Al Jazeera reports that the United States will send between 20,000 and 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan in order to fight and, hopefully defeat the Taliban.

Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, said the troops would be in place by the summer of 2009.

General David McKiernan asked for 20,000 more troops earlier this month. After some debate, the Pentagon approved his request.

“The troops that were asked for in joint discussions with General McKiernan is what we’re going to need for the foreseeable future. So I don’t see an increase any higher at this point than 20 to 30,000,” Mullen said.

Mullen said he hoped the extra troops – including four combat brigades, an aviation brigade and other support forces – could all be deployed by mid-2009.

“We’re looking to get them here in the spring, but certainly by the beginning of summer at the latest,” he said.

The U.S. currently has 31,000 troops in Afghanistan. The planned surge could, therefore, almost double the amount of U.S. forces in this war torn and highly chaotic country.

Although the war in Afghanistan once was the front war in the global war on terrorism, it took a backseat in 2003, after the U.S. invaded Iraq. This war, in a bigger country with a larger population and a more numerous insurgency was deemed more important and vital to U.S. interests in the region.

Now that the war in Iraq seems to be going rather well, however, U.S. civil and military leaders have started focusing once again on the war in Afghanistan; a war that was the direct result of the terrorist attacks carried out by Al Qaeda on 9/11/01.

Since a surgency accomplished a lot in Iraq, U.S. leaders tend to believe that it could do the trick in Afghanistan as well. Sadly, however, I think they are wrong.

The lesson of the surge is not that simply more troops work. Rather, it is that every country needs an individual, different plan. In the case of Afghanistan, this means that the U.S. will have to work with local tribal leaders and that it will have to encourage farmers to stop growing poppy fields or, if this is not possible simply because they can grow no other product and still make a profit, to buy the opium from the farmers and to use it for regular drugs such as painkillers and other medicines.

The U.S. can send 30,000 more troops or even 300,000. They will not make a difference, however, as long as the U.S. continues to destroy the livelihood of farmers, thereby pushing them in the arms of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

More troops are useful, but only if they are part of a grand new strategy aimed at emancipating Afghanistan’s farmers and rural population. If not, they’re useless.