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But as the President prepares to once again review options this weekend for the US strategy in Afghanistan, he will arrive at Camp David to meet with his national security advisers with a new chief of staff at his side -- one who has commanded troops in Iraq and lost a son to the war in Afghanistan.

John Kelly has largely focused on instilling new order in a chaotic White House beset by internal division and controversies since he was tapped for the position late last month. But his sudden appointment also hurled the former four-star Marine Corps general into the decisive final stretch of a deeply divisive and often acrimonious internal White House debate over the Afghanistan war, putting him in a position to shape the debate at a critical juncture.

Now Kelly will step into the middle of that debate, carrying with him a 45-year military career and his personal experience as the father of a fallen Marine, 1st Lt. Robert Kelly, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2010.

Four retired Marine Corps generals who served with Kelly at different points in his career told CNN they believe Kelly will tackle the debate with a "no-nonsense" but very deliberative approach to help steer the President toward a decision on Afghanistan, ensuring in the process that Trump hears different sides of the debate.

"He's the right guy in this position right now," said retired Gen. John Allen, the former top US military commander in Afghanistan who has been friends with Kelly for four decades. "I think Kelly's going to be an honest broker."

The four generals all agreed that Kelly would focus on his role of chief of staff in helping to organize the debate to ensure the President gets the best information possible to make a decision, but said he would not shy away from sharing his own view if asked.

That was the case when Kelly served as legislative assistant to Gen. Michael Hagee, the Marine Corps commandant at the time.

"Most importantly, he told me what he thought, what he truly thought," Hagee said. "He was really a good partner and I could trust him that he would give me his opinion. I can tell you John will honestly always do that."

Gen. James Conway, Hagee's successor as Marine Corps commandant, put it more bluntly: "He's a big Boston Irishman. Don't ask John Kelly the question unless you can hear the answer."

The question is what Kelly's answer will be.

Kelly, who through a White House spokeswoman declined to be interviewed, has offered few public indications of his views on the war in Afghanistan, though Allen said Kelly has said he wants to see the US win in the country. Kelly's private comments preceded his White House tenure.

Kelly signaled as much in January 2016 when he addressed Gold Star families' hopes for the future of US military engagements.

"I think the one thing they would ask is that the cause for which their son or daughter fell be -- be carried through to -- to a successful end, whatever that means, as opposed to 'this is getting too costly,' or 'too much of a pain in the ass,' and 'let's just walk away from it.' Because that's when they start thinking it might have been not worth it," Kelly said in January 2016, shortly before his retirement from the military.

Asked about Kelly's role in the decision-making process, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement: "Gen. Kelly will make sure POTUS is properly staffed and informed so he can make the best decision for our country."

But to what extent will that advice be shaped by his status as a Gold Star father thrust into a position to shape the future of the war that claimed his son's life.

Kelly rarely discusses his son's death in public, but in the few comments he has offered on the topic Kelly has made clear that his son's death has given him a perspective shared by only a tiny sliver of Americans.

"The one huge revelation was I didn't have a clue how bad it hurt. I just had no idea. I was trying to empathize, trying to sympathize, trying to understand. And I thought like any person would. You kind of put it into terms like, 'well, I lost my mother, I lost my brother, it's kind of the same thing,'" Kelly said. "It ain't."

Kelly also described the loss of his son as a "physical sadness that doesn't got away."

In a speech he gave days after his son was killed after stepping on a landmine in Afghanistan in November 2010, Kelly noted that "we are in a life-and-death struggle, but not our whole country."

"One percent of Americans are touched by this war. Then there is a much smaller club of families who have given it all," Kelly said.

The four generals who spoke to CNN said they did not know how Kelly's son's death affected his views on the war in Afghanistan, but said the experience gave Kelly a better understanding of the true costs of war.

"Unlike the vast majority of the people in the White House or who have ever been in the White House in a permanent assignment, he understands what's at stake in not being successful in Afghanistan," said Allen, Kelly's longtime friend and the former US commander in Afghanistan.

Still, Allen said he believed Kelly would approach the war with a Marine's mindset and with a sense of patriotic duty.

"While yes, he has suffered -- he and Karen have suffered a terrible loss in that war -- I believe that seeing his duty as bringing the President the best advice possible he will do that even though he has lost one of his precious children in that war."

While Kelly is the only Cabinet-level official in the Trump administration to have lost a son to war, both Bannon and Vice President Mike Pence have a daughter and son, respectively, serving in the military.

