20,000 troops headed toward Afghanistan in 2009

Reuters:

The Pentagon is considering a plan to send more than 20,000 troops to Afghanistan over the next 12 to 18 months to help safeguard elections and quell rising Taliban violence, officials said on Friday.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he and top commanders had discussed sending five brigades to Afghanistan, including four brigades of combat ground forces as well as an aviation brigade, which a defense official said would consist mainly of support troops. An Army combat brigade has about 3,500 soldiers.

Gates said much of the infusion could take place before Afghanistan holds elections by next autumn.

"I think it's important that we have a surge of forces before the election," said Gates, who stressed no decision on troop deployments had been taken.

...

This appears to be in response to a previous request for this amount of troops. Having additional troops in place for the election make sense, but it is very hard for the enemy to attack polling locations. The Taliban relies on ambiguity as to time and place of attack in order to get tactical surprise. Both elements are missing in an election that takes place on a specific date for a specific time period. The enemy would be fooling to attack a defended target.

The troops are needed for among other things training of additional Afghan forces so that we can increase the force to space ratio and get people familiar with the language in place to protect the people. This leads to increased intelligence so that more directed attacks can be made against enemy sanctuaries. It has a cascading effect on the enemy.