Afstan: Obamamiddlesplittingstrategy

Earlier,

...Round and round the mulberry bush

and now the latest:

U.S. to Protect Populous Afghan Areas, Officials Say

President Obama’s advisers are focusing on a strategy for Afghanistan aimed at protecting about 10 top population centers, administration officials said Tuesday, describing an approach that would stop short of an all-out assault on the Taliban while still seeking to nurture long-term stability.

Mr. Obama has yet to make a decision and has other options available to him, but as officials described it, the debate is no longer over whether to send more troops, but how many more will be needed. The question of how much of the country should fall under the direct protection of American and NATO forces will be central to deciding how many troops will be sent.

At the moment, the administration is looking at protecting Kabul, Kandahar, Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz, Herat, Jalalabad and a few other village clusters, officials said. The first of any new troops sent to Afghanistan would be assigned to Kandahar [emphasis added], the Taliban’s spiritual capital, seen as a center of gravity in pushing back insurgent advances.

But military planners are also pressing for enough troops to safeguard major agricultural areas, like the hotly contested Helmand River valley, as well as regional highways essential to the economy — tasks that would require significantly more reinforcements beyond the 21,000 deployed by Mr. Obama this year.

One administration official said Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, had briefed Mr. Obama’s advisers on how he would deploy any new troops under the approach being considered by the White House. The first two additional combat brigades would go south, including one to Kandahar [emphasis added], while a third would be sent to eastern Afghanistan and a fourth would be used flexibly across the nation, said the official, who like others insisted on anonymity to describe internal deliberations...

Those four brigades, with support elements, might total around 20,000 personnel; the Dutch ISAF Regional Command South commander has already said at least two more brigades are needed there. Where new US troops for Kandahar might go (from an earlier post, three battalions are effectively a brigade):

...I have it from someone well-informed that the US military are seriously considering three more battalions for Kandahar/Zabul to operate in peripheral/Pak border areas that remain under-resourced...

But note:

...
General McChrystal has sought at least 40,000 more troops for a counterinsurgency strategy to protect Afghan civilians so they will support the central government...

As for "population centers" and the number of additional forces needed, it all depends on what one decides about how much outside them it is essential to protect--from a week ago:

While Washington deliberates...Gen McChyrstal is implementing his COIN strategy

...
Even as leaders in Washington struggle with the next steps in Afghanistan, troops there are moving to better protect the Afghan people, NATO and Pentagon officials said today.

NATO’s International Security Assistance Force is gradually re-positioning its forces as part of the counterinsurgency strategy of protecting the population...

NATO forces will be re-positioned in other parts of Afghanistan in the coming weeks [emphasis added]. “We are re-positioning forces all across Afghanistan to better protect the Afghan people,” Shanks [Army Col. Wayne Shanks, a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul] said. “You won't see wholesale re-distribution, but movement from remote locations to ones which can prevent insurgent influence on the larger population centers [emphasis newly added].”..