Planning is underway for the initial withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, and the details are being closely guarded by the officer overseeing the process, Army Gen. David Petraeus.
“The ground-truth is there’s one action officer on this effort,” Petraeus, commander of the International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces Afghanistan, told Military Times during an exclusive interview Friday at his office inside NATO’s headquarters here. “You’re looking at him.”
Petraeus expects his options will be delivered to the White House before the end of June, around the time he is likely to testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee on his nomination to become the CIA’s next director. He dismissed recent media reports suggesting the initial drawdown would include between 5,000 and 10,000 troops, saying nobody could have that information because he has not shared it with anyone.
Neither Petraeus’ commander’s initiatives group nor his executive staff has participated in the development of options for the president, the general said. The effort has taken place in his office, behind his own desk.
“There may be one or two folks on the staff who think they know something about it; they might be deceiving themselves because there are misdirection plays out there,” Petraeus said. “I want to assure everybody above me that this is not going to leak, that there will be no kinds of atmospherics as a result of leaks.”
Before they’re presented to President Obama, Petraeus’ plans will be shared only with Marine Gen. James Mattis, commander of U.S. Central Command; Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Gates and Mullen, he said, will most likely be the ones who take it to the Oval Office.
Petraeus is likely hoping to avoid a repeat of late 2009, when his recommendation for a troop surge in Afghanistan — a proposal meant only for the president — was leaked to the media, fueling pre-decisional speculation for weeks. Upon announcing the surge of 30,000 U.S. troops, Obama made it clear those forces would begin to leave in July 2011.
“What a commander in my position should do is to provide the chain of command and president with options to implement the policy … at a pace determined by conditions on the ground,” said Petraeus, who then was in charge of CENTCOM.
The recommendations for the president, Petraeus said, are informed by visits to ground commanders across Afghanistan, including the volatile southern provinces where Marines and soldiers continue to battle Taliban fighters in what used to be their exclusive stronghold.
Important considerations also include the purview of Mattis, whose context is the entire theater, not just Afghanistan, and by Gates and Mullen, who must consider broader global context. At the top is Obama, who faces difficult fiscal challenges and an atmosphere in Congress where there is waning support for the war.
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