Obama's Afghan troops withdrawal announcement could see shift in war tactics

Washington -  US President Barack Obama's announcement of withdrawing 33,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan by next summer from Afghanistan could lead to a shift in war tactics, including where and how the war has been fought over the past two years.

The 'surge' US troops deployed by Obama last year have been concentrating on battling the Taliban in the flat, desert south through a counter-insurgency strategy that requires intensive investments of money and personnel.

Obama, however, has now declared those areas sufficiently stabilized to begin lowering the U.S. profile there, the Washington Post reports.

'We are starting this drawdown from a position of strength,' he said.

A military official has said that although the east has been a secondary focus of the US compared with the Taliban heartland in southern Afghanistan, it has always presented a 'tougher kinetic fight' than the south.

Meanwhile, CIA operations in Pakistan against al-Qaeda senior figures and hideouts have become more difficult after the Abbottabad operation the killed Osama bin Laden.

'It is a different fight, and it has been for some period of time,' Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who has urged a greater focus on eastern Afghanistan and on Pakistan, has said.

'The president talks about [insurgent] sanctuaries,' Kerry said in an interview after Obama's address. 'That is where almost all the mischief comes from. If we can change that equation, that is the best opportunity to protect what we have gained in Afghanistan,' he added.

Although the Obama administration has denied any shift in the strategy that Obama announced in December 2009, a renewed focus on the east is poised to bring a change in the balance between the major counterinsurgency in the southern mission and the targeted counterterrorism that has marked U.S. operations in eastern Afghanistan and Pakistan.