Taliban growth weighs on Obama strategy review
(For more on Afghanistan, click on [ID:nAFPAK])
* Taliban numbers quadruple in past four years
* Obama's security team discusses troop numbers
By Adam Entous
WASHINGTON, Oct 9 (Reuters) - The White House has been presented intelligence estimating that Taliban-led forces battling U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan have grown nearly four-fold in the last four years, officials said on Friday.
The U.S. intelligence assessment, showing the number of active fighters in the insurgency is now roughly 25,000 from 7,000 in 2006, spotlights Taliban gains and the tough choices facing President Barack Obama in trying to reverse the trend.
Obama launched a broad review of his war strategy after the top commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, gave him a grim assessment of the war and an Afghan election, marred by fraud charges, raised U.S. doubts about President Hamid Karzai's legitimacy.
At a strategy session on Friday, Obama and his top advisers were expected to discuss McChrystal's request to deploy 40,000 more troops in Afghanistan next year as part of a revised counterinsurgency plan aimed at reversing Taliban gains.
Officials said Obama remains undecided about the request.
McChrystal's proposed increase -- on top of the 65,000 U.S. troops and 39,000 allied forces currently in Afghanistan -- and the broader strategy review present Obama with what may be the most difficult choice of his young presidency.
As U.S. and NATO casualties have soared, public support for the eight-year-old war has eroded. Sending 40,000 more troops, which sources say McChrystal sees as the minimum number needed, could spark a backlash within Obama's own Democratic Party.
But sending a smaller number, or no troops at all, would open Obama up to criticism from congressional Republicans and, possibly, the military, for taking a more politically palatable middle-road approach.
TALIBAN INCREASINGLY EFFECTIVE
Though dominated by hard-core Taliban loyalists, the 25,000 figure also includes affiliates who are less committed to the fight, officials said. The White House believes some of them can be split off from the Taliban to weaken the insurgency.
A U.S. counterterrorism official said the figure was a "rough" estimate because of the difficulty of assessing the size of an insurgency that mainly operates in small units and uses hit-and-run tactics.
"You're not talking about fixed formations that rely solely on full-time combatants. Numbers ebb and flow. Bands of fighters appear and vanish," the counterterrorism official said.
A defense official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Taliban may be outnumbered but is increasingly effective because of the way they fight.
"By the very nature of insurgency, you do not need a lot of insurgents to inflict a lot of damage, because they are able to choose the time and the place to engage," the official said.
Obama's national security team has sought to make the case that al Qaeda, which is now primarily based in Pakistan, rather than the Taliban, which operates on both sides of the border, is the main threat facing the United States and, therefore, should be the main focus of the war effort.
Before it was toppled by U.S.-led forces after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Taliban offered al Qaeda safe haven in Afghanistan. White House officials have sought to play down the threat of al Qaeda returning to the country, even if the Taliban regained control of large swaths of territory.
While Taliban fighters aligned with al Qaeda would remain U.S. targets, administration officials have suggested that more moderate elements could have a future political role in Afghanistan if they broke away from hard-core leaders. (Additional reporting by Steve Holland and Caren Bohan, Editing by Eric Beech)
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