President Obama’s choice to be the next Army Chief of Staff suggested Tuesday that the administration is wavering from its commitment to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan by the end of next year.
Gen. Mark Milley told Senate Armed Services Committee chair John McCain (R-Ariz.) at his confirmation hearing that the current timetable is subject to constant scrutiny by top generals leading the war effort.
“I’ve been talking with John Campbell, Gen. Campbell, the commander of the force in Afghanistan,” Milley said. “It’s my understanding that the plan is continually under review and that we will execute based on conditions on the ground.”
McCain, however, did not appear convinced that President Obama would sign off on any such strategy.
“But that is your view,” the hawkish senator told Milley, in response. The general had said, after a previous question from McCain, that he personally favored a “condition-based” withdrawal.
In March, President Obama announced that he would freeze plans to this year scale down the US contingency in Afghanistan, but said he remained determined to shutter US bases and downsize American forces to a Kabul-based initiative by the end of next year.
“Afghanistan is still a dangerous place,” he said after a meeting with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. “The way it’s going to become less dangerous is by Afghan security forces being capable of keeping law and order and security in the country, and that is not going to happen if foreign forces are continually relied upon.”
Beyond Campbell and Milley, other top leaders are publicly skeptical of this approach. President Obama’s choice to be next Joint Chief of Staffs chair, Gen. Joseph Dunford, last week bashed the current withdrawal timetable during his confirmation hearing.
“My experience has been that sometimes the assumptions you make don’t maintain, particularly with regard to time, and that’s certainly the case in Afghanistan,” he told McCain, calling for an end to the US mission “based on the conditions on the ground.”
On Monday, Military.com reported that Gen. Campbell and his soon-to-be predecessor, current joint chiefs chair Gen. Martin Dempsey, met with Pres. Ghani in Kabul last weekend “to discuss the [Islamic State (ISIL)] threat as well as the future manning levels of coalition forces in Afghanistan.”
“I think we’re all having an important discussion on how to address the trans-regional nature of what is clearly a persistent threat (from [ISIL]) that has to be addressed at a sustainable level of effort over a period of time,” Dempsey said.
Campbell claimed that ISIL in Afghanistan has evolved from a non-factor to one that is “probably operationally emergent” and commented that the President’s withdrawal timetable was established before this development.
During the meeting, Ghani offered establishing Afghanistan as a regional counter-ISIL base. Dempsey responded by calling Ghani’s position a “major advantage” and said his offer represented “an opportunity here.”
He had also noted that US military leaders in Afghanistan and Iraq had told him that no troop surge was necessary.
“I asked the senior leaders point blank: ‘Are we at the point where, in order to make sure this mission succeeds, that we need to be here in greater numbers and go farther forward?’” he said. “The answer was no.”
The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction repeatedly warned earlier this year that US assistance is creating for Kabul a strong dependency on Washington that will last “for years to come.”
