Al-Qaida 'weakened' by US policy, says report

President Barack Obama's expansion of the war in Afghanistan has weakened al-Qaida and the Taliban, a US strategy review says.

US troops will begin to leave Afghanistan in July, according to the report, the same timeline that Obama promised one year ago.

But the scope and pace of that withdrawal remain unclear, and both are expected to be modest.

The United States and its Nato allies hope to turn control of the conflict to Afghan forces by the end of 2014, a timeline endorsed in the new review. Even then, Obama sees an enduring US role in Afghanistan.

The White House released a five-page summary of the classified evaluation of the war strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan that Obama unveiled to much fanfare in December 2009.

Obama will speak about the review findings at the White House later today.

It says the senior leadership of al-Qaida in Pakistan is at it weakest since the September 11, 2001, attacks - and that the Taliban has seen much of its power halted and reversed over the last 12 months.

Obama, inheriting a war he considered off course but vital to American security, ordered a heightened US presence and a renewed commitment to supporting Afghanistan's development. There are now roughly 100,000 troops in Afghanistan.

The report suggests that the gains against the Taliban "remain fragile and reversible".

Yet more emphasis is given to descriptions of progress.

"The surge in coalition military and civilian resources, along with an expanded special operations forces targeting campaign and expanded local security measures at the village level, has reduced Taliban influence," the summary says.

That is a reference mainly to the 30,000 additional forces that Obama ordered a year ago.

The review says progress is most clear in the way Afghan and coalition forces are "clearing the Taliban heartland" in Kandahar and Helmand provinces, and in the boosted size and capability of Afghanistan's security forces.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in Kandahar today that he considers the fight in Afghanistan's South to be a harbinger of how the wider war will go.

"We've got the right people in you," Mullen told US troops. "We've got the right strategy."

Afghan army and police are scheduled to grow to more than 300,000 troops over the next two years. They face an estimated 25,000-30,000 Taliban guerrillas and other rebels.

There were no direct references to the corruption that plagues Afghanistan's government or the fractured relationship that Obama's administration shares with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said today his country has "more realistic expectations" for Afghanistan - no longer expecting good governance, but the more achievable goal of "good-enough governance."

On al-Qaida, the White House review speaks of major progress in dismantling the Pakistan-based leadership of the terror network.

"Most important, al-Qaida's senior leadership in Pakistan is weaker and under more sustained pressure than at any other point since it fled Afghanistan in 2001," the report finds. It warns that the US is still the principal target for al Qaida, and that "Pakistan and Afghanistan continue to be the operational base for the group that attacked us on 9/11."

The United States has lasting trouble in ridding Pakistan of its havens for terrorists.

The report says Pakistan must provide more help in solving the problem, particularly in the dangerous border zone with Afghanistan.

The report also calls for sustained US help in developing Afghanistan and Pakistan for its people, not just waging a military campaign.

This year has been the deadliest in the war for US forces. At least 480 American troops have been killed in 2010, and more than 2,100 have died since the conflict began in the weeks after the September 11 attacks in 2001.