US-led occupation forces will remain in Afghanistan says Pentagon head Robert Gates. Public opinion in the US is against the war and wants the troops to be withdrawn from the central Asian state.
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Gates: US will stay in Afghanistan
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The US defence secretary has said American troops will not leave Afghanistan despite a lack of numbers that allows for Taliban's revival.
Speaking at George Washington University on Tuesday, Robert Gates said troops had to stay but that the situation required some "momentous decisions" from Barack Obama, the US president.
"Because of our inability, and the inability, frankly, of our allies, [to send] enough troops into Afghanistan, the Taliban do have the momentum right now, it seems," he said.
Gates said Washington could not afford to give al-Qaeda or the Taliban the propaganda victory of a US retreat.
"That country, and particularly the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, is ... where the mujahideen defeated the other superpower," he said.
"They now have the opportunity to defeat a second superpower, which more than anything would empower their message and the opportunity to recruit and fund raise and plan operations."
Pullout pressure
The comments by Gates, a former CIA chief, come as leftists and US foreign-policy critics increasingly call for a US pullout.
Dozens of protesters gathered outside the White House on Monday, and a few were arrested when they chained themselves to the gates.
Seeking to shore up support, Obama has invited senior Democratic and Republican politicians to the White House on Tuesday to discuss the war.
He will meet his national security team to continue the policy review on Wednesday and Friday.
Obama almost doubled the US troop total in Afghanistan to 62,000 to combat the worst violence since US-led forces ousted the Taliban rulers in 2001.
But signing off on the 30,000- to 40,000-troop increase that the top US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, is said to have requested would be politically risky for Obama.
Unease within his own Democratic Party has been voiced increasingly, as is fatigue among the American public after eight years of war in Afghanistan.
McChrystal's warning
Last week, McChrystal gave warning that Taliban fighters are gathering strength.
"The situation is serious and I choose that word very, very carefully," he told military and defence experts at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London on Thursday.
"My best military judgment is that the situation is, in some ways, deteriorating."
He went on to say that unrest across the country was up, and it was up "not only because there are more coalition forces, it is up because the insurgency is growing".
Any plan that falls short of stabilising Afghanistan "is probably a shortsighted strategy", McChrystal said, and he called openly for additional resources.
That prompted retired General James Jones, Obama's national security adviser, to say on Sunday that military advice is best provided "up through the chain of command".
Gates blames past lack of troops for Taliban edge
Tue Oct 6, 2009 10:10am EDT
By Arshad Mohammed and Matt Spetalnick
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Robert Gates blamed the Taliban's revival on a past failure to deploy enough troops to Afghanistan and said U.S. forces would not withdraw whatever the result of President Barack Obama's strategy review.
"We are not leaving Afghanistan. This discussion is about next steps forward and the president has some momentous decisions to make," Gates said in a TV program taped at George Washington University on Monday and being aired by CNN on Tuesday.
Obama faces pivotal decisions after the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, presented a grim assessment of the eight-year war.
Eight American soldiers were killed last Saturday when tribal militia stormed two combat outposts in eastern Afghanistan, the worst U.S. loss in more than a year.
The administration is debating whether to send up to 40,000 more troops, or scale back the mission and focus on striking al Qaeda cells, an idea backed by Vice President Joe Biden.
Gates suggested U.S. and allied failure to put more troops into Afghanistan in the past, when then-president George W. Bush shifted resources to invade Iraq, gave the Taliban an edge.
"Because of our inability, and the inability, frankly, of our allies, (for putting) enough troops into Afghanistan, the Taliban do have the momentum right now, it seems," Gates said.
Complicating the White House discussions are allegations of vote fraud in Afghanistan's August presidential election, mostly aimed at incumbent and provisional winner Hamid Karzai.
Some say if Karzai is declared victor despite the charges it will undermine his government's legitimacy. U.S. officials have cited the fraud allegations as a reason for the policy review.
