Afghanistan withdrawal: Obama warned over ‘snatching defeat from jaws of victory’

US military fears cutting troop numbers in Afghanistan too quickly could jeopardise entire mission Unless Barack Obama has a sudden change of heart, his address to the nation will privately disappoint many of the senior commanders in Isaf – the International Security and Assistance Force – and provide them with immediate logistical problems. The military had been expecting an initial withdrawal of between 3,000 and 5,000 troops. That can be achieved relatively easily by reducing the number of back-up staff in Afghanistan. The ratio of fighters to support personnel is out of kilter at the moment, so this would help to rationalise the “teeth to tail” numbers. A further 5,000 soldiers out by the end of the year is more of a problem. In military circles this target is described as “challenging”. That means it is going to be a real headache, potentially disrupting plans for this summer’s fighting season, and the strategy for the autumn. Speaking ahead of the speech, Professor Michael Clarke, director of the Royal United Services Institute thinktank, warned the US needed to keep “as many combat units intact for as long as possible” or risk “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory”. But the likelihood now is that the US will have to start withdrawing one of its brigades in the autumn, to meet the first end of year deadline, and then synchronise the withdrawal of others through 2012 to get all 33,000 surge troops out of Afghanistan within the White House timetable. There will not be a second fighting season at full strength, which is what commanders wanted. All talk of a “conditions-based withdrawal”, the phrase used by Downing Street and the White House to provide reassurance to the generals, appears to have been abandoned. The conditions driving this process now are political ones. In early 2013, the US will still have more

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