Thursday, December 10, 2009
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates yesterday toured the nerve centre of NATO command in Afghanistan, telling officers an imminent troop surge would turn around the eight-year war against the Taliban.
Gates visited the NATO-run International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) joint operation centre, which has 170 staff from 42 nations, saying improved allied co-operation and the sweeping new strategy put success within reach.
"We have all the pieces coming together to be successful here," Gates told staff in the imposing command room, where commanders co-ordinate operations throughout Afghanistan.
Gates is the most senior US official to visit the country since President Barack Obama ordered the deployment of an extra 30,000 troops to battle the Taliban, with the goal of starting to withdraw forces in July 2011.
Thousands of extra forces will head to southern Afghanistan. However, a plan for Gates to visit US troops in Kandahar province, one of the key battlegrounds and the spiritual capital of the Taliban, was cancelled due to harsh weather. Instead, he visited a base where Afghanistan’s nascent air force is being trained and commanders briefed him on the challenges involved in recruiting Afghan forces, on which Washington’s withdrawal strategy depends.
The number two NATO commander on the ground, Lieutenant General David Rodriguez, said problems of recruiting and retaining personnel were particularly acute in the south, where the fighting is heaviest.
"They are getting in tough fights all the time down there," he said. "Where it’s hard, we can’t recruit and we can’t retain" Afghan forces.
Gates says the goal is to increase the Afghan army to 134,000 soldiers at the end of 2010, with an ultimate size of 240,000.
Obama’s timeline for a US draw-down has sparked criticism from domestic opponents and within Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan, where many fear the Taliban will sit out the surge, regroup and step up attacks in 18 months’ time.
Soaring violence has made this year the deadliest since the Taliban fell from power in 2001, with record numbers of civilians, Afghan and foreign troops killed.
Rodriguez conceded that civilians may have been killed in a joint military operation with Afghan forces in the east of the country this week. Civilian deaths are a highly sensitive subject in Afghanistan, because of fears they could create animosity against the Western-backed government and foreign forces.
"There could possibly have been some civilians killed," said Rodriguez.
President Hamid Karzai’s office said six civilians, including a woman, died when troops from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) conducted an operation in the eastern province of Laghman.
However, the overall commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, predicted that the surge – which will raise overall foreign troop numbers to 150,000 – would reverse the momentum of Taliban insurgents within a year.
He warned, however, the insurgency was "complex and resilient", that the most difficult task would be improving the government’s credibility, and that killing or capturing Osama bin Laden was key to defeating al-Qaida.
"I believe he is an iconic figure at this point whose survival emboldens al-Qaida as a franchising organisation across the world," McChrystal said in Washington.
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