The US is considering sending an extra 7,000 troops to Afghanistan next year to make up for a shortfall in contributions from NATO allies, the New York Times reported yesterday.
Citing unnamed senior administration officials, the newspaper said if the plan was to be approved, the number of US troops in the country would rise to about 40,000, and entail at least a modest reduction in troops from Iraq.
US President George W. Bush told allies at a NATO summit in Bucharest last month that the US would significantly increase its force levels in Afghanistan next year.
US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates also has pushed other European allies to provide combat troops and equipment to fill shortfalls in the volatile south, but the response so far has been tepid.
But the Times said the Pentagon now appears resigned to the fact that NATO is unable or unwilling to contribute more troops despite its public pledges.
The increasing proportion of US troops in Afghanistan, from about half to about two-thirds of all foreign troops in the country, will likely result in what one senior administration official described as “the re-Americanization” of the war, the report said.
“There are simply going to be more American forces than we’ve ever had there,” the paper quoted the official as saying.
So far a dozen NATO countries have pledged a total of about 2,000 additional troops for Afghanistan, while alliance commanders have asked for 10,000, the paper said.
The US has about 34,000 troops in Afghanistan, 16,000 of them under the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in eastern Afghanistan.
The other 18,000 are involved in counter-terrorism operations and training of Afghan security forces.
But a contingent of some 2,500 US Marines was deployed to Afghanistan last month to reinforce NATO forces in the south for seven months.
Southern Afghanistan, site of the worst in a surge of Taliban violence, is under NATO command. Britain, Canada, the Netherlands and Australia have forces there.
“This is a matter that’s going to be looked at over probably some period of time primarily because it requires consultation with our allies,” Gates told reporters when asked to comment on discussion at the Pentagon about the possibility of taking over command in the south.
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
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