NASH F L A S H:
President Obama will announce his new Afghan strategy shortly and it will focus on protecting ten population centers; in effect, surrender large swaths of the nation to insurgents, allowing the Taliban to establish mini-states complete with training camps that could be used by al-Qaida. Conspicuously missing is any change in the original estimate of 20 years required for "success."
The new strategy will protect Kabul, Kandahar, Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz, Herat, Jalalabad and a few other village clusters. The first of any new troops sent to Afghanistan would be assigned to secure Kandahar, the spiritual capital of the Taliban, 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.
A senior military officer said Gen. McChrystal wants the most expansive definition of population centers to include fertile valleys and economic belts as well as major roadways -- in particular the national ring road that is the central link for commerce -- as well as four or five roadways linking Afghanistan eastward to Pakistan and westward to Iran.