Kelly's advice will also of course be shaped by his four decades in the military and his tours of duty commanding troops in Iraq, as well as the longstanding friendships -- more like a brotherhood -- he shares with Defense Secretary James Mattis and Gen. Joseph Dunford, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, two critical figures in the Afghanistan debate.

The four generals who spoke to CNN all pointed to the close and longstanding friendship between the three men, who have known each other throughout their military careers.

Dunford, at the time the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, showed up at Kelly's doorstep to inform him of his son's death.

But whether he will side with Dunford and Mattis during the intense deliberations at Camp David is unclear.

While Kelly has said privately he wants to see the US emerge victorious in Afghanistan -- which could suggest he would be opposed to a significant drawdown or withdrawal from the country -- it's less than clear what victory would look like.

It may depend on where the goalposts lie -- and they have already moved as the President has raised fundamental questions about the US's role in Afghanistan and as some of his advisers have questioned longstanding US objectives like bolstering the country's centralized government

A senior administration official told CNN that at a late July meeting of the National Security Committee's Principals Committee the group of top advisers agreed to set "more realistic goals" for the US in Afghanistan, including casting aside the need to bolster Afghanistan's central government and aiming to degrade, but not destroy, the Taliban.

Regardless of the goals, Kelly's friends and former colleagues promised one thing: Kelly will be concerned with doing what's best for the country, and for the young servicemembers who would be put in harm's way.

"It's not about John Kelly," said Hagee, the former Marine Corps Commandant. "John will be concerned about only one thing and that's his country and the young men and women who serve his country."

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As Trump mulls Afghanistan, a former general and fallen Marine's father at his side - CNN International

KABUL (Reuters) - Navigating a chaotic maze of cars and people, the convoy of British army armored vehicles weaves slowly through Kabul. The job of about a dozen soldiers is to protect just two international advisers on their way to meet Afghan soldiers.

While every mission varies, for every adviser deployed in Afghanistan as part of a NATO-led multinational force, many more soldiers are tasked with providing security and support.

The minimum security requirements mean that providing even just a few thousand advisers for Afghan security forces is a monumental task that, if continued, will keep many thousands more international troops and contractors facing daily threats.

That calculus will factor into arguments put before U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday as he and advisers meet ahead of a long-awaited decision on strategy and troop levels for the United States' longest war.

Fewer than 25 percent of coalition troops in Afghanistan are dedicated advisers - with the rest either in a security, support or a combined role.

The need to balance the force with more advisers is a driving factor behind the military's request for more troops, which has met with scepticism in Washington, where Trump was elected on a platform of reducing American commitments overseas.

Providing security and support for the advising mission can be a deceptively dangerous job, with hours of quiet routine that can be broken by deadly violence at any moment.

On Aug. 2, two American soldiers were killed by a suicide car bomb as they were providing security for a convoy in the southern province of Kandahar.

The next day, a Georgian soldier was killed when a coalition convoy was attacked by a suicide bomber in Kabul.

And just two days after that, Romanian soldiers providing security for advisers in Kandahar were forced to shoot and kill an Afghan policeman who attacked the international troops.

For the soldiers of the British army's Royal Irish Regiment in Kabul, this "taxi and bodyguard service" is a far cry from their last deployment to Afghanistan when they battled militants in Helmand province in 2011.

"We're there in the background if anything happens," said ranger Riley Tolliday, describing his job as a "guardian angel" escorting advisers to meetings around the Afghan capital.

After months of relative calm, since April the Royal Irish Regiment has deployed a "quick reaction force" to at least three attacks in the city, said Major Paul Martin, a company commander.

In April, the regiment's soldiers were deployed to mediate a dispute that arose after a vehicle carrying foreign troops was involved in a traffic accident and was fired upon by Afghan police.

In early May, the soldiers escorted the disabled vehicles of an U.S. military convoy that had been struck by a suicide bomber, killing eight Afghan bystanders and wounding three Americans.

And on May 31, they responded to the scene of a massive truck bomb that detonated in the center of Kabul, killing at least 92 people.

The British soldiers helped secure the scene and then evacuated casualties from the German embassy, which was heavily damaged.

Even at the height of the international military mission in Afghanistan, a large proportion of troops was involved behind the scenes providing security and other support for the main mission.

Of the 12,447 troops from 39 countries that make up the NATO-led Resolute Support mission, about 2,865 are classified as advisers, according to numbers provided by the coalition.

Another 7,766 are considered "enablers", which can range from logistics and security troops to fighter aircraft pilots.

And, finally, 1,816 are deployed as "command and control".

Among the enablers plus command-and-control troops, many also have part-time roles advising Afghan counterparts, but the numbers reveal the massive number of supporting troops needed to field even a limited advising mission.

