NATO military commanders told US President Barack Obama’s envoy on Sunday that they needed more troops and other resources to beat back a resurgent Taliban, particularly in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistan border.
The Taliban has made inroads in recent months in many areas that US forces thought they had stabilized. The deteriorating security has increased pressure on the Obama administration to consider sending more forces into the fight, a move that could prove a hard sell with the US Congress and the American public.
US Major General Curtis Scaparotti, commander of forces in eastern Afghanistan, said he told US envoy Richard Holbrooke that veteran Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani had expanded his reach in several areas in Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan.
“Haqqani is the central threat. We’ve seen that expansion and that’s part of what we’re fighting,” Scaparotti told reporters after the meeting.
The US military has launched big offensives against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, but officials acknowledge that more attention may need to be paid to the increasingly unstable eastern provinces.
It is unclear how much room Obama has to maneuver.
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll showed most Americans believe the war in Afghanistan is not worth fighting and just a quarter say more troops should be sent there.
US senators visiting Kabul said they told Afghan President Hamid Karzai and members of his Cabinet on Sunday that US patience was running out.
“I conveyed to Karzai that there’s going to come a time when the patience of Americans will run out,” US Senator Robert Casey, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, said.
Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat who was part of the same delegation, said: “Time is not running out next week. But they have to show results. It’s the last chance.”
Some military officials contend that there are a growing number of Uzbek and other foreign fighters among the Taliban in border areas.
Asked about the presence of Uzbek fighters, one commander said his men had never found one, alive or dead, but added: “I’m pretty sure they are there.”
US officials increasingly see the fight against the Taliban as a “single battlefield” that runs from Afghanistan into the tribal areas of Pakistan.
While welcoming Pakistan’s offensive against militants in the Swat valley, northwest of Islamabad, some US officials are concerned that Islamabad will put off indefinitely a push into the South Waziristan region on the Afghan border, a stronghold of Pakistani Taliban fighters led by Baitullah Mehsud.
Mehsud is widely believed to have been killed this month in a missile strike by a US pilotless drone aircraft.
Scaparotti said Taliban leaders in Afghanistan and their subordinates “routinely go to Pakistan to be safe” and to resupply their forces.
“We hope that they keep up the pressure,” he said of a prospective Pakistani operation in Waziristan.
Holbrooke also met US and allied commanders in southern, western and northern Afghanistan.
In the city of Herat, the commander of Italian forces, General Rosario Castellano, said he told Holbrooke that the Iranian border was “very porous” and neither he nor Afghan authorities had enough guards to prevent arms smuggling. He said the Afghans have only 170 guards to protect a border that stretches nearly 1,000km.
In the north, one commander said progress was being made but that Taliban activity had increased in some areas such as Kunduz.
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners of war in the latest such swap that saw the release of hundreds of captives and was brokered with the help of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), officials said on Monday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that 189 Ukrainian prisoners, including military personnel, border guards and national guards — along with two civilians — were freed. He thanked the UAE for helping negotiate the exchange. The Russian Ministry of Defense said that 150 Russian troops were freed from captivity as part of the exchange in which each side released 150 people. The reason for the discrepancy in numbers
A shark attack off Egypt’s Red Sea coast killed a tourist and injured another, authorities said on Sunday, with an Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs source identifying both as Italian nationals. “Two foreigners were attacked by a shark in the northern Marsa Alam area, which led to the injury of one and the death of the other,” the Egyptian Ministry of Environment said in a statement. A source at the Italian foreign ministry said that the man killed was a 48-year-old resident of Rome. The injured man was 69 years old. They were both taken to hospital in Port Ghalib, about 50km north
‘MAGA CIVIL WAR’: Former Trump strategist Bannon said the H1-B program created ‘indentured servants,’ but Musk said that he was willing ‘to go to war on this issue’ US president-elect Donald Trump on Saturday weighed in on a bitter debate dividing his traditional supporters and tech barons such as Elon Musk, saying that he backs a special visa program that helps highly skilled workers enter the country. “I’ve always liked the [H1-B] visas, I have always been in favor of the visas, that’s why we have them” at Trump-owned facilities, he told the New York Post in his first public comments on the matter since it flared up this week. An angry back-and-forth, largely between Silicon Valley’s Musk and traditional anti-immigration Trump backers, has erupted in fiery fashion, with Musk
The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland on Tuesday expressed concern about “the political crisis” in Georgia, two days after Mikheil Kavelashvili was formally inaugurated as president of the South Caucasus nation, cementing the ruling party’s grip in what the opposition calls a blow to the country’s EU aspirations and a victory for former imperial ruler Russia. “We strongly condemn last week’s violence against peaceful protesters, media and opposition leaders, and recall Georgian authorities’ responsibility to respect human rights and protect fundamental freedoms, including the freedom to assembly and media freedom,” the three ministers wrote in a joint statement. In reaction
RSS