VOTE COUNT RULES MAY HELP KARZAI
Afghan election authorities began a recount on Monday, but new rules appeared to make it unlikely Karzai's preliminary win would be overturned and a second round vote take place.
The former deputy head of the U.N. mission in Kabul, U.S. diplomat Peter Galbraith -- sacked last week for outspoken views on voting fraud -- said the method chosen to evaluate suspicious ballots was "not acceptable."
The new rules from the U.N.-backed Electoral Complaints Commission treat suspicious ballot boxes the same regardless of which candidate received the suspect votes.
Galbraith told Reuters: "It cannot be correct to treat all presidential candidates equally for disqualification of ballots."
"Let's not mince words: there was one candidate who had control of the state apparatus."
A final result from the poll will likely come next week.
Galbraith is close to Richard Holbrooke, Obama's Afghanistan and Pakistan point man. Holbrooke is not considered a Karzai fan and is presumably a key player in the White House talks.
But more than Afghanistan politics are at issue in the talks.
In his CNN remarks, Gates said the United States could not afford to give al Qaeda and the Taliban the propaganda victory of a U.S. retreat in Afghanistan, where mujahideen forced the Soviet Union to withdraw after a decade of bloody warfare.
"That country, and particularly the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, is the modern epicenter of jihad," he said.
"And their view is ... they now have the opportunity to defeat a second superpower, which more than anything would empower their message and the opportunity to recruit and fund raise and plan operations.
"What's more important than that in my view is the message that it sends that empowers al Qaeda," Gates said. "The notion that they have come back from this defeat, come back from 2002, to challenge not only the United States but NATO, 42 nations, is a hugely empowering message should they be successful."
With casualties rising, U.S. public opinion has turned increasingly against what Obama's aides once called the "good war," in contrast to the Iraq war launched by Bush in 2003.
Seeking to shore up support, Obama invited senior Democratic and Republican lawmakers to the White House on Tuesday to discuss the war. He will meet his national security team to continue the policy review on Wednesday and Friday.
Obama almost doubled the U.S. troop total in Afghanistan to 62,000 to combat the worst violence since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban rulers in 2001. The U.S. invasion was in response to the September 11 attacks carried out by al Qaeda, which had been given a haven in Afghanistan by the Taliban.
(Additional reporting by Peter Graff and Sayed Salahuddin in Kabul and Phil Stewart and Arshad Mohammed in Washington; Editing by Alan Elsner and Jerry Norton)
NATO says kills 100 fighters in huge Afghan battle
Tue Oct 6, 2009 11:21am EDT
KABUL (Reuters) - NATO forces said Tuesday they had killed more that 100 fighters in a huge weekend battle in eastern Afghanistan in which eight Americans died, the deadliest firefight for U.S. troops in more than a year.
The revised enemy death toll gives an idea of the scale of the battle, one of the biggest of the eight-year-old war, in which hundreds of fighters armed with machine guns, rifles and rocket-propelled grenades attempted to storm remote outposts.
"A more detailed battlefield assessment following the October 3 attack in Nuristan has determined that enemy forces suffered more than 100 dead during the well-coordinated defense, significantly higher losses than originally thought," NATO said in a statement.
The fighters launched their assault on two remote outposts in Nuristan province Saturday, triggering the 13-hour battle in a part of the country U.S. forces had already planned to abandon under a new strategy calling for a focus on population centres.
At least two Afghan soldiers died in the battle and authorities said they had lost contact with police in the area and did not know if they were captured or deserted.
The NATO statement said Western forces had concluded the attackers were local militants operating with the help of the Taliban and the Hezb-i-Islami group led by former anti-Soviet Mujahideen commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
Since the weekend assault, Afghan authorities say U.S. and Afghan forces have mounted a number of operations to retake areas held by the Taliban. U.S. officials say operations have taken place in the area but have not give further details.
