WASHINGTON - U.S. and allied combat troops will withhold efforts to destroy Afghanistan's narcotics industry, which finances the Taliban insurgency, unless Afghan government forces take the lead, a senior military officer said yesterday.
But with the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai widely believed to be riven with corruption and its army and police units unable to conduct complex operations, the drug industry has flourished virtually untouched, military officers said.
Senior civilian and military officials have acknowledged that the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, launched by President George W. Bush weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, cannot be won unless the narcotics trade's stranglehold on Afghanistan is broken and insurgent sanctuaries in neighboring Pakistan are eliminated.
"These things simply have not happened," Gen. James T. Conway, commandant of the Marine Corps, told reporters yesterday. "I'd like to see, if and when we do contribute additional troops, that there is a direct means to get after these things."
Until then, he said, "we have all the elements of a long-term insurgency."
For months, senior officials, including Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have worked with Pakistan to find ways to reduce the radical Islamist militias' sanctuaries in that country's northwest region.
Yesterday, as part of that effort, several missiles apparently fired from U.S. drone aircraft struck two targets in North and South Waziristan. The Associated Press, quoting unidentified Pakistani intelligence officials, said five militants were among the 18 people killed.
The two strikes were the first taken under the Obama administration and seemed to signal that the practice of occasional attacks on militants in Pakistan, begun last August, will continue.
The Obama White House, in concert with the State Department and the Pentagon, is crafting a new strategy for dealing with Afghanistan and Pakistan, a process that is not complete, officials said.
Key parts of the new strategy will deal with narcotics and the sanctuaries problem.
President Barack Obama is tentatively scheduled to meet next week with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to review strategy options, including schedules to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq over the next 16 to 18 months and plans to add troops in Afghanistan.