Among the 23,500 private contractors also employed by the U.S. military in Afghanistan, only 800 are classified as trainers, according to the Pentagon.

Erik Prince, the high-profile founder of the private security firm Blackwater, has proposed using contractors to take over all of the foreign mission in Afghanistan.

While the U.S. military has used contractors to buttress the force in Afghanistan, including using private guards for security around some bases, officials say they hope to reduce overall reliance on contractors by deploying more troops.

The command in Kabul is now waiting on the stalled request for thousands more American troops, which they hope will allow them to deploy more soldiers dedicated to working with the Afghans, but also a "significant" number to provide more security, said one senior military official.

Security services have seen a recent increase in demand as advisers try to reach more Afghan units, Martin said.

"We're able to fulfill about 80 percent of the requests we receive."

The troops tasked with escorting the advisers on their missions have to not only provide protection from potential militants, but also from so-called insider attacks by members of the Afghan security forces, who have occasionally turned on their foreign allies.

Originally posted here:
'Guardian angel' need for advisers in Afghanistan drives call for more troops - Reuters

An American service member was killed Wednesday and an unspecific number wounded while battlingIslamic Stateloyalists in eastern Afghanistan.

Members of the Afghan army also sustainedcasualties in what the U.S. military characterized as a partnered operation.

Officials in Kabul have said little else aboutthe engagement, releasing only a brief statementindicating that the wounded were evacuated for medical treatment, the families of those involved were being notified, and the mission was said to be aimed at further reducing theIslamic States regional presence.

The statement doesnot specifywhere the attack occurred, althoughISIS militants are known to be active along the Pakistan border in Nangahar and Kunar provinces.

[Blackwaters founder wants Trump to outsource the Afghanistan war. Why thats so risky.]

Wednesdays fatalityisthe 11th suffered by U.S. forces in Afghanistan this year, surpassinglast years total of 10. All but one resulted from hostile enemy action, according to Defense Departmentdata. It comes, too, as the United States longest war nears the start of its 17th year, and the Trump administration remains without a clear strategy.

The ISIS affiliate in Afghanistan, a group known as ISIS Khorasan, or ISIS-K, is entrenched along the countrys mountainous border with Pakistan. Backed by U.S. troops and firepower, Afghan commando units have aggressively pursued itsfighters for many months and shown some progress in disrupting their activity.

[McCain releases strategy for Afghanistan, preempting and rebuking Trump]

American and Afghan troopslaunched Operation Hamza in early March. The following month, U.S. forces carried out a massive airstrike on an ISIS tunnel complex in Nangarhars Achin district, reportedly killingupward of 100 militants.At the time, U.S. officials estimated that between 400 and 700 ISIS-K militants remained in Afghanistan.

ISIS-K is an offshoot of the terrorist groups core network in Iraq and Syria, receivingtactical guidance and financial support from outside Afghanistan but few additional fighters.

About 14,000 U.S. and NATO troops remain in Afghanistan.With backing from the Pentagon, the wars top commander, Army Gen. John Nicholson, wants to expand his force by about 4,000 American troops, with a match from other NATO countries.

The White House has not committed to that plan. Some advisers havesuggested that contractors could gradually assume the training and advisory mission there, allowing U.S. troops to come home.

In bid to beat back the Taliban, Afghanistan starts expanding its commando units

This is what a day with the Afghan air force looks like

The Islamic State is fighting to the death as civilians flee Raqqa

See the article here:
A US service member is killed, others wounded, fighting ISIS in Afghanistan - Washington Post

ISLAMABAD

Pakistans populist opposition leader, Imran Khan, says the future of long-term relations with landlocked Afghanistan lies in the two countries having open borders and free trade.

Pakistan is unilaterally fencing the nearly 2,600-kilometer, largely porous Afghan border. Authorities defend the recently initiated project, saying it will help stop criminal and terrorist infiltration, as well as boost counterterrorism efforts on both sides.

The Afghan government opposes the border fortification plan because Kabul traditionally has disputed the demarcation drawn during the former British rule of the Indian subcontinent.

Islamabad dismisses the objections and maintains it inherited the boundary as an international frontier.

The long term relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan is open borders. Rather than building fences, I think it should have open, free trade, it should be like a European Union type of relationship. Thats our long term future and this would be of enormous benefit to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Khan told VOA in a recent interview at Khan's residence and party office in Bani Gala on the outskirts of Islamabad.

Afghanistan relies on Pakistani seaports and land routes for its international trade. Rising diplomatic and political tensions, however, have led to a reduction in the trade and transit activity through Pakistan, according to businessmen on both sides.