(Reporting by Peter Graff; Editing by Nick Macfie)
Western Afghanistan, a new worry?
By Golnar Motevalli
Reuters
Herat province in west Afghanistan is seen as one of the country’s safest areas. It is one of the largest, most prosperous Afghan provinces — its capital’s wide, smooth and tree-lined boulevards are a far cry from Kabul’s crumbling skyline.
But the past few months have seen a sharp increase in violence.
Last month a cabinet minister and former militia leader, Ismail Khan, was the target of a bomb attack in Herat city. A day earlier, Herati traders took to the streets to protest against rising insecurity in the province.
Khan, who is seen by many Heratis as an icon of the anti-Taliban and anti-Soviet mujahedin, was unharmed, but three civilians were killed.
The district of Guzara in Herat has seen a spate of Taliban attacks, including the shooting dead of three men and the hanging of another and an ambush on a policeman’s home in which his teenage son was killed.
Since July at least 29 civilians have been killed in insurgent-linked attacks in Herat. Foreign troops, mainly Italians and Americans, are hit by roadside bombs or ambushed on a weekly basis.
While these attacks do not put Herat on a par with southern provinces such as Kandahar or Helmand — where the Taliban have grass-roots support in many areas — they still point to a considerable rise in instability in Herat, when compared to the same period last year.
Although the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, focusses mainly on the insurgency in the Pashtun tribal belt of the south and east, in
an interview with CBS news recently, he said the spread of violence to the mostly Tajik north and west was worse than he had expected.
Some analysts, including Ahmed Rashid, a prominent authority on the Taliban, have warned that the Taliban has been pushing further westwards and northwards for the past year in an effort to consolidate gains already made in northern provinces such as Badghis and Kunduz — where there are mainly European troops.
Iran might also have reason to be alarmed. Last month, three Afghan policemen at a checkpoint very close to the border with Iran were killed in a Taliban ambush about two months after they attacked an Iranian engineering company, killing one employee.
U.S. military and Afghan officials have said that the rise in Taliban attacks in the west is partly a result of July’s U.S. operation “Strike of the Sword” in southern Helmand province, which has pushed Taliban fighters to the west and north.
Farah province, which is sandwiched between Herat and Helmand, has also seen a sharp spike in violence since the U.S. operation and the Taliban now command checkpoints in districts
such as Bala Boluk. In April I accompanied U.S. and Afghan army patrols in Bala Boluk, but on my second visit to Farah in August, I was told the entire district was now pretty much a no-go zone.
Could Herat’s Guzara district, where much of the Taliban-related violence has taken place in the past months, be on the same slide into Taliban control?
And are the Italian troops, who make up the bulk of main foreign force in Herat, and whom the Taliban perceive as weaker than their U.S. counterparts, capable of containing the growth of the insurgency in the west?
New Taliban chief meets reporters
The new head of Pakistan's Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, has met reporters in the country's north-west, quashing persistent rumours he was dead.
It is the first public appearance by the Taliban chief since he took control after his predecessor was killed in a US missile attack in August.
Hakimullah Mehsud said he would avenge the killing of Baitullah Mehsud.
News of the meeting came as a suicide bomber targeted the UN's offices in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.
The BBC's M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad says that Hakimullah Mehsud's decision to appear before the press indicates the Taliban are desperate to shore up the morale of their comrades in other regions.
The meeting comes at a time when the Pakistani army and US drones have been aggressively targeting the militant leadership in the region.
Hakimullah Mehsud met only journalists from his clan at a location which has not been disclosed. Five Mehsud reporters based near his stronghold in the tribal region of South Waziristan attended the clandestine meeting on Sunday.
It was held on condition that it could be reported only on Monday.
Very few other journalists were invited - those who were did not go for security reasons.
The Taliban commander's appearance in public will end weeks of speculation on the part of Pakistani and US intelligence officials that he was in fact dead, our correspondent says.
