U.S. envoy in Kabul isn't sold on adding to forces

WASHINGTON — The U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, who once served as the top U.S. military commander there, has expressed in writing his reservations about deploying additional troops to the country, three senior U.S. officials said Wednesday.

The position of the ambassador, Karl Eikenberry, a retired lieutenant general, puts him in opposition to the current U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who has asked for 40,000 more troops.

Eikenberry sent his reservations in a cable last week, the officials said.

President Obama and his national-security advisers have begun considering sending relatively few troops to Afghanistan, 10,000 to 15,000, with most designated as trainers for the Afghan security forces.

This low-end option was one of four alternatives under consideration by Obama and his war council at a meeting in the White House Situation Room on Wednesday. The other three options call for troop levels of about 20,000, 30,000 and 40,000, the three officials said.

Obama asked Eikenberry about his concerns during the meeting Wednesday, officials said, and raised questions about each of the four military options and how they might be tinkered with or changed. A central focus of Obama's questions, officials said, was how long it would take to see results and be able to withdraw. "He wants to know where the offramps are," one official said.

The White House meeting was Obama's eighth session in two months on the subject of Afghanistan. A few hours before the meeting, the president walked through the rain-soaked grass at Arlington National Cemetery, stopping by Section 60, where troops from Iraq and Afghanistan are buried.

Eikenberry has expressed strong concerns about President Hamid Karzai and corruption in his government. Obama appointed Eikenberry as ambassador in January.

During two tours in Afghanistan — from 2005 to 2007, when he served as the top U.S. commander, and from 2002 to 2003, when he was responsible for building and training the Afghan security forces — Eikenberry encountered what he later described as the Afghan government's dependence on Americans to do the job that then-President George W. Bush was urging the Afghans to begin doing themselves.

Eikenberry crossed paths with McChrystal during his second tour in Afghanistan, when McChrystal led the military's Joint Special Operations Command, which conducted clandestine operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Their relationship, a senior military official said last year, was occasionally tense as McChrystal pushed for approval for commando missions, and Eikenberry was resistant because of concerns that the missions were too risky and could lead to civilian casualties.

Pentagon officials said the low-end option of 10,000 to 15,000 more troops would mean little or no significant increase in U.S. combat forces in Afghanistan.

The bulk of the additional forces would go to train the Afghan army, with a smaller number focused on hunting and killing terrorists, the officials said.

The low-end option would essentially reject the more ambitious counterinsurgency strategy envisioned by McChrystal, which calls for a large number of forces to protect the Afghan population, work on development projects and build up the country's civil institutions.

It would largely deprive McChrystal of the ability to send large numbers of U.S. forces to the southern provinces in Afghanistan, where the Taliban control broad swaths of territory. It would also limit the number of population centers the United States could secure, officials said.

Eikenberry has been an energetic envoy, traveling widely around Afghanistan to meet with tribal leaders and to inspect U.S. development projects.

He has been pushing the State Department for additional civilian personnel in the country, including in areas such as agriculture, where the United States wants to help wean farmers off cultivating poppies.

He played a significant role, along with Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., in persuading Karzai last month to accept the results of an election commission, which called for a runoff presidential ballot. That vote never took place because Karzai's main opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, subsequently withdrew from the contest.

But Eikenberry also angered Karzai early in the campaign when he appeared at news conferences called by three of Karzai's opponents.