Obama approved the deployment of 17,000 troops for the coming months even as his administration scrambles to craft a new strategy to tackle a rejuvenated insurgency led by Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants.

The new US president has signaled his approach will be less ambitious than his predecessor, relying on diplomacy and economic aid as well as military might.

But he has inherited a grim landscape in which a stretched NATO force and a weak Kabul government have been unable to keep pace with an emboldened insurgency financed in part by a vast opium trade.

The outlook in Afghanistan is dismal partly because former president George W. Bush "allowed a bad situation to get worse" by diverting resources to a controversial war in Iraq, allowing the Taliban to rebound after its ouster in 2001, said Lawrence Korb of the Center for American Progress.

"And that's the key issue -- has it gotten so far down hill that you can't get it?" Korb told AFP.

The extra troops, a Marine Expeditionary Brigade and an Army Stryker Brigade, are expected to step up patrols in the volatile south and bolster security along main roads, which have become an easy target for Taliban guerrillas.

By safeguarding main roadways, US officials hope the reinforcements will allow a resumption in civilian traffic and open the way for more rural development projects that have been crippled by roadside bombs.

"The idea is that with those extra troops you can provide security and send a signal to the Afghan people that they don't have to fear the Taliban because we have enough troops to clear an area and leave some behind to protect the people," Korb said.

But more troops may still be needed to shore up security, and a larger foreign force in turn runs the risk of alienating the Afghan population.

Although Afghans initially embraced the US-led troops that toppled the Taliban regime, that support has declined, a recent poll showed, with civilian casualties from air strikes sowing increasing resentment.

The Kabul government and its police force, meanwhile, are riddled with corruption, a Defense Department report said earlier this month. And US military officers describe a vacuum of authority in the provinces amid a thriving opium trade.

Obama has made clear that US goals in Afghanistan will be more narrowly focused on defusing the terrorist threat posed by Al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies, while downplaying a bid to transform the country.

"We are not going to be able to rebuild Afghanistan into a Jeffersonian democracy," he told NBC television this month.

The rugged border area with Pakistan, exploited as a base by Al-Qaeda, presents perhaps the biggest headache for the US contingent, according to Gilles Dorronsoro, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"There is no quick fix to this situation: even with the full support of the Pakistani government and military (a very optimistic hypothesis) the border will stay out of control for years," Dorronsoro wrote this month.

European allies and US General David Petraeus, the commander for the region, have suggested that the Afghan insurgency could be defused by opening up negotiations with elements of the Taliban, similar to the US approach in Iraq.

But the insurgents have little incentive to enter into talks at a time when they are gaining strength on the ground against President Hamid Karzai's government.

"The Taliban are feeling too powerful, a little too successful," said Daniel Markey of the Council on Foreign Relations.

"They don't quite feel the motivation that would bring them to the table at this point to deal with a relatively weaker Karzai government," Markey said at a conference in Washington last month.

The NATO alliance and the Kabul government also are not ready to make concessions that might persuade the Taliban to put down their guns, he said.

"And nobody can really square that circle quite yet."

earlier related report
Obama sending 17,000 troops to Afghanistan
In his first major military move, President Barack Obama Tuesday approved the deployment of 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan, saying they were needed "to stabilize a deteriorating situation."

"There is no more solemn duty as president than the decision to deploy our armed forces into harm's way," Obama said in a statement.

"I do it today mindful that the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan demands urgent attention and swift action."

Obama said the deployment orders were in response to a months-old request by the US commander in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, who had asked for 30,000 more troops.

"This increase is necessary to stabilize a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, which has not received the strategic attention, direction and resources it urgently requires," Obama said.

The president said he had approved a request by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to deploy a Marine Expeditionary Brigade in the spring, and an Army Stryker Brigade and support forces later this summer.

The White House said some 17,000 troops will be deployed to Afghanistan ahead of Afghan elections scheduled for August 20, significantly building up the 38,000-strong US force already on the ground battling a growing insurgency.

Asked about possible future troop deployment orders, a senior administration official told AFP they were unlikely to come before an ongoing comprehensive review of US strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan was completed.

"The thinking is that this was necessary at this time because of the expected increase of fighting in the spring and the upcoming elections," the official said on condition of anonymity.

"The strategy needs to be complete to determine whether additional troops would be necessary," the official added, saying the objective was for the review to be completed before a NATO summit in April.

The US-backed government in Kabul has come under intense pressure as the insurgency led by Taliban and Al-Qadea Islamic militants has gained strength and spread from the country's east and south into parts of the west and areas around the capital.

As the security situation in Iraq has improved, the US has increasingly shifted its focus to Afghanistan and reduced the number of its troops in Iraq.

Last year saw the deadliest Taliban violence, including suicide attacks, assassinations of officials and ambushes on Afghan and international troops.

"The Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan, and Al-Qaeda supports the insurgency and threatens America from its safe haven along the Pakistani border," Obama warned.

The Pentagon said Gates had ordered the deployment of two additional combat units totaling more than 12,000 troops, with Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman indicating they would be deployed in the violence-plagued south.

Some 5,000 support troops would receive deployment orders at a later date.

Under the orders, some 8,000 Marines from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade will deploy to Afghanistan in late spring 2009, and about 4,000 soldiers from the 5th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division would deploy in mid-summer, the Pentagon said.

Obama indicated that the units had initially been earmarked for Iraq, saying the drawdown of US forces there "allows us the flexibility to increase our presence in Afghanistan."

He said the deployment decision would not predetermine the outcome of the review but instead would "further enable our team to put together a comprehensive strategy that will employ all elements of our national power to fulfill achievable goals in Afghanistan."

Obama ordered the review amid growing alarm about mounting Islamic extremism in the region seven years after the United States launched its "war on terror" and ousted Afghanistan's Taliban regime.

Senator John McCain, Obama's rival for the US presidency in last year's election, welcomed the troop move but expressed hope that it was "just the first step in a new comprehensive approach to Afghanistan."

"A major change in course is long overdue," he said.

US intelligence has warned that endemic corruption in Afghanistan and the government's inability to deliver services and protect the population has eroded its legitimacy.

Washington has grappled with rising tensions with Kabul over civilian casualties in military operations against insurgents.

On Monday a US-led air strike in western Afghanistan killed up to 15 militants, the US military said, but on Wednesday Afghan police said the strike killed six women and two children in addition to eight men.

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