President Obama brought his top Afghanistan commanders to the Oval Office on Tuesday to discuss the way forward in a war he is determined to end by the end of the year, even as he finds himself stymied by an unreliable partner and an uncertain future.
Increasingly vexed by Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s president, Mr. Obama is trying to figure out what form a residual force might take after the bulk of American troops leave by December and what would happen if no Americans stayed behind at all. The debate has rekindled some of the tensions within the administration that divided it in its early days.
With Mr. Karzai reinforcing Washington’s view of him as an erratic ally, skeptics of the administration’s Afghan strategy are increasingly open to withdrawing entirely at the end of 2014. Some in Mr. Obama’s civilian circle suspect that his generals may be trying to manipulate him with an all-or-nothing approach to a residual force. Military officials say they are trying to leave options open and are themselves more ambivalent than ever about staying.
The internal dynamics involved in the review, described by a variety of current and former White House, administration and military officials, are complicating what could be one of the most important decisions Mr. Obama makes this year. The president wants to avoid a repeat of what has happened in Iraq, which is again under siege, and yet he considers extricating the United States from Afghanistan a signature achievement for his legacy.
“The question is: The lessons of Iraq, are they transferable to Afghanistan?” asked Barry Pavel, a former defense policy adviser to Mr. Obama. “Will the same risks emerge? That’s got to be a daunting, overhanging question for the administration.”
While Mr. Obama promised in his State of the Union address last week that “we will complete our mission” in Afghanistan this year and that “America’s longest war will finally be over,” any hopes for a relatively clean exit have grown dimmer by the day.
Dysfunction reigns in Kabul. American aid dollars have disappeared. Terrorism suspects may be released from Afghan prisons. And Mr. Karzai has refused to sign an agreement for a residual force beyond December, and instead has been fruitlessly contacting the Taliban about peace talks that have yet to materialize.
While Washington has long been frustrated by Mr. Karzai, what little patience remains has ebbed in recent weeks as he blamed American forces for terrorist attacks on civilians, threatened to release prisoners deemed dangerous by the international coalition and likened the United States to a “colonial power.”
As James B. Cunningham, the American ambassador to Afghanistan, said in Kabul last week, what makes the United States’ stance toward Mr. Karzai different now “is that he is coming to the end of his presidency, and we have some very important milestones for the international community and for Afghanistan coming up in the next couple months.”
Indeed, Mr. Karzai has missed several deadlines set by the Obama administration to sign a bilateral security agreement permitting a small post-2014 force to train Afghan troops and conduct counterterrorism operations.
Facing a NATO meeting of defense ministers later this month where it had hoped to secure allied commitments beyond 2014, the White House is trying to figure out its plan. But officials in Washington are increasingly resigned to having to wait until after the Afghan presidential election in April to deal with Mr. Karzai’s successor instead.
The exasperation with Mr. Karzai has grown so strong that even Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, one of the most ardent supporters of the American partnership with Afghanistan, warned last week that he might push Congress to cut off all development aid.
“Here’s what he needs to understand: I’ve been going to Afghanistan for years; I believe in the partnership,” Mr. Graham said. “This idea of trying to squeeze more out of us has got to stop. There is no more to be squeezed. I don’t think he understands how easy it would be for a politician in America to sever this relationship.”
Mr. Graham was especially incensed by a plan to release 37 suspected Taliban detainees over the strenuous objections of American military commanders who say they have American and Afghan blood on their hands. Mr. Graham said in an interview that he would have “an easy time” cutting off aid if those prisoners were released. Congress already cut development aid to Afghanistan in half, in what officials called a partial rebuke of Mr. Karzai. Eliminating the remaining $1.12 billion in aid would devastate the Afghan government, which can pay only about 20 percent of its expenses from tax revenue and customs duties.
Mr. Graham’s frustrations are widely shared within the White House. “The partnership is clearly strained,” said an administration official involved in the Afghan review. “The longer that goes on and drags out, the more I think you’ll start to see an erosion of international and U.S. support.”
As part of his review, Mr. Obama met Tuesday with Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the general’s vice chairman, Adm. James A. Winnefeld Jr.; Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., commander of American and allied forces in Afghanistan; Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, the head of the United States Central Command; and Adm. William H. McRaven, head of the United States Special Operations Command.
About 36,500 American troops and 19,000 foreign troops remain in Afghanistan. NATO has planned for a residual force of 8,000 to 12,000, with two-thirds of them American. But American military officials lately have suggested keeping a force of 10,000 Americans, presumably with another 5,000 foreign troops, or leaving Afghanistan altogether.
The idea of all-or-nothing has generated suspicion of military motives. “I think what we’re seeing is the military doing what it always does, which is to squeeze the president rather than finding a way out,” said a former administration official.
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has been pressing officials with skeptical questions of what a residual force would accomplish, and aides to Mr. Obama have suggested alternatives that would result in a lower troop presence than the military would prefer. The administration has explored so many possibilities that one military officer called the White House a “random options generator,” according to Anthony H. Cordesman, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“President Obama’s discussion of Afghanistan in the State of the Union address was political rubbish,” Mr. Cordesman wrote in a report released Tuesday. “It is time for real leadership, real transparency, real honesty and hard decisions.”
At the Pentagon, officials said they had been trying to restructure the force to allow Mr. Obama more time to make a decision. And rather than trying to pressure the president into keeping troops there, military officials said they had increasingly mixed feelings about staying.
“The feeling among the generals is that, ‘Hey, if Karzai doesn’t sign this thing, we are fine with pulling back to zero,’ ” a senior defense official said. “This is not a case of the military insisting that we stay.”
Some of that ambivalence may be for show, as the United States has its own interests in retaining a presence in Afghanistan. But as Mr. Karzai drags out the issue, defense officials said moving to zero troops no longer seems unthinkable, especially with alternatives like drones available.
“People are tired,” another defense official said.
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