President Obama will today announce the deployment of an extra 34,000 American troops to Afghanistan, according to sources briefed since the President issued new orders to his top military commanders.
The precise figure, reported last night by the Washington Post, was close to previous estimates and enough to bring the total US troop strength in Afghanistan to more than 100,000.
With an additional 5,000 reinforcements from other Nato countries, the long-awaited “surge” will consist of close to 40,000 soldiers – the number requested by General Stanley McChrystal, the Nato commander in Afghanistan.
The extra US troops are expected to start arriving in the south and east of the country in January, with orders to dislodge the Taleban from strongholds in Helmand Province where militants have defied British forces for years.
US Marines and soldiers from the army’s 101st Airborne Division and the 10th Mountain Division are also expected to surround Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second city, in an effort to cut off Taleban units operating there in open defiance of the regime of President Hamid Karzai.
President Obama will not go into detail in his speech at West Point military academy on how his $30 billion escalation of the eight-year Afghan war will be paid for, his spokesman said, but he will offer American voters an exit strategy and set out clear tests of progress in the fight against corruption that Mr Karzai must pass to be sure of continued US support.
