As I said to you in my opening remarks, we've been delighted with the success we've had in the south. The Afghan Taliban has been unable to take any of the objectives he tried to do, and has taken actually significant casualties in trying to take those. So we're fairly confident where we are in the south, and we think it's reasonable to expect the Afghan security force to take over the south during the course of next year.
Now, we will then switch our focus to the east, and we will certainly be fighting in the east for some time to come. It's pretty tricky terrain over there. We come up against the Haqqani Network in the east, who are a reasonably ordinary bunch of criminals who employ terrorist tactics. But we are taking them on, and we're certainly taking on their leadership.
But the new focus on the east won't be able to count on more American troops:
Look, we'll have a look at that, Richard. I think the better way to put it, you'd be aware that we have a drawdown upon us, we have the surge recovery. And it may simply be that we draw the east down last, so that will effectively mean that we have the extra forces in the east. But I don't think we'll be able to free up appreciable troops to move to the east. We may simply draw down the south, and that may be part of our surge recovery. ...
In terms of the balance of troops that we have remaining in the east, and we project forward that we will have in the east, we're fairly comfortable with the numbers that we have. Look, we would always like more, but that's what military always asks for, and we always expect to be disappointed. So we'll work with what we've got.
From where I'm sitting as the chief planner, I work with east very closely, Dan Allyn out there in command of the magnificent 1st Cavalry Division, and we're working very, very closely. And from where we are with the operational lay-down that we have, the operational sequencing that we have, we're fairly comfortable. What we are looking at though is moving more of the Afghan security force to the border, whether it be temporary deployment of some of their mobile troops, their National Civil Order Police or their commandos or, indeed, potentially having a rotation system of their kandaks, of their battalions that are in the north and west to move to the border. We're also working very closely with the Afghan Border Police to make sure that they have a closer relationship with the Afghan National Army. So we're putting in a lot of thought to this. We've got some, I think, pretty robust plans. Ultimately, by 2014 it is the Afghans who have to be able to show that with our support, they can secure their border and the approaches to the key cities.
I think we can do it. As I've written in the past, I think we could have won in the south without the last surge. But the surge no doubt sped up our progress and reduced risks. My only concern about the surge recovery is the rapid pace of withdrawal and whether that will be seen by allies and enemies alike as a retreat and lack of commitment. I don't want the surge to be more harmful than just staying constant at 68,000 during the past couple years and into the next couple years.
Just don't panic. We're doing fine and unless we define success as creating a unitary Afghan nation where none has ever existed, we can prevent the territory of Afghanistan from being a launching pad for future attacks and actually give Afghans hope for a better future after several decades of civil war and Islamist tragedy.
UPDATE: It looks like we will shift some troops to the east:
"My sense is that there will be additional combat forces sent into the east, some number of battalions," U.S. Marine Gen. John Allen said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal[.]
That makes more sense than the east becoming the main effort with no additional US resources. I had assumed that when the east became the main effort that more of our troops would go there even if we had to thin out more than we'd like in the south and southwest, relying more on Afghans and allies to hold our gains. Krause made it seem as if no more line units would go east, leading me to assume only more Afghans and more US support units backing the existing forces would be used. Now I can return to my original assumption.