Bilateral ties have deteriorated, particularly over the past few years because of a spike in Taliban attacks and territorial advances in Afghanistan.

Afghan officials allege that insurgents use sanctuaries on Pakistani soil to plot deadly attacks in Afghanistan, and the neighboring countrys spy agency is helping them expand their influence in the war-ravaged country.

Islamabad denies the charges and accuses the Afghan intelligence agency of sheltering and helping anti-Pakistan militants to orchestrate terrorist attacks in the country.

The worst of times

Cricket-star-turned-politician Khan, who also is popular among cricket-playing Afghan youth, acknowledges it is the worst of times in terms of relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The problem is right now there is a lot of suspicion in Afghanistan about Pakistan, the way our foreign policy has gone up and down. And in Pakistan right now there is a lot of suspicion about Afghanistan, that the attacks in Pakistan, the terrorist attacks, are coming from Afghanistan, instigated by India, said Khan.

He echoed Pakistan's official stance that archival India is using its growing influence, particularly among Afghan security institutions, to allegedly destabilize Pakistan. Kabul and New Delhi both deny the charges.

Khan urged that the United States should desist from intensifying military actions in Afghanistan, underscoring the need to find a political settlement to the protracted Afghan conflict.

I think the best decision Donald Trump could make is to finally decide to take American troops out of Afghanistan, and then that will pave the way for some sort of consensus government in Afghanistan, Khan said.

President Donald Trumps administration has said it is close to finalizing its Afghan policy, which could see an additional several thousand U.S. troops being deployed to Afghanistan to help local security forces break the military stalemate with the Taliban.

As long as the troops are there, they are not going to be able to enforce peace there. If 150,000 NATO troops could not change Afghanistan, then 5,000 or 10,000 troops are only going to prolong the agony," he added.

Khans party rules Pakistans northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which shares a border with Afghanistan. The province has borne the brunt of terrorist attacks since Islamabad joined hands 16 years ago with Washingtons anti-terrorism operations in Afghanistan.

The violence has significantly declined, however, due to counterterrorism operations in adjoining border areas and major police reforms the provincial government has introduced over the past four years.

The opposition politician and his party, Pakistan Terheek-e-Insaf, are being credited with leading a consistent anti-corruption campaign that ultimately prompted the countrys Supreme Court to investigate and oust former prime minister Nawaz Sharif from office last month for concealing overseas assets.

Observers say Khans successful legal battle has boosted his partys political standing, and it could pose a serious challenge to Sharifs ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party in 2018 parliamentary elections.

Read more from the original source:
Pakistan's Khan Calls for 'Open Borders' With Afghanistan - Voice of America

A Black Hawk helicopter flies over the site of a Taliban suicide attack in Kandahar, Afghanistan, on Aug. 2. Javed Tanveer/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

A Black Hawk helicopter flies over the site of a Taliban suicide attack in Kandahar, Afghanistan, on Aug. 2.

President Trump's calculation about Afghanistan boils down to a familiar question in U.S. national security: Of all the bad options, what's the least worst?

Trump, Vice President Pence and other national security team members are scheduled to convene at Camp David on Friday to review the next phase of the nearly 16-year war.

Defense Secretary James Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon this week that all options remain in play as the White House weighs a long-awaited new strategy.

Trump could authorize a new deployment of more American troops to continue the approach the U.S. has taken all along. Or he could try to shift the burden so that more of it falls on private security contractors. Or he could authorize something like a gradual withdrawal or cut bait entirely.

None of those choices would bring victory or end the conflict, and each one has its downsides. As the summer wears on, however, observers worry that whatever the Trump administration decides, it's taking too long.

"It is doing just what it should not do," wrote defense scholar Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It is letting the situation steadily deteriorate and is losing by negligence and default."

The problem is not new: Afghanistan is a house that can stand only if the United States remains in the corner holding up the roof.

Its government cannot afford the military and security infrastructure built by Washington and other international donors. The Afghan military and police cannot hold their own against the Taliban and other insurgents they've been battling for nearly two decades. Billions of dollars of international aid have been squandered.

The U.S. intelligence community assessed years ago that if or when the United States withdrew its support, the Afghan government would most likely collapse. The question is how badly and how quickly.

Top American commanders say the conflict is in "stalemate"; Trump is said to have complained that the U.S. is "losing."

A new troop deployment could keep the war on a low boil but preserve the status quo or even claw back some previous security gains at greater risk to the larger population of American troops and the increased costs associated with a larger troop presence.

