WASHINGTON – The Pentagon yesterday announced plans to cut up to 47,000 troops starting in 2015 as part of a sweeping belt-tightening effort.
“Under this plan, the US army’s permanent ... strength would decline by 27,000 troops, while the marine corps would decline by somewhere between 15-20,000 depending on the outcome of their force structure review,” United States defense secretary Robert Gates said.
Meanwhile, the US will temporarily send 1,400 more marines to Afghanistan in an effort to hold on to fragile security gains, but overall US troop levels will not surpass previously announced limits, the Pentagon said.
The short-term deployments were ordered by Mr Gates, and come months before President Barack Obama plans to start withdrawing US forces in July from the unpopular war against the Taliban.
“This will allow us to keep our momentum,” said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell. The troops would mainly be deployed in southern Afghanistan, he said, where fighting is the fiercest.
Britain’s top military officer, Gen David Richards, told reporters in Washington that Britain had no similar plan to boost force levels in Afghanistan but indicated that could change depending on the need of ground commanders.
“Troop levels are not set in concrete. They never have been,” Richards, Britain’s chief of defence staff, told a briefing at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington. “If there’s a good case for sending a few more people ... we’ll remain open-minded about it,” Gen Richards added.
Violence is at its worst in Afghanistan with record casualties on all sides of the conflict and with the insurgency spreading from traditional strongholds in the south and east into once-peaceful areas in the north and west.
A review by President Obama last month found US and Nato forces were making headway against the Taliban and al-Qaeda, but serious challenges remained.
It said that the Taliban’s momentum had been arrested in much of Afghanistan and had even been reversed in some areas. – (Reuters)