the size of the Afghan army by next year. Additional troops from other NATO countries are also needed, Milley says.
But not all in the western coalition believe that more troops are the answer. A leaked French diplomatic cable recently quoted the British ambassador to Afghanistan as saying that more troops appeared to be making things worse. The British government has said the report mischaracterizes the British position, but has not denied its validity.
The conventional wisdom in the U.S. that more troops will produce improvements is largely rooted in the experience in Iraq, where dramatic security gains took hold within a year of the arrival of 30,000 "surge" troops. But Afghanistan is a far different country, and commanders say most of those differences point to the likelihood of a longer and ultimately more difficult project.
For all its problems, the Iraqi government could always count on its oil wealth, and is now believed to be running a budget surplus of as much as $79 billion. The Afghan government, by contrast, last year raised revenues of just $750 million — not enough to support its current army, let alone launch reconstruction projects in a country with virtually no modern infrastructure outside a few major cities.
Afghanistan has virtually no history of effective central control, few roads and adult literacy rates as low as 20 percent. The tribal safe havens in Pakistan fuel the Afghan insurgency.
Which brings commanders back to the need for more troops. Though most are reluctant to discuss specific numbers — and acknowledge that the availability of troops will largely be dictated by a continued drawdown in Iraq — the need is not small, they say.
"We are facing an active insurgency in a semi-preindustrial society with rudimentary infrastructure, struggling rule of law, an immature government, a national income of $750 million, a raging drug trade and enemy sanctuaries across an international border," Milley said. "And people ask, ‘Why all this violence?’ "
Stars and Stripes reporter Drew Brown contributed to this report.
