US PRESIDENT Barack Obama will announce details of the beginning of a troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in a televised address this evening.
Mr Obama had promised to begin reducing troop numbers in July 2011 when he announced a surge of 33,000 soldiers in December 2009. Two factors – the killing of Osama bin Laden last month, and American war weariness – have increased pressure on Mr Obama to substantially reduce the 97,000 troops deployed in Afghanistan.
The president said recently the number of troops returning to the US next month would be “significant”. He can use bin Laden’s death and petitions within the past week by a bipartisan group of senators and the US conference of mayors to justify reductions.
However, he is also under pressure from military commanders to move cautiously. In the past, Mr Obama has chosen the middle ground between conflicting assessments. Outgoing defence secretary Robert Gates has made clear his preference for a gradual withdrawal, a view shared by officers. They do not object to pulling out logisticians and engineers who have completed the building of barracks and runways, but oppose removing combat personnel.
Mr Obama has tripled the number of US soldiers in Afghanistan since taking office. He intends to withdraw all 33,000 surge troops by the end of 2012. That would still leave 64,000 Americans in Afghanistan until Nato turns command over to the Afghan security forces in 2014.
The biggest question about tonight’s speech is what number Mr Obama will reveal, if he announces a number at all.
Gen David Petraeus, the overall commander in Afghanistan, who will soon become head of the CIA, briefed Mr Obama at the White House on June 16th.
According to the New York Times, the Pentagon wants an initial withdrawal of only 5,000 troops. The president’s White House advisers, including his top adviser on Afghanistan, Lieut Gen Douglas Lute, would prefer that 15,000 troops leave this year, and another 15,000 next year.
Vice-President Joe Biden is reportedly pressing for the departure of 30,000 troops within a year, while the state department proposes following the Iraq model which would leave the pace of the reduction to field commanders.
The US spent $120 billion (€83 billion) on the Afghan war last year. Yesterday, the US mayors’ conference passed a resolution asking Congress “to bring these war dollars home”.
Last week, 25 Democrat and two Republican senators signed a letter urging Mr Obama to make a “sizeable and sustained” reduction of US troops in Afghanistan.