US vice president-elect Joe Biden pledged long-term US support for Afghanistan during a visit and the commander of NATO-led forces told him that thousands of new US troops expected this year will need more support against surging Taliban violence.
US president-elect Barack Obama has promised to end the war in Iraq and refocus US military efforts on Afghanistan. Biden’s visit is a sign that Obama plans to make the region an immediate priority.
In a meeting on Saturday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Biden “talked about ... the fight against terrorism, American troop increases as well as equipping and supplying of the Afghan forces,” a statement from Karzai’s office said, without providing any details.
Earlier, the top US general in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, told Biden that thousands of new US troops expected in the country’s south would need more support to beat back surging Taliban violence.
Some 32,000 US troops in Afghanistan serve alongside another 32,000 other NATO-led and coalition troops, the highest number since the invasion to oust the Taliban from power began in 2001.
The US is rushing up to 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan and some will go to its volatile southern provinces to combat the spiraling violence.
“General McKiernan explained the current situation and talked about the incoming troops and the need for additional enablers ... things like helicopters, engineers, military police, transportation assets,” said Colonel Greg Julian, a US military spokesman. “As we expand in the south, we will need those additional enablers to cover for the troops.”
Southern Afghanistan has become the center of the Taliban-led insurgency, that left some 6,400 people — mostly militants — dead last year alone.
Foreign and Afghan troops are the target of daily roadside bombings and suicide attacks. Last year, 151 US troops died in the country, more than in any other year since 2001.
Obama has called Afghanistan an “urgent crisis,” saying it’s time to heed the call from US commanders for significantly more troops.
Biden also discussed Afghanistan’s priorities for this year with the UN’s top representative for the country, Kai Eide, UN spokesman Adrian Edwards said.
“Their meeting touched on security, political and developmental issues, including donor coordination, police reform and regional cooperation,” Edwards said.
During his meetings at NATO’s Kabul headquarters, Biden also applauded some of the US troops stationed there.
“Thank you, I mean it sincerely,” Biden told the troops, a NATO statement said.
“It’s a big, big deal, what you’re doing here. You’re making a big sacrifice in a [challenging] environment. Thank you for your service,” he said.
The senator from Delaware will take office as Obama’s vice president on Jan. 20.
Biden and South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham also visited the Torkham border crossing between Afghanistan and Pakistan, Biden’s office said.
Biden’s visit to Afghanistan follows his trip to neighboring Pakistan, where aides said he met with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi.
Biden’s tour comes after five US soldiers were killed in two separate attacks in southern Afghanistan and as US officials warned the violence would likely intensify in the coming year.
Three US soldiers were killed in an explosion on Friday in southern Afghanistan, Julian said. Another two soldiers were killed in a suicide attack on Thursday in a marketplace in Kandahar Province’s Maywand district.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver