Washington: Violence in Afghanistan may climb in the short-term, along with internal government turmoil, US General David Petraeus told Congress on Wednesday, urging lawmakers to reserve judgment on the new war strategy for a full year.
Petraeus, who as head of US Central Command is in charge of drawing down forces from Iraq and overseeing a new surge of 30,000 US troops in Afghanistan, said he expected increased Afghan fighting in the spring and the summer.
He also said the Afghan government's expected moves to combat corruption would likely result in "greater turmoil within the government as malign actors are identified and replaced."
"It will be important, therefore, to withhold judgment on the success or failure of the strategy in Afghanistan until next December, as the President has counseled," Petraeus said.
Petraeus, who in his previous role as the top Iraq commander oversaw a surge of forces in 2007 credited with helping pull that country back from the brink, also cautioned that progress in Afghanistan would not be as fast as in Iraq.
"Achieving progress in Afghanistan will be hard and the progress there likely will be slower in developing than was the progress achieved in Iraq," Petraeus said.
The general, a favorite among Republicans who had a high public profile under former President George W. Bush, was the latest US official to go before Congress to defend President Barack Obama's new war strategy announced last week.
All of the additional 30,000 US forces are expected to be deployed by the summer or fall, aiming to reverse Taliban momentum and allow for a gradual withdrawal starting in July 2011, according to Obama's plan.
Risk to democrats
Analysts warn a perceived deterioration of conditions in Afghanistan following the new war strategy could hurt Obama's Democrats in mid-term 2010 elections, further eroding public support for the costly, eight-year-old war.
Officials, including Petraeus, appear to be bracing the public for trouble ahead, including rising casualties.
"Violence likely will increase initially, particularly in the spring as the weather improves," he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
He warned that the situation was "likely to get harder before it gets easier."
"None of this will be easy. Improving the capacity of the Afghan government will also be difficult," he said.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said it would be 15 to 20 years before his country could afford the new, larger Afghan security force the US believes is necessary to secure the country and allow for a US security handover.
Petraeus said that the target-level of 400,000 Afghan soldiers and police that the US hopes to eventually establish would "cost in the range over $10 billion a year." That compares with a $30 billion-$35 billion annual price tag for the surge.
"I would submit that it is a lot cheaper to maintain a certain number of Afghan forces than it is to maintain the number of US and coalition forces required to compensate for their absence," Petraeus said.
Afghanistan has announced some anti-corruption measures, such as setting up an anti-graft unit and placing some ministers under investigation for embezzlement. On Wednesday the Afghan government and the United Nations jointly announced they would hold an anti-corruption conference on December 15-17.
Petraeus underscored the importance of battling corruption, widely seen as fueling the Taliban insurgency.
"Corruption within the Afghan government -- particularly the serious abuse of power by some individual leaders and their associates -- has eroded the government's legitimacy," he said.
Bureau Report
First Published: Wednesday, December 09, 2009, 23:28