Gen. Allen urges analysis before further troop reductions

WASHINGTON -- The top coalition commander in Afghanistan said he plans to analyze security conditions after the last of the surge forces leave this fall before making a recommendation on further troop reductions.

"It's going to require some analysis after the conclusion of the fighting season" and the reduction of forces, Marine Gen. John Allen testified Tuesday before the House Armed Services Committee.

The military is reducing the size of the U.S. force in Afghanistan to pre-surge levels by October, which would leave 68,000 U.S. servicemembers.

The current military plan calls for handing over security responsibility to Afghanistan by the end of 2014. At issue is the pace of reductions between October and the end of 2014, when most combat forces will have left.

"Before the end of 2012, I intend to provide to the president a series of recommendations on the kind of combat power that I will need for 2013 and 2014," Allen told the committee.

The military would like to keep the 68,000 U.S. servicemembers in Afghanistan as long as possible, said committee member Mike Coffman, R-Colo.

President Obama is unlikely to press for further reductions this year, Coffman and other lawmakers say. "The president doesn't want to make a decision that is clearly going to be controversial before the election," Coffman said.

Reassessing conditions after the drawdown is "consistent with what we've been doing," said Mark Jacobson, a former NATO official in Afghanistan now at the German Marshall Fund. "You don't set a plan in motion without continual reassessment."

In 2008, Gen. David Petraeus, who served top commander in Iraq and later as head of Central Command, recommended a pause in troop reductions to assess conditions after the initial troop escalation in Iraq. In 2012, the pace of force reductions may trigger debate in Washington.

"The president has said that after this summer and the surge forces are out that we will continue to reduce our forces at a steady pace," Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said recently. "I think that's the right approach."

"They'll be a lot of pressure not to reduce forces after the end of this summer," Levin, D-Mich., said.

The reduction of forces comes as NATO consolidates gains in the south and considers shifting the main effort to the east, a mountainous region near the Pakistani border that partly controls access to Kabul. The Haqqani network, a violent insurgent group, operates in the region. "We anticipate shifting resources to the east … because it remains there that the principal counterinsurgency fight will … be shaped in 2012," Allen said.