The cost of fighting the war in Afghanistan will overtake
that of the Iraq conflict for the first time in 2010, Pentagon
budget documents showed Thursday. On top of the basic defense
budget of 533.7 billion dollars, the White House is requesting
a further 130 billion dollars for overseas missions, including
65 billion for Afghanistan and 61 billion for Iraq.
“This request is where you’re going to first see
the swing of not only dollars or resources, but combat capability,
from the Iraqi theater into the Afghan theater,” Navy
Vice Admiral Steve Stanley, director of force structure for
the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters. Some 136,000
US troops are currently stationed in Iraq, but they are set
to be progressively withdrawn by the end of 2011, in accordance
with a security pact signed between Washington and Baghdad
in late 2008.
The withdrawal from Iraq will be accompanied by a buildup in Afghanistan, which President Barack Obama has made a priority of his administration, dispatching 21,000 extra troops to the region to combat an emboldened insurgency. US forces in Afghanistan are set to reach 68,000 by the end of this year.
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The United States has about 45,000 troops in Afghanistan, the bulk of a foreign deployment of roughly 70,000 soldiers tasked with hunting down armed Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants, as well as stabilizing the country.
The funds are part of a total 663.7-billion-dollar Pentagon spending plan that aims “to try to reshape the military to have more capability to fight irregular and unconventional war while maintaining a balance of conventional capability, and modernize with those themes in mind,” budget documents said.
