WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration is quietly working to lower expectations for this weekend’s parliamentary election in Afghanistan, worried that a messy outcome will fuel U.S. public doubt over the nine-year war.

The elections will be a measure of whether fragile Afghan institutions have improved since last year’s fraud-marred presidential poll, and if President Barack Obama’s revised war strategy is making the country more stable so American troops can start to withdraw as planned from July 2011.

How the elections go will likely be an indicator in a year-end review by Obama of his strategy overhaul last December, which included sending in an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to fight the Taliban.

“If the elections do not yield positive signals, I think it is going to empower those who are skeptical that the U.S. should stay the course” that Obama has laid out, said Ashley Tellis, an Afghan expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think tank.

Critics will use the elections and other issues to “make the argument that maybe we ought to revisit the determined kind of posture that President Obama has adopted and look for a Plan B,” Tellis added.

U.S. officials have been quietly talking down prospects for the election, saying they expected widespread claims of corruption to emerge and that running an election during wartime is bound to be problematic.

A key concern is that Afghans will feel too threatened to go to the polls on September 18 to choose a total of 249 members to the country’s lower house of parliament.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Pentagon said on Friday it would double the number of U.S. helicopters to help with relief efforts in Pakistan after epic floods that have overwhelmed the fragile government there.

An additional 18 helicopters would arrive in mid-September as part of an expanded U.S. contribution to deal with the floods, the Pentagon said. These would be in addition to 15 helicopters and three C-130 aircraft already there.

Rajiv Shah, administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development, said it was clear after he personally surveyed flood damage this week that significant resources would be needed when the waters receded.

“The scale and scope of this natural disaster is astronomical,” he told a news conference in Washington on his return from Pakistan.

The floods have affected more than 20 million people and Shah said about 23 percent of the country’s cropland — or 4.3 million acres — was under water.

More than 9 million people are in need of immediate support because of the raging waters, which have spread out over a landmass bigger than Italy, he said.

Shah created a stir when he visited a flood victims’ camp on Wednesday where some supplies had been distributed days earlier by militant groups who are trying to compete for hearts and minds via much-needed aid.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States has seen evidence that Pakistani militants and affiliated charities are deepening their involvement in flood relief in an effort to win popular support, a senior U.S. official said.

The disclosure follows State Department warnings that insurgents may also be targeting foreign aid workers responding to the floods, and raises the stakes in relief efforts that critics say are moving too slowly.

The worst floods in decades, triggered by unusually heavy monsoon rains more than three weeks ago, have overwhelmed the Pakistani state’s ability to respond.

One major risk is Islamist charities and militants successfully exploiting anger over the government response, even as the United States and international allies rush to deliver additional aid.

The senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said militants were even dispensing money for victims.

“There are certainly clear indications that the insurgents and affiliated groups are trying to use the flood and the relief from the flood to try to gain support for their broader effort of being able to control large parts of Pakistan,” the official said on Thursday.

Pakistan, aware of the risks, last week announced it would clamp down on charities linked to Islamist militant groups.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States expects the Taliban to increase attacks in next month’s parliamentary elections, including in Afghanistan’s north where insurgents have made inroads, a senior U.S. defense official said on Thursday.

The parliamentary poll will be a litmus test for stability in Afghanistan as well as the credibility of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who was roundly criticized over the handling of last year’s fraud-marred presidential elections.

“The biggest single variable that is important to watch is the degree of security that there is for the elections,” the defense official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.

The official said the Taliban had, for example, put an “extra effort” in the once peaceful north since last year’s presidential election.

“It is quite possible that the election turnout there (in the north) will be less than it was last year. But it is hard to make a judgment based on turnout because the turnout for the provincial elections will be based on the competitiveness of the local races,” said the official.

The Taliban, which has been largely active in their strongholds in the east and south, has stepped up strikes in what was once a relatively secure north. On Thursday, eight police officers were killed in Kunduz.

“I am certainly concerned about the efforts by the Taliban to intimidate and affect the election process and am concerned about their plans to try and make the election day a day of violence and how that will affect, first of all, the overall willingness of the Afghans to vote and secondly the ability to carry out the elections themselves,” said the official.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama’s July 2011 date to start withdrawing troops from Afghanistan has given a morale boost to Taliban insurgents, who believe they can wait out NATO forces, the top U.S. Marine said Tuesday.

But General James Conway, who is retiring this fall as commandant of the Marine Corps, said he believed Marines would not be in a position to withdraw from the fight in southern Afghanistan for years.

Conway’s unusually blunt assessment is likely to fan criticism by opposition Republicans of Obama’s war strategy as public opinion of the nine-year-old war sours further.

“In some ways, we think right now it is probably giving our enemy sustenance,” Conway said of the July 2011 deadline.

“In fact we’ve intercepted communications that say, ‘Hey, you know, we only need to hold out for so long.’”

Supporters of Obama’s July 2011 date to start withdrawing forces from Afghanistan, conditions permitting, say it conveys a needed sense of urgency to Kabul. Afghans must quickly ramp up the size of their security forces for an eventual handover.

But critics say the strategy backfired, sending a signal to the Taliban that the United States was preparing to wind down the war while setting unrealistic expectations to Americans about the pace of progress in Afghanistan.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – High drop-out and illiteracy rates mean it will take until late October 2011 to build up Afghanistan’s police and military so they can take the lead in more areas, a senior U.S. commander said on Monday.

Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon via video link-up from Afghanistan, Lieutenant-General William Caldwell said at the current pace of training, the Afghan army and police could take the lead only in “isolated pockets” of the country and with support from foreign forces.

“To say they will be able to do much more before October next year would be stretching it, only because we have not finished the development of their force,” said Caldwell, who leads NATO’s training mission.

“So if somebody says, when will the security force have the lead in a particular area, we will not have finished building the entire army until October of next year,” he added.

U.S. forces are expected to start withdrawing from Afghanistan from July next year, but the scale and pace of the pullout depend on the ability of Afghans to take responsibility for security in major parts of the country.

“We are aware of the date,” said Caldwell when asked whether the timing of troop training was in line with a pledge by President Barack Obama to start withdrawing U.S. forces from July 2011 if the right conditions exist.

“We continue to say that by … the end of October, we can make the current growth objectives with our Afghan counterparts as we move forward,” said Caldwell.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Influential U.S. Senator John Kerry returned abruptly to Afghanistan on Thursday to see President Hamid Karzai, seeking to press him over a four-month deadline for private security contractors to be disbanded.

In Washington, Kerry’s office confirmed that instead of returning to Washington, the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had flown back to Kabul from neighboring Pakistan, where he surveyed damage from epic floods.

“Senator Kerry has returned to Kabul as part of his ongoing effort to assess conditions on the ground and will complete his meetings with President Karzai and U.S. officials and visit with U.S. soldiers,” spokesman Fred Jones told Reuters.

Jones declined to provide a specific reason for Kerry to hold a second round of meetings with Karzai, except to say more details would be available on Friday after the talks.

Other sources said Kerry was expected to press Karzai to be flexible on the four-month deadline for security contractors to leave, a timeline the Pentagon called “very aggressive” and challenging.

Karzai issued the security contractors’ decree just hours after seeing Kerry on Tuesday when the senator also urged him to work harder to fight corruption and improve governance.

Kerry said before the order was issued that it was in Afghanistan’s interests not to have a “whole bunch” of private security firms there but added a reasonable timeframe was “up for grabs.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. military will conduct an anti-submarine warfare exercise with South Korea early next month, sending a message to the North that Washington is committed to defending its ally, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the joint exercise, which is likely to annoy regional power China, would be conducted off the western coast of the Korean Peninsula and was aimed at defending against “sub-surface” attacks, particularly following the sinking of one of the south’s warships in March.

“This exercise certainly sends a clear message to North Korea that the U.S. is committed to the defense of the Republic of Korea,” Whitman told reporters. “Our commitment is unequivocal.”

Asked about China’s likely negative reaction, Whitman said Beijing had no reason to view the joint series of exercises as a threat to its security.

“These exercises are intended to deter North Korea from future destabilizing attacks such as that which occurred with Cheonan,” he said, referring to the sinking of the South Korean warship earlier this year, which was blamed on Pyongyang.

The North has denied involvement in the sinking of the Cheonan, which killed 46 sailors, and sees the latest string of joint exercises as a provocation by its neighbor and Washington.

After Seoul competed drills near a disputed maritime border off the west coast this month, the North retaliated by firing a barrage of artillery shells in the same area.

WASHINGTON, Aug 16 (Reuters) – China is expanding its military edge over Taiwan, increasing the lethality of its short-range ballistic missiles while raising the risk of “misunderstanding and miscalculation,” the Pentagon said on Monday.

“Many uncertainties remain regarding how China will use its expanding military capabilities,” according to the annual U.S. Defense Department report to Congress on China’s military.

The report also said that China, a growing world economic and military power, was unlikely to be able to deploy large-scale military forces in high-intensity combat operations far from China until well into the next decade.

China has considered Taiwan — the self-ruled island across the Taiwan Strait — as a renegade province since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949 and insists on unification, by force if necessary.

Since opening diplomatic relations with Beijing in 1979, the United States has been obligated by law to provide Taiwan with arms for its self-defense.

The report, which covered Chinese military activities in 2009, said that China’s buildup opposite Taiwan has continued unabated, adding: “The balance of cross-Strait military forces continues to shift in the mainland’s favor.”

“The limited transparency in China’s military and security affairs enhances uncertainty and increases the potential for misunderstanding and miscalculation,” the report stated.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a driving force behind both the Afghan war plan and in overhauling the Pentagon’s finances, said in an interview published on Monday he aims to retire next year.

But his press secretary Geoff Morrell shot down suggestions that Gates announced his retirement to Foreign Policy magazine, saying it was nothing more than “musings” over a wish to quit, which the U.S. defense chief has done before.

“I think that it would be a mistake to wait until January 2012,” Gates was quoted as telling the magazine in an article published on its web site. http:/www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/08/16/the_transformer

“This is not the kind of job you want to fill in the spring of an election year,” added Gates, who is also in the midst of a major budgetary overhaul of the Pentagon.

But Morrell sounded a cautionary note when asked to comment: “Don’t get carried away. This is not Bob Gates announcing he is stepping down. This is somebody who has been a failure at retirement, musing about when it would make sense to try again.”

“All he was doing here was expressing the logic about leaving with enough time on the clock for the president to backfill him,” he told Reuters. “That Gates would like to leave should not come as news to anybody.”

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