President Obama is resisting pressure from the Nato commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, for a rapid troop increase and shift away from judging success in the war by the numbers of Taliban killed, following the leak of a confidential 66-page report from McChrystal to the Pentagon.
The report says "success demands a comprehensive counter-insurgency campaign" that shifts the emphasis to protecting and winning support from ordinary Afghans so as not to be seen as an occupying army. But the general warns that Nato forces must be prepared for an escalating rate of casualties as they take greater risks to win over civilians.
In a grim assessment of the situation in the report, leaked to the Washington Post, the general says that task is being made more difficult by rampant Afghan government corruption and a hesitation by civilians to ally themselves with the authorities for fear that the Taliban might ultimately win. McChrystal does not propose a specific number of additional troops nor say whether he expects them principally to come from the US or other Nato countries. But he pressures the administration for a swift commitment by warning that if the Taliban is not driven back by coalition forces within a year then the war will be unwinnable.
The leak came as a British soldier from 2nd Battalion The Mercian Regiment was killed yesterday in an explosion during a patrol in Helmand province, bringing the number of British military personnel killed in Afghanistan to 217. Italy also held a state funeral for six soldiers killed last week in a bomb attack in Kabul, with relatives, officials and thousands of Italians saluting their flag-draped coffins. The government called a national day of mourning, with flags at half-mast and a minute's silence at public offices.
"Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) – while Afghan security capacity matures – risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible," McChrystal wrote in his report. "Failure to provide adequate resources also risks a longer conflict, greater casualties, higher overall costs and ultimately, a critical loss of political support. Any of these risks, in turn, are likely to result in mission failure."
Echoing divisions in Washington between the politicians and the military, British commanders believe between 1,000 and 2,000 more UK troops should be deployed in southern Afghanistan, and want a government decision on reinforcements soon, according to military sources. They argue that more troops now will help the counterinsurgency operation by providing more enduring security for Afghans. There are about 9,000 British troops in Helmand province. However, military chiefs say this number is still insufficient if they are to hold ground captured from the Taliban, and that more troops are needed to consolidate their position in populated areas recently taken from the enemy. Obama has already approved an additional 21,000 US troops this year, raising the total to 68,000 alongside 38,000 other Nato soldiers. But with public and political support for the war eroding in the US, and increasingly drawn parallels with America's long war in Vietnam likely to be strengthened by McChrystal's talk of boosting the numbers of troops and winning hearts and minds, Obama has said that he is in no hurry to increase the size of the coalition force.
White House officials say the president stands by the comments he made at the weekend when he told talk shows that he is hesitant to escalate the numbers of troops in Afghanistan but agrees that a new strategy is required to combat the Taliban and al-Qaida.
"Until I'm satisfied that we've got the right strategy, I'm not going to be sending some young man or woman over there beyond what we already have," he said.
The president said that if a new counter-insurgency strategy can be shown to be effective "then we'll move forward.
"But, if it doesn't, then I'm not interested in just being in Afghanistan for the sake of being in Afghanistan or saving face or sending a message that America is here for the duration," he said.
Political support for the war has weakened amid a creeping concern that the war may be unwinnable as US casualties rise sharply. A recent Washington Post poll showed that 51% of Americans thought the war "not worth fighting".
The chairman of the Senate's armed services committee, Carl Levin, has said that the administration should train more Afghan soldiers before sending additional US troops. McChrystal proposes tripling the size of the Afghan army to 240,000 troops.
The doubts have been reinforced by evident fraud in President Hamid Karzai's re-election and will be strengthened further by warnings from McChrystal that government corruption is as much a threat to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) fight as the insurgency.
"The weakness of state institutions, widespread corruption and abuse of power by various officials, and ISAF's own errors, have given Afghans little reason to support their government," he writes.
McChrystal warns of the need to win the hearts and minds of Afghan civilians by protecting them better rather than focusing on controlling territory and counting the number of Taliban dead.