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General Sees Long Term for Afghanistan Buildup

WASHINGTON — The top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David D. McKiernan, said Wednesday that the heightened troop levels that President Obama ordered for Afghanistan could remain in place for as long as five years.

General McKiernan, who spoke at a news conference at the Pentagon a day after Mr. Obama ordered 17,000 additional troops to the country, said that the buildup “is not a temporary force uplift” and that it was essential to break what he called a stalemate in southern Afghanistan, the epicenter of the Taliban-led insurgency.

He said that he could not determine exactly how long the troops would be there, but that the buildup would “need to be sustained for some period of time,” and that he was looking at “the next three to four or five years.”

General McKiernan said the additional troops would get him through the start of the traditional fighting season in the spring and a presidential election scheduled for August, when there is expected to be a surge in violence.

But he said he would still like 10,000 additional troops in Afghanistan to fulfill a request that neither President Bush nor President Obama had met.

Later on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said no decision on additional troops would be made until the administration completed a sweeping policy review now under way. Mr. Gates said that review would determine how long the heightened troop levels in Afghanistan would remain in place.

The additional troops ordered to Afghanistan by Mr. Obama amount to an increase of nearly 50 percent over the 36,000 American troops already there. About 30,000 other foreign troops are operating there under a NATO-led command.

Of the new reinforcements, General McKiernan said, “What this allows us to do is change the dynamics of the security situation, predominantly in southern Afghanistan, where we are, at best, stalemated, and we need additional, persistent security presence in areas that we’re not at today.” He added, “I have to tell you that 2009 is going to be a tough year.”

Mr. Gates spoke to reporters before departing for a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Krakow, Poland. He said the decision to sharply increase the American troop presence in Afghanistan came with an expectation that allies would increase their contributions to the effort, in particular to civilian projects to develop the country’s economic and political structures.

Despite the buildup, General McKiernan said Afghanistan would not be won by military power alone. “We’re not going to run out of people that either international forces or Afghan forces have to kill or capture,” he said. “It’s going to be ultimately a political solution.”

General McKiernan, who declared three times during the news conference that “the insurgency will not win in Afghanistan,” said that the failed history of the British and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan should not be a predictor of America’s future in the country.

“There’s always an inclination to relate what we’re doing now with previous nations,” General McKiernan said, adding, “I think that’s a very unhealthy comparison.”

Thom Shanker contributed reporting.

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