A sneak peek at Obama’s Af-Pak strategy

Over at The Atlantic, Marc Ambinder offers a peek into President Barack Obama’s Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy — to be unveiled tomorrow. Among the highlights:

• Obama plans to endorse a bill by Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairs Kerry and Lugar that would “emphasize results-driven cooperation with both countries” and “condition a significant increase in aid to Pakistan on measurable improvements in Pakistan’s internal efforts to combat terrorism.”

• The new policy apparently does not “express a preference for specific leaders”; in contrast, the Bush administration favored Afghan President Hamid Karzai and former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, at “the expense of rooting out corruption and terrorism.” He notes: “The U.S. hasn’t found a candidate it likes.”

• The plan explains how Obama intends to use the 17,000 additional troops he’s sending to Afghanistan: “4,000 will be tasked with training Afghan soldiers and the national police; the administration hopes to have more than 130,000 soldiers and 82,000 police officers trained by 2011. The rest of the troops will be given expanded counter-terrorism assignments and charged with defeating Al Qaeda, not just killing them in isolation.”

• It also deals with Iran. Obama will “ask neighboring nations to form a working group to handle disputes and plan longer-term initiatives,” Ambinder writes.

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