U.S. to Extend Troop Increase in Afghanistan, Take Fight to Enemy Forces Before Their Spring Offensive

President Bush vowed yesterday to make a sustained new military and political effort to beat back resurgent Taliban forces as he turned his attention back to Afghanistan and a conflict that has been overshadowed for the past couple of years by the larger war in Iraq.

Bush announced that he will extend a temporary increase of 3,200 U.S. troops in Afghanistan "for the foreseeable future" and urged Congress to give him $11.8 billion more to accelerate training, reconstruction and counter-narcotics programs. He also insisted that NATO allies should drop restrictions on their forces in Afghanistan and join the fight against Islamic extremists.

"America and our allies are going to stand with these folks," the president said in an address to the American Enterprise Institute. "That's the message I want to deliver to the Afghanistan people today. Free debates are important. But our commitment is strong. We will train you, we will help you, and we will stand with you as you defend your new democracy."

The speech was the first Bush has devoted to Afghanistan during his second term, reflecting the shifting priorities in Washington as the Iraq war has turned increasingly violent and consumed more of the president's attention. But though Iraq dominated the debate, remnants of the ousted Taliban government have regrouped and launched a potent new challenge. Attacks on U.S., Afghan and other coalition forces nearly tripled last year, and the Taliban by some estimates controls four times as much territory as in 2005.

"The focus on Iraq has definitely diminished not just the amount of resources that can be applied . . . but it's also a question of the time and attention that top policymakers can spend on the problem," said James Dobbins, a former special envoy to Afghanistan who now works as a national security analyst at the Rand Corp. "Iraq has tended to suck the air out of the system for the last couple of years." 

White House aides said Bush has devoted a lot of time to Afghanistan but has come to understand that more needs to be done. The administration started a review of Afghanistan policy last summer and concluded in December that more troops, money and diplomacy were necessary. Elements of the plan have been reported, but yesterday was the first time Bush laid them all out.

A 3,200-member brigade from the Army's 10th Mountain Division that was scheduled to come home in February will instead stay for another four months. And the Pentagon said this week that the 173rd Airborne Brigade, originally slated to head to Iraq, will then replace it, increasing U.S. troops in Afghanistan to 27,000. In his speech, Bush expressed a commitment to make that increase indefinite.

As part of the emergency war spending package he sent to Congress this month, the president asked for $8.6 billion for training Afghan security forces, $1.4 billion for reconstruction and $1.8 billion for drug-fighting and other activities. Bush said yesterday that those funds would help increase the size of the Afghan national police from 61,000 to 82,000 officers and the army from 32,000 to 70,000 troops by the end of 2008. He also promised to rebuild an additional 1,000 miles of roads this year.

The goal, he said, will be to take the fight to the Taliban rather than wait for its expected spring offensive. "The snow is going to melt in the Hindu Kush mountains, and when it does, we can expect fierce fighting to continue," Bush said. "The Taliban and al-Qaeda are preparing to launch new attacks. Our strategy is not to be on the defense but to go on the offense. This spring, there is going to be a new offensive in Afghanistan and it's going to be a NATO offensive."

But major NATO allies have so far resisted the sort of robust engagement that Bush wants. With the exception of some French special forces that are leaving Afghanistan, troops from France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Turkey are not in the fight because of political limits on where and how they may operate. "Allies must lift restrictions on the forces they do provide so NATO commanders have the flexibility they need to defeat the enemy where the enemy may make a stand," Bush said.

The president acknowledged the escalating violence in Afghanistan, but critics said that he underestimated the depth of the problem. "We're talking about much more serious problems than the president discussed today," said Anthony H. Cordesman, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. In testimony to the House Foreign Relations Committee earlier in the day, Cordesman said any victory in Afghanistan will take five to 10 more years.

Although Bush vowed to do more to curb poppy production in Afghanistan and help Pakistan disrupt Taliban havens, some critics said those are not enough. "If we are to succeed in Afghanistan, we must create effective deterrence on the narcotics threat, where none now exists, in order to deny our enemies the profits from this deadly trade," said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Fla.), the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Relations Committee.

In December, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy said that opium production in Afghanistan reached a record high in 2006, 26 percent more than in 2005. The United Nations and the World Bank reported in November that the Afghan police whom Bush wants to expand are deeply involved in the drug trade.

B. Wood, Bush's nominee to be ambassador to Afghanistan, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that police training is "not easy" but would be "one of my highest priorities."

Wood acknowledged that plans for a meeting of Afghan and Pakistani tribal and political leaders have yet to go anywhere. The relationship between the two nations is "complicated," he said. "Each is helping the other. Each often wonders if the other could be doing more."

Staff writer Josh White contributed to this report.