Pentagon's call for continued US support in Afghanistan is good news for India

New York: A Pentagon assessment released on Tuesday says Afghanistan’s growing security forces aren’t yet able to protect the country fully and will require US support for the foreseeable future, bolstering the argument for a long-term American presence in the country.

“Although [Afghan security force> capabilities have greatly increased over the past two years, it has yet to demonstrate the ability to operate independently on a nationwide scale,” military officials told Congress in the 181-page report released on Tuesday.

The report describes the Taliban insurgency as “resilient” and says that so long as the Taliban can sneak across the border to Pakistan and find sanctuary, defeating it on the battlefield is impossible. If Taliban bases in Pakistan are not eliminated, the Afghan government will face crippling difficulties in their effort to rebuild Afghanistan.

Worryingly for India, after nearly a dozen years of debilitating war and unspectacular gains, President Barack Obama has speeded up the handover of combat operations in Afghanistan to Afghan forces, raising the prospect of an accelerated US withdrawal from Kabul even before the American mission formally ends there in 2014. US troops in Afghanistan are currently playing a “support role,” focusing on training while still fighting when necessary.

India is concerned that once US troops pull out of Afghanistan by 2014 a resurgent Taliban will allow Afghanistan to become a haven for Islamic jihadists obsessed with Kashmir. There are worries that without the American security umbrella Afghanistan could revert to the kind of chaos that beset it in the mid-1990s from which the Taliban grew all-powerful.

“Indians are worried about their neighbourhood where a giant intrudes brazenly and a country waits to be overrun by medieval men who boast about shooting little girls in their face,” said Times of India.

Tuesday’s Pentagon report, titled “Progress toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan” comes amid a debate in Washington over the size and role of a long-term US military presence in the region.

The US-led military coalition has already handed main responsibility to Afghan forces in combat operations, and President Obama has called for a reduction in US soldiers to about 34,000 over the next six months, down from a 2012 peak of about 100,000 troops.

Complicated US consultations are under way with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on a security agreement pivoting on whether US soldiers will remain after the NATO mandate expires at the end of 2014.

According to US officials, increasingly frustrated by his dealings with Karzai, President Obama is mulling speeding up the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan and to a “zero option” that would leave no US soldiers there after next year. However, the new Pentagon assessment makes it clear that progress in Afghanistan could backslide without continued US financial and military backing.

Afghan forces are taking the lead for almost 90 percent of all military operations, the report states, highlighting that “the conflict in Afghanistan has shifted into a fundamentally new phase.” But US generals say American forces will be critical behind the scenes for three or four years, to help Afghans develop their air force and master logistics and intelligence analysis.

“Beyond then (2014), Afghanistan will still require substantial training, advising and assistance — including financial support — to address ongoing shortcomings,” said the report.

The report, which covers events in Afghanistan through March of this year, describes the heavy toll the US military withdrawal is taking on the Afghan forces. It notes a steep increase in casualties among Afghan soldiers and a drop in casualties among American and NATO forces.