WASHINGTON?American troops will stay indefinitely in Afghanistan as local power struggles and remaining al Qaeda make it impossible to set a withdrawal deadline, defense officials say.
The U.S. troops will help train an Afghan army in addition to searching for al Qaeda fighters, and may also intervene to keep violent warlords apart.
Many analysts worry that the day American and other Western soldiers leave would be the day Afghanistan again started to disintegrate.
Troubled by threats preventing the exiled king’s return and other signs of chaos, some urge the United States to consider an even more robust role?such as sending U.S. peacekeepers or supporting the expansion of a 4,500-member international security force beyond Kabul.
“Never will so much have been at stake on a modest request for 10,000 to 20,000 people,” said the United Nations human rights representative for Afghanistan, Kamal Hossain. He asked Wednesday for international peacekeepers across the country, to fill a security “vacuum.”
The Bush administration has rejected the idea of sending American peacekeepers and opposes the security force expansion. Yet Vice President Dick Cheney said over the weekend the United States will not “walk away” from Afghanistan once the al Qaeda threat is overcome.
U.S. officials will meet next week in Geneva with other countries to try to raise money for an Afghan army, on which the Bush administration pins its hopes for a stable Afghanistan.
But analysts point to recent incidents?including the threats against the king?as a sign the country is far from stable.
President Bush’s special envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, suggested Wednesday that American troops might be used to stop disputes among rival warlords, stepping in to make up for the lack of peacekeepers outside Kabul.
“In some places, the U.S. capabilities, assets have not been given this mission of discouraging?the potential conflict among the warlords,” Khalilzad said. “This could be added.”
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said this week his hope is that the Afghan army can eventually become strong enough to overcome regional rivalries and guarantee stability for Afghans so that U.S. troops can leave.
Even as some U.S. troops train the army, the main U.S. role will continue to be attacking al Qaeda who have now melted into mountains and villages and across borders, Rumsfeld said.
Some Afghans say the United States has actually worsened local rivalries by paying some Afghan warlords to help in the search for al Qaeda?essentially working to create a national army on one hand while supporting local warlords on the other.
Either way, expectations are unrealistically high for the national army, now under the control of one small Tajik faction whom other ethnic groups, including the dominant Pashtuns, might not accept, said Anatol Lieven of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Parts of Afghanistan are relatively secure, said Lieven. But virtually none are under the control of interim leader Hamid Karzai’s central government.
“What we need are modest, realistic aims about Afghanistan’s future,” Lieven said. “But above all, we need to be prepared to stay for a long time.”
Italy put off the exiled king’s return after reports about plans to assassinate him, an Italian official said. Troops in the Afghan Interior Ministry who would have protected the king came from the Tajik faction considered political rivals to the king and Karzai.