WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama will map a course for drawing down the nearly 10-year war in Afghanistan Wednesday, when he is expected to set a target of bringing home about 30,000 troops by the end of 2012.
The president is likely to pull out 10,000 troops by the end of this year, administration and Pentagon officials said, and aims to bring another 20,000 home by the end of next year.
But with 100,000 U.S. troops currently in Afghanistan, that drawdown may not be substantial enough to satisfy some lawmakers on Capitol Hill and a war-weary public.
The initial withdrawal is expected to happen in two phases, with 5,000 troops coming home this summer and an additional 5,000 by the end of the year, a senior U.S. defense official said.
The pace of bringing home the other 20,000 forces was unclear heading into Obama's primetime address to the nation Wednesday. The White House opted not to give the president's speech the weight of an Oval Office address. Instead, Obama was to speak for about 10 to 15 minutes from the East Room of the White House.
Obama's expected blueprint focuses on the 30,000 surge forces he ordered to Afghanistan as part of his 2009 decision to send reinforcements to reverse the Taliban's battlefield momentum.
The president reached his decision a week after receiving a range of options from Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan. Obama informed his senior national security advisers, including outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, of his plans during a White House meeting Tuesday.
"The president is commander in chief," spokesman Jay Carney said. "He is in charge of this process, and he makes the decision."
The administration has begun briefing NATO allies on its plans. British Prime Minister David Cameron's office confirmed that officials there have been informed but declined to offer comment, or to make any immediate statement on the plans for about 9,500 British forces in Afghanistan.
The withdrawals would put the U.S. on a path toward giving Afghans control of their security by 2014 and ultimately shifting the U.S. military from a combat role to a mission focused on training and supporting Afghan forces.
The Obama administration has said its goal in continuing the Afghanistan war is to blunt the Taliban insurgency and dismantle and defeat al-Qaida, the terror network that used the country as a training ground for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S. As of Tuesday, at least 1,522 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to an Associated Press count.
The U.S. and its allies have set Dec. 31, 2014, as a target date for ending the combat mission in Afghanistan.
A reduction this year totaling 10,000 troops would be the rough equivalent of two brigades, which are the main building blocks of an Army division. It's not clear whether Obama's decision would require the Pentagon to pull out two full brigades or, instead, withdraw a collection of smaller combat and support units with an equivalent number of troops.
If Obama were to leave the bulk of the 30,000 surge contingent in Afghanistan through 2012, he would be giving the military another fighting season - in addition to the one now under way - to further damage Taliban forces before a larger withdrawal got started. It also would buy more time for the Afghan army and police to grow in numbers and capability.
Under that scenario, the emphasis in U.S.-led military operations is likely to shift away from troop-intensive counterinsurgency operations toward more narrowly focused counterterrorism operations, which focus on capturing and killing insurgents.
Afghan security forces and judicial institutions are expected to take up many aspects of the counterinsurgency fight by establishing the rule of law and respect for government institutions, U.S. officials in Afghanistan said Tuesday.
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