The US Defense Department said on Wednesday it has shelved a plan to take greater control in parts of Afghanistan where NATO is in charge after the Dutch and British agreed to extend their commands.
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said the Netherlands and Britain will stay in control in southern Afghanistan for a full year, rather than a few more months, as the military alliance fights a stubborn Taliban insurgency.
The European allies agreed to the new arrangement in recent conversations with Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Morrell said.
“I think we’re trying to create a situation in which ... by the command serving longer, there’ll be greater stability and continuity to our operations” in southern Afghanistan, Morrell said.
The US raised the idea and allies signed on, he said.
The US has complained that changing commands every nine months and rotating troops even more frequently do not provide the necessary continuity for an effective fight against the insurgency, particularly in Afghanistan’s volatile south.
In recent months, the Pentagon suggested giving the US military more authority in those areas now under NATO command. US control is now limited to eastern Afghanistan.
Gates said that the idea, which reflected internal discussion, was worth considering. US military leaders had expressed concern about a lack of continuity among NATO forces.
Also, there was a sense that, in the long run, it might be better for NATO to focus mainly on areas with less fighting but a great need for noncombat aid — in Afghanistan’s north and west, for example.
Taliban resistance has stiffened in the south since NATO took command there in mid-2006. Some officials in the Pentagon have said the fight against the Taliban could gain strength if the US also took charge in part or all the south.
Asked if the new agreement ends discussion that one country — likely the US — take charge of operations in the south, Morrell said it addresses the issue there for at least the next two-and-a-half years.
A NATO official said on Wednesday that while the US floated the idea of controlling the south, the Pentagon did not press hard for the plan. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not involved in the Pentagon’s announcement, said there were no real disputes over the plan.
Under the new agreement, the Canadians, who now control the south, will leave in November and the Dutch will assume command. In November next year the British would take over, and the US is on tap to take command of the region in November 2010.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS