McChrystal: Corruption may defeat war on terror

Rampant government corruption might derail the fight against the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan even if up to 80,000 more US troops go to the war zone, the top military commander says.

The conclusion by General Stanley McChrystal is part of a still-secret document that requests more troops even as he warns that they may not ultimately prevent terrorists from turning Afghanistan back into a haven.

According to US officials briefed on his recommendations, Gen. McChrystal has outlined three options for additional troops – from as many as 80,000 to as few as 10,000 to 15,000, according to officials at the Pentagon and White House.

Each option carries a high risk of failing, according to US officials, although they said Gen. McChrystal concluded that fewer troops would bring the highest risks.

Gen. McChrystal favours a compromise of 40,000 additional troops, said the officials, who spoke anonymously.

US president Barack Obama said yesterday he would decide on a war strategy and the troops needed to carry it out in “the coming weeks”.

Although he said weighing military and security concerns were crucial to his decision, “another element is making sure we’re doing a good job in building capacity on the civilian side”.

“Our principal goal remains: root out al Qaida and its extremist allies that can launch attacks against the United States or its allies,” the president said.

There are 67,000 American troops in Afghanistan and 1,000 more will be heading there by the end of December. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is expected to announce today the deployment of around 500 additional British troops to Afghanistan.

Allegations of widespread fraud in Afghanistan’s August 20 presidential election threaten to scuttle the international strategy to combat the burgeoning Taliban uprising.

The elections were marred by claims of ballot box stuffing and voter coercion, and officials are now recounting a sample of 10% of ballot boxes from 3,063 polling stations with suspect results.

A decision whether to hold a run-off election between Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai and his chief challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, a former Afghan foreign minister, could come as early as Saturday.

Yesterday one US military official said discussions within the Obama administration were continuing about whether it was even possible to “surge” enough troops to overcome the corruption and how crucial a legitimate government in Afghanistan was to the overall war strategy.

Sending in additional troops would help secure Afghanistan, but only in the short term, said Jay Parker, a Georgetown University foreign service professor and retired US Army colonel. Troops alone could not end the corruption, the root of the problem, he said.

Now in its ninth year, the war in Afghanistan has been increasingly deadly for Nato forces and faces waning public support in the US and allied nations.

Mr Obama has vowed to disrupt al-Qaida, the terrorist group behind the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US, whose leaders are believed to be hiding in Pakistan’s mountainous border region with Afghanistan.

Some of Mr Obama’s top advisers, chiefly vice president Joe Biden, want to target al-Qaida with missile-carrying unmanned spy planes and US special forces strikes in Pakistan.

But military officials and some diplomats argue that US troops must continue to curb the extremist Taliban’s influence in Afghanistan to prevent future alliances with al-Qaida.