Afghan buildup concludes; now to assess it

— The U.S. troop buildup in Afghanistan is now over, but the post-mortems have just begun.

The U.S. military says it has completed what it called the “recovery,” meaning withdrawal, of the 33,000 troops it had sent to Afghanistan two years ago, more than a week ahead of the Sept. 30 deadline that President Barack Obama.

The milestone, which still leaves 68,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, went uncelebrated in the South Asian country, partly because it was long expected. The U.S. secretary of defense, Leon Panetta, announced it during a trip to New Zealand.

Some pro-government Afghans boasted it showed their own forces were ready to take over, pro-Taliban forces exulted that they were not, and most just worried about what it would really mean for the final two years of the U.S. presence here.

“What did the surge give us?” a senior U.S. official reflected Friday. “We’re going to hit a point where -I won’t say that’s as good as it gets - but now it’s up to them to hold what we gave them. Now really it’s Karzai’s turn.”

No one claimed there was not a great deal yet to be done against an insurgency that its foes describe as tenacious and determined.

“We were not happy about the arrival of the surge troops, and we are not sad that theyleft,” said Mohammad Naim Lalai Amirzai, a member of the Afghan parliament from Kandahar, who maintained that the U.S. presence alienated Afghans and increased support for the Taliban. “As the American surge ends, the Taliban surge will begin.”

Indeed, some of the most worried voices were raised in the heartland of the buildup, in Kandahar and Helmand provinces in the south and southwest where the 2010 influx of 33,000 fresh U.S. Marines and Army soldiers largely subdued the Taliban on their home turf. Post-buildup, the capital cities of those provinces are more peaceful than they have been in many years, and the Taliban operate only clandestinely in the rural areas. But operate, they still do.

Ten southern districts, of the 400 in Afghanistan, are responsible for 45 percent of all attacks, according to statistics provided by officials of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.

Three of the five most active districts over the past 90 days, Panjway and Zhare in Kandahar, and Nad Ali in Helmand, were also early focuses of the buildup. Nad Ali is adjacent to Marja, where Marines began the first buildup-related offensive. In districts once dominated by U.S. troops, then by growing numbers of newly trained Afghan troops alongside them, locals face the prospect that in many cases it will soon just be Afghan forces.

In Maiwand district, onesuch place, where a roadside bomb exploded as recently as Friday morning, an elder named Haji Abdullah Jan said he was worried about what he saw as a lack of commitment from government forces.

The senior U.S. official said he disagreed with the Taliban view that “the Americans have all the watches, and we have all the time.” Many feel the Taliban are just biding their time until the U.S. withdrawal of the bulk of its forces by theend of 2014.

“It’s not like time is on their side,” he said. “They lose their relevance, lose their donors, limit their power at the negotiating table. They’re not just going to hide and wait.” Information for this article was contributed by Habib Zahori, Alissa J. Rubin, Matthew Rosenberg and Thom Shanker of The New York Times; and by Donna Cassata and Lolita C. Baldor of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 4 on 09/22/2012

Upcoming Events