WASHINGTON - The U.S. administration expects to announce new objectives for the flagging war in Afghanistan as soon as next week that place an onus on Pakistan to contain extremism, defence and administration officials said Thursday.
The White House objectives are expected to roughly parallel 15 goals contained in a 20-page classified report to the White House from the joint chiefs of staff. Among them are eliminating terrorist safe havens in Pakistan and adopting a regional approach to reducing the threat of terrorism and extremism in both countries.
"We're just about done," joint chiefs of staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen said in an interview with PBS's "The Charlie Rose Show" on Thursday.
The review addresses "the safe haven in Pakistan, making sure that Afghanistan doesn't provide a capability in the long run or an environment in which al-Qaida could return or the Taliban could return," Mullen said, as well as the need for stability, economic development and better governance in Afghanistan and the development of the Afghan armed forces.
An administration official said although the review is not complete, one thrust is that Pakistan needs to recognize combatting extremism is in its own interest, as well as that of U.S.-and NATO forces across the border in Afghanistan. The official, like others interviewed, spoke on condition of anonymity.
President Barack Obama is expected to explain the redrawn U.S. objectives to NATO allies when he attends a NATO summit in Europe next month.
The in-house review co-ordinated by the White House National Security Council lays out objectives over three to five years, although that doesn't necessarily mean the U.S. military could leave in that time, defence officials said.
The U.S. goal in Afghanistan must be to protect its fragile government from collapsing under pressure from the Taliban -- a goal that can only be achieved by securing Pakistan's co-operation, increasing substantially the size of Afghanistan's national security forces and boosting economic aid in the region, said senior military and intelligence officials.
Gen. David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, and Richard Holbrooke, special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, met privately Thursday with more than a dozen U.S. senators. Although the session was confidential, it was part of the administration's effort to recruit support for a trimmed-down U.S. mission in the war begun by former president George W. Bush in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The White House review is expected to frame U.S. objectives in two major categories: strategic regional goals for stability in impoverished Afghanistan and nuclear-armed Pakistan and smaller-scale warfighting goals for the growing U.S. military commitment in Afghanistan.
Broadly speaking, the Obama administration is expected to endorse a doctrine of counterinsurgency that has military and civilian components and scales back U.S. expectations for Afghan democracy and self-sufficiency. A main theme is the premise the military alone cannot win the war, officials said.
The review is expected to focus on containing the Taliban and the proliferation of lesser-known militant groups, providing a greater sense of security and stability for Afghan civilians and increasing the size and proficiency of the Afghan armed forces.
"I would say that, at a minimum, the mission is to prevent the Taliban from retaking power against a democratically elected government in Afghanistan and thus turning Afghanistan, potentially, again, into a haven for al Qaeda and other extremist groups," Defence Secretary Robert Gates said in an interview with National Public Radio this week.
Part of the strategy would be purely military, as the 17,000 additional troops Obama has approved for Afghanistan this year attest. Their role is to face off against extremists in the busy spring and summer fighting season and buy time for less tangible counterinsurgency tactics to take hold.
Administration and military leaders have given a glimpse into one such tactic, describing ways Afghan and U.S. leaders might co-opt or pay off mid-and lower-level Taliban and other insurgents in rough imitation of a successful strategy to blunt the insurgency in Iraq.
The review overseen by former CIA analyst Bruce Riedel drew on several generally bleak internal government assessments of the war done over the last six months. People familiar with those accounts sum up the conclusions much as Obama himself described the Afghanistan war in a New York Times newspaper interview last week: the United States is not winning.
