Gates: Biggest threat coming from Pakistan

The greatest threat to the United States comes from tribal lands in Pakistan along the border with Afghanistan, not Iraq, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told lawmakers Tuesday.

But Gates said a Pentagon constrained by the war in Iraq will be unable to send more forces into Afghanistan until at least next spring.

{mosads}U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan have repeatedly called for several thousand additional troops to be placed in that country since violence spiked there this year. Insurgents operating from remote, mountainous areas in Western Pakistan, seen as a safe haven for al Qaeda, the Taliban and other groups, are believed to be behind the violence.

Gates told the Senate Armed Services panel that more U.S. military forces would not become available until the spring or summer of 2009.

President Bush announced plans this month to deploy an Army brigade of around 4,000 troops and another 2,000 Marines to Afghanistan in January. But U.S. Army Gen. David McKiernan, the commander of the NATO-led force in Afghanistan, said last week that he needed three more brigades plus support units, totaling around 15,000 troops, on top of those scheduled to arrive in January.

“I have given great deference to those requests,” Gates told the panel. "Without changing deployment patterns, without changing length of tours, we do not have the forces to send three additional brigade combat teams to Afghanistan at this point."

The vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. James Cartwright, said that the Pentagon could meet at least part of the commanders’ request in Afghanistan if troops were withdrawn more quickly from Iraq. He made this acknowledgement after being pressed by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the panel’s chairman.

Cartwright said support forces are particularly needed in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Boosting the U.S. force in Afghanistan depends in part on how quickly those support troops can be freed up, he said.

The new president will decide how many additional troops should be sent to Afghanistan, and it is an issue Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has highlighted in his presidential campaign.

Obama has repeatedly emphasized the need to address the threat to U.S. security coming from Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Western Pakistan along the Afghan border. He has pressed for an increased U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan, and criticizes the Bush administration for focusing on the Iraq war instead of Afghanistan.

His opponent, GOP Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), also has said he wants to see more troops in Afghanistan. But McCain has said he may call on the NATO countries to send in their reinforcements rather than deploying mostly U.S. troops.

Gates cautioned that the decision to send a larger number of troops to Afghanistan should be weighed carefully, because the Afghans traditionally have not welcomed foreign forces.

{mospagebreak}"I think we need to think about how heavy a military footprint the U.S. ought to have in Afghanistan," he told the committee. He said there should be a focus instead on increasing the size of the Afghan army.

“The Afghan army is our exit strategy,” he said. “They are really tough.”

Gates also cautioned that withdrawing more troops from Iraq, where violence has declined by 80 percent since the surge, has to be done carefully.

{mosads}"I worry the great progress that our troops and the Iraqis have made has the potential to override a measure of caution born of uncertainty," Gates said.

Obama has called for most combat troops to be withdrawn within 16 months, while McCain has warned that pulling them out too quickly could hurt the security gains. McCain argues Obama would pull U.S. troops out of Iraq at a time when victory for the U.S. is in reach.

The first presidential debate between Obama and McCain is scheduled for Friday and will focus on national security issues. Gates’s words could add spark to what already was expected to be a heated debate.

The United States has been considering Pakistan crucial in the strategy against a growing insurgency in Afghanistan, which officials believe is being fueled by militant strongholds in Pakistan.

The United States now has about 33,000 troops in Afghanistan, including 13,000 under NATO command. There are about 150,000 troops in Iraq.