Obama promises 'terror war' to continue with 10,000 more troops for Afghanistan

Barack Obama on July 14 pledged to increase US troops in Afghanistan by a third if he becomes president, sending 10,000 more to reinforce the 33,000 already there. He was speaking after the US lost nine soldiers at the weekend in the deadliest attack on its forces in the country since 2005. Obama has promised, soon after becoming president in January, to begin scaling back the 156,000 US troops in Iraq and Kuwait, and to shift the focus to Afghanistan. In an article written for the comment page of the New York Times, Obama wrote: "As president, I would pursue a new strategy and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan. We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more non-military assistance to accomplish our mission there." He said that ending the war in Iraq is "essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and al-Qaida has a safe haven." In a separate comment on the campaign trail, Obama said the killings on Sunday reinforced the need to switch resources from Iraq to Afghanistan. "I continue to believe that we're under-resourced in Afghanistan," he said. "That is the real center for terrorist activity that we have to deal with and deal with aggressively." As well as visiting Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama is to go to Germany, France and Britain and call on Germany and France, in particular, to increase their involvement in Afghanistan. Obama, in the New York Times article, reiterated his promise to have all US combat troops out by the summer of 2010, with a "residual" force left in place to fight al-Qaida and train Iraqi forces.