Rumours of his demise persisted despite the fact that he had spoken to the BBC and other media outlets by telephone on a number of occasions in recent months.
Vengeance promised
Hakimullah Mehsud was flanked by senior Taliban commanders Qari Waliur Rehman and Qari Hussain - the man reputed to be responsible for training suicide bombers.
One of the journalists who was at the meeting told the BBC that all the militant leaders appeared to be in good health.
Hakimullah Mehsud said his group would avenge the killing of former Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud by striking back at Pakistan and the US.
He said he would retaliate against recent efforts on the part of the US and Pakistani security forces to target senior Taliban figures.
A number of senior militant commanders have been killed in recent missile strikes along the troubled border with Afghanistan.
Hakimullah Mehsud's brother was killed in a clash with security forces only last week.
The recent spate of strikes on Taliban commanders follows the death of Baitullah Mehsud in a US missile attack in the tribal region of South Waziristan on 6 August.
After some weeks the Taliban acknowledged his death and put Hakimullah Mehsud, the young and feared commander from South Waziristan, at its helm.
Correspondents say a series of blasts across the country's north-west in the past month show that the Taliban appear to be reasserting themselves after a series of setbacks.
This public appearance by Hakimullah Mehsud appears to be part of an effort to prevent the Pakistani Taliban from disintegrating, our correspondent says.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/8290243.stm
Published: 2009/10/05 11:14:22 GMT
Suicide bomb hits UN in Pakistan
A suicide bomber dressed in military uniform has attacked the UN World Food Programme offices in Pakistan's capital Islamabad, killing five people.
Pakistan's interior minister said an investigation had begun into security lapses after guards had allowed the man into the compound to go to the toilet.
Four of the dead are Pakistanis, the fifth is an Iraqi. The bomber died too.
It is unclear who is responsible but suspicion will fall on the Pakistani Taliban, correspondents say.
They promised revenge for the killing of their leader Baitullah Mehsud in a US drone strike in August and have been behind a series of recent attacks.
Last week, at least 16 people died in two suicide car bomb attacks in north-western Pakistan.
'No to terrorists'
Local television footage showed smoke rising from the heavily fortified UN building, shortly after the early afternoon blast in its reception area.
A number of injured people are being treated in hospital.
The BBC's Orla Guerin in Islamabad says heavily armed anti-terror police quickly ringed the compound and sniffer dogs were brought in.
For Pakistan this was an unwelcome reminder that their capital remains vulnerable, our correspondent says. It is further proof that the militants can still strike in spite of increased security precautions and ongoing army operations.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik said an investigation had been launched into the security officials who had allowed the bomber, who was wearing a uniform of the paramilitary Frontier Corps, to enter.
Mr Malik said the attack would not "slacken the resolve" of Pakistan's efforts to counter the Taliban.
He said: "The operations that we carried out against them in Swat, North Waziristan and South Waziristan have broken their back. They are like a wounded snake."
Mr Malik added: "I want to make it clear to the terrorists that the entire nation is united, and the entire nation says no to Taliban, no to oppressors, no to terrorists, no to extremists."
'Heinous crime'
Earlier, a WFP employee, Sajjad Anwar, said about 100 people were working in the compound at the time.
"Walls of the building have cracked because of the intensity of the blast," he said.
"I don't know how this could have happened. We have private security as well as government-provided police."
The WFP said five of its staff members had been confirmed dead.
They included two Pakistani finance assistants and an Iraqi information and communication technology officer.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned the attack.
"This is a heinous crime committed against those who have been working tirelessly to assist the poor and vulnerable," he said in Geneva.
The attack came as Britain's defence and home ministers visited Islamabad for talks with Pakistani officials on the role Pakistan plays in combating terror in the UK.
A British embassy spokesman said: "I'm not prepared to say where they are staying, but it is safe to say they were not affected."
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/8290059.stm
Published: 2009/10/05 16:18:01 GMT
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