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A 'surge' for Afghanistan?

A Marine proposal under discussion this week would redeploy troops from Iraq.

from the November 29, 2007 edition

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Less secure in Afghanistan

Two years ago, the Pentagon was set to proclaim military success in Afghanistan and tie it up with a bow. But this year the security mission in Afghanistan has suffered from the US focus on Iraq and a heavy reliance on an international force.

NATO's command in Afghanistan, the International Security Assistance Force, has had some victories on the ground there, working with the nascent Afghan Army and police force. But the US considers some allied nations to be "casualty averse," not expecting to be engaged in heavy combat operations back when they signed up for what they considered a training-and-peacekeeping mission. Suicide attacks in Afghanistan are on the rise, and US casualties, though relatively few compared with those in Iraq, have increased as well, according to American military officials on the ground there.

Conway, for one, is convinced that Afghanistan's security needs inevitably will require more American forces – and that the Corps, with its "expeditionary" focus, is well suited to the mission. Already, he has sent two Marine battalions to mountain warfare training in California to prepare for the missions in Afghanistan should the request come.

The Corps is already beginning to plan the drawdown of its forces in Anbar in Iraq, where the bulk of Marine forces are deployed.

So far, the calm in Anbar, which began before the surge of US forces this spring, has continued, and Marine officials believe the strategy there has worked. It seems unlikely that a large contingent of marines would stay in Anbar much longer if that peace continues. Unless marines are sent elsewhere in Iraq, that would leave Conway an opening to redeploy them to Afghanistan.

Such a deployment would also ease the Corps' deployment tempo, a goal Gates established for both the Army and Marine Corps upon taking office in January.

The decision about which forces, if any, to send to Afghanistan has a political subtext. If the White House were to send more US forces into a country most Americans thought was already secure, Democrats would be sure to exploit the security retrogression during an election year.

Such a decision, too, would have reverberations within the Pentagon, since the US force that would return to Afghanistan would carry with it a political prize. While much of the American public wants US forces out of Iraq, many see Afghanistan as the more righteous mission, because the origins of the 9/11 attacks can be traced there.

"Marines may be jockeying for the longer-term and maybe more popular role," says Anthony Cordesman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington.

If more American forces are needed in Afghanistan, then the Pentagon must look at the "entire pool" of forces before it decides that what is best for the Marine Corps is also best for its policy in Afghanistan, says Mr. Cordesman.

Institutional memory lost?

Michael O'Hanlon, a senior analyst at the Brookings Institution, another think tank in Washington, is not necessarily opposed to Conway's idea, but he worries that taking marines out of Anbar, where they have been effective, could rob the US of vital knowledge about the province.

"The Marines know more about that province than the Army does," he says.

Marines are already being asked to help with the fight in Afghanistan. Last month, Corps officials announced that AV-8B Harrier jump jets – attached to the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit deployed aboard an amphibious assault ship – flew more than a dozen sorties over Afghanistan. The jets conducted reconnaissance, escorted ground convoys, and dropped precision-guided munitions on enemy targets, according to Corps officials.

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