Switching to larger numbers of military contractors could usher in an unprecedented new era in which Washington more or less privatized a major arena of national security policy. That might pose fewer risks to American troops, but it would likely still be expensive and certainly still dangerous for the mercenaries who took over.

A withdrawal is the least certain, and potentially most dramatic, of all the options said to be under consideration. The devil, as ever, would be in the details.

President Barack Obama wanted to reduce the American military presence in Afghanistan to just a standard embassy detachment, but he had to backtrack from that plan toward the end of his tenure when it became clear that the dangers were too great from the Taliban and terrorist forces.

Mattis and Pentagon leaders appear to continue to hold that view, as may national security adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster. They pushed to deploy nearly 4,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan earlier this year to join the current force of about 8,500 in helping train the indigenous forces and fight insurgents and terrorists.

Trump and his top political advisers, however, are said to question whether the status quo is worth preserving if it won't bring the war any closer to a satisfactory end. The United States couldn't set the Afghan government up to succeed and defeat its enemies with 100,000 troops under Obama, so a much smaller bump would almost certainly not be decisive.

Trump has been described as bitterly frustrated with the war and his options, to the point where he has aired firing the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Nicholson. The general so far remains in his job but the White House also has delayed rolling out a new strategy for Afghanistan that was expected early this summer, which was supposed to outline the mission for any additional troops.

Mattis said this week that Nicholson "is our commander in the field, he has the confidence of NATO, he has the confidence of Afghanistan, he has the confidence of the United States."

But there are more signs that Trump is fed up with the generals. He even hosted a group of lower-ranking service members at the White House in July to ask them for their take on what he should do.

"We're going to be getting some ideas because we've been there it's our longest war we've been there for many years ... and I want to find out why," he said.

The White House did not disclose what advice the troops gave the president, but Trump and his advisers are said to look hard at this bottom line: If Afghanistan is unwinnable, why prolong the danger to American forces and the cost associated with deploying them?

Why not just rip off the Band-Aid?

Simply deciding to do so would not be enough, however. The White House would need to determine how to achieve its ends.

Trump could let Afghanistan down easy: preserve financial support for the government in Kabul, ask to keep some American warplanes and drones in key bases and continue targeting the most dangerous terrorist groups but get most U.S. troops out.

Supporters of a withdrawal make the case that decreasing American support for Afghanistan effectively imposes costs on nearby Iran, China and Russia. That could be worth doing for its own sake, in this view "forcing the countries that do have major strategic interests in the region to take on the burden or live with the consequences," as CSIS's Cordesman wrote.

The Afghan government might have a great deal to say about all this. And it might not agree to permit U.S. forces to keep access to only the bases that Washington wants if American troops are withdrawing from everywhere else.

If that means a breach with Kabul and full-scale "retrograde," as military planners would say, it would start the clock on a dark new era for Afghanistan. Taliban and terrorist insurgents would press their gains across the country and put intense new pressure on the more populated areas controlled by the central government.

But the terrorism threat in 2017 is different from 2001, when the U.S. invaded. Extremist groups have proliferated in the Middle East and North Africa, but they are divided and, say U.S. national security officials, less capable of launching a major attack.

Former CIA Director John Brennan told an audience at the Aspen Security Forum that although homegrown extremists or small-scale attacks remain dangerous, he believes the U.S. and its allies could disrupt or prevent something as large as another Sept. 11 plot.

Or so the U.S. and Western governments might hope. In terms of terrorism, abandoning Afghanistan might amount to a roll of the dice.

Separate from the geopolitical and security implications, the biggest consideration for Trump and his advisers are the politics. How much do Americans care?

If the old conventional wisdom was that a president didn't want to "lose" Afghanistan in the way that the U.S. "lost" Vietnam or the way critics blamed Obama for the rise of the Islamic State after the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq in 2011 does that still apply?

Most Americans are disconnected from the war in Afghanistan. Only a small minority have served there or know someone who has. And even though U.S. casualties do continue 10 service members have been killed in Afghanistan so far this year the war keeps well off the front page and almost never gets onto TV. Obama himself claimed to have "ended" combat in Afghanistan.

So the question for Trump is whether he would pay any political price for pulling the plug on a conflict that many Americans already ignore, or whether the risks from a crumbling Afghanistan would be so great it's wiser to keep the war going behind the scenes.

Mattis told reporters the research and analysis behind the menu of choices for Trump is complete. What remains, he said, is for the president to pick.

"We're sharpening each one of the options so you can see the pluses and minuses of each one, so that there's no longer any new data you're going to get," Mattis said. "Now just make the decision."

Original post:
Behind The Scenes, A Major Choice Looms On Afghanistan - NPR