US President Barack Obamas national security team is moving to reframe its war strategy by emphasising the campaign against al-Qaeda in Pakistan while arguing that the Taliban in Afghanistan does not pose a direct threat to the US,officials said on Wednesday. As Obama met with advisers for three hours to discuss Pakistan,the White House said he has not decided whether to approve a proposed troop buildup in Afghanistan. But the shift in thinking suggests that the President has been presented with an approach that would not require all of the additional troops that his commanding general has requested. While Vice-President Joe Biden has argued for months against increasing troops in Afghanistan because Pakistan was the greater priority,Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defence Secretary Robert M Gates have both publicly warned that the Taliban remain linked to al-Qaeda and would give its fighters safe haven again if it regained control of Afghanistan,making it a mistake to think of them as separate problems. Moreover,Obamas commander there,Gen Stanley A McChrystal,has argued that success demands a substantial expansion of the American presence up to 40,000 additional troops and any decision that provides less will expose the President to criticism that his policy is a prescription for failure. The White House appears to be trying to prepare the ground to counter that by focusing attention on recent successes against al-Qaeda cells in Pakistan. The approach described by administration officials on Wednesday amounts to an alternative to the analysis presented by McChrystal. If it has improved the ability of the US to reduce the threat from al-Qaeda,then the war in Afghanistan is less important to American security. In reviewing McChrystals request,the White House is rethinking what was a strategy that viewed Pakistan and Afghanistan as a single integrated problem,according to several administration officials and outsiders who have spoken with them. Now the discussions in the White House Situation Room are focusing on related but separate strategies for fighting al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Clearly,al-Qaeda is a threat not only to the US homeland and American interests abroad,but it has a murderous agenda, one senior administration official said in an interview on Wednesday. We want to destroy its leadership,its infrastructure and its capability. The official contrasted that with the Taliban in Afghanistan. When the two are aligned,its mainly on the tactical front, the official said,noting that al-Qaeda has fewer than 100 fighters in Afghanistan. Officials argued that while al-Qaeda is a foreign body,the Taliban cannot be wholly removed from Afghanistan. Moreover,the forces often described as Taliban are actually an amalgamation of militants that includes local warlords like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the Haqqani network rather than just jihadist ideology.
