AP

WHICH of his generals will President Barack Obama listen to? Will it be his commander in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, who has asked for some 40,000 extra troops to reverse the recent gains of the Taliban? Or will it be one of General McChrystal's predecessors, Karl Eikenberry, now Mr Obama's ambassador to Afghanistan? He insists that no such reinforcement should be sent until President Hamid Karzai tackles the corruption and mismanagement that is rife in the country.

The debate over what to do in Afghanistan has raged in Washington for more than ten weeks since General McChrystal gave warning in an initial assessment that “resources will not win this war, but under-resourcing could lose it”. In recent days, though, Mr Eikenberry has pitched in forcefully with messages expressing his opposition to a troop surge.

The details of his messages are not known, but Mr Eikenberry is said to be doubtful about Mr Karzai's reliability as a partner and his willingness to curb corruption. In the weeks of political wrangling that followed last August's fraud-riddled election, Mr Karzai was first forced to accept a second round of voting (after nearly 1m ballots were deemed to be fraudulent). He was then declared the winner after the withdrawal of his main opponent, Abdullah Abdullah.

Mr Karzai is due to be sworn in on November 19th, with several Western foreign ministers in attendance. Despite the West's seal of approval for the election result, support for Mr Karzai in the long term is ambivalent and conditional on his doing a better job of running a clean and competent government.

It is unclear whether Mr Eikenberry's call to refrain from sending more troops is intended as a short-term tactic to increase pressure on Mr Karzai to make bolder reforms, or as an expression of the hopelessness of the Afghan venture.

Nevertheless, Mr Eikenberry's 11th-hour intervention could tip the scales in the White House. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, and Robert Gates, the defence secretary, are said broadly to support General McChrystal's call to add substantially more troops to the roughly 68,000 American and 35,000 allied forces in Afghanistan. Against them have stood Joe Biden, the vice-president, who is reckoned to favour a narrower focus on counter-terrorism operations, and Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, who is thought to be worried about the impact of the deepening war on Mr Obama's prospects for re-election.

Mr Obama is said to be weighing four options. These range from a minimal increase of 10,000-15,000 troops focusing mainly on intensifying the training of the Afghan army, to General McChrystal's favoured option of about 40,000 troops to conduct a more fully-fledged counter-insurgency campaign focused on “protecting the population” to isolate insurgents.

Mr Obama has now put off his decision until after he returns from his trip to Asian countries beginning this week, and may not make a choice until December. Many accuse him of dithering, and even close allies such as Britain are expressing exasperation with the delay in Washington. But others think Mr Obama's caution has proven wise, given the political mess in Kabul. What is undeniable is that the protracted debate within the administration is increasingly being fought in public.

It is also apparent that the hope of recreating the dream-team that oversaw the successful surge in Iraq—with General David Petraeus, the military commander, working in lock-step with Ryan Crocker, the ambassador in Baghdad—has not been realised in Afghanistan.