Afghan violence 'at peak level'

The violence that has surged for two years in Afghanistan has reached a new high and more difficulty lies ahead, America’s top war zone commander said.

General David Petraeus said the number of attacks in Afghanistan over the last week hit the highest level since the December 2001 fall of the Taliban.

“Some of this will go up because we are going to go after their sanctuaries and safe havens as we must,” Gen Petraeus, head of US Central Command, said during a speech at the Washington think-tank Centre for a New American Security.

“But there is no question the situation has deteriorated over the course of the past two years in particular and there are difficult times ahead.”

There were more than 400 insurgent attacks last week, including ambushes, small arms volleys, assaults on Afghan infrastructure and government offices, and roadside bomb and mine explosions. In comparison, attacks in January 2004 were less than 50 a week.

Extremist attacks in the rural nation tend to increase in the summer months, and in part are spurred by military efforts to crack down on insurgents, Gen Petraeus said.

Gen Petraeus, who led a beefed-up US military effort that helped turn about violence in Iraq in 2007, noted several challenges in Afghanistan he did not face while in Baghdad – including the inability of US troops to live among the residents.

He cited the need for “being good partners and good neighbours and having enormous concern, needless to say, about civilian casualties in everything we do”.

Gen Petraeus did not shed light on an inquiry he is overseeing about US air strikes in a western Afghanistan province that killed at least 30 civilians while trying to protect a village from a Taliban onslaught.

The inquiry’s results are to be released as early as today, but the Pentagon said earlier this week US troops did not follow proper tactics and procedures during the May 4-5 assault in Farah province.

Afghan officials have said that the civilian toll was 140 dead, but US commanders have said they believe no more than 30 civilians were killed, along with 60 to 65 Taliban insurgents.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said on Monday that it was unclear whether an apparent failure by a B-1 bomber crew to follow procedures during the strikes “had anything to do with the fact that civilian casualties did occur in this incident”.

In Brussels, after meeting European defence ministers, US defence secretary Robert Gates said Nato allies agreed with the US that progress must be shown in Afghanistan over the next year to 18 months.

He said that after this summer’s election in Afghanistan, he hoped “to see if we can shift the momentum”.