US readying south Afghan surge against Taliban
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – Afghanistan's southern rim, the Taliban's spiritual birthplace and the country's most violent region, has for the past two years been the domain of British, Canadian and Dutch soldiers.
That's about to change.
In what amounts to an Afghan version of the surge in Iraq, the U.S. is preparing to pour at least 20,000 extra troops into the south, augmenting 12,500 NATO soldiers who have proved too few to cope with a Taliban insurgency that is fiercer than NATO leaders expected.
New construction at Kandahar Air Field foreshadows the upcoming infusion of American power. Runways and housing are being built, along with two new U.S. outposts in Taliban-held regions of Kandahar province.
And in the past month the south has been the focus of visiting U.S. and other dignitaries — Sen. John McCain, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, U.S. congressional delegations and leaders from NATO headquarters in Europe.
For the first time since NATO took over the country in 2006, an experienced U.S. general, Brig. Gen. John Nicholson, is assigned to the south.
He says U.S. Gen. David McKiernan, NATO's commander in Afghanistan, has made the objectives clear in calling the situation in the south a stalemate and asking for more troops, on top of the 32,000 Americans already in Afghanistan.
"By introducing more U.S. capability in here we have the potential to change the game," Nicholson said.
The Army Corps of Engineers will spend up to $1.3 billion in new construction for troop placements in southern Afghanistan, said the corps commander in Afghanistan, Col. Thomas O'Donovan.
Violence in Afghanistan has spiked in the last two years, and Taliban militants now control wide swaths of countryside. Military officials say they have enough troops to win battles but not to hold territory, and they hope the influx of troops, plus the continued growth of the Afghan army, will change that.
U.S. officials hope to add at least three new brigades of ground forces in the southern region, along with assets from an aviation brigade, surveillance and intelligence forces, engineers, military police and Special Forces. In addition, a separate brigade of new troops is deploying to two provinces surrounding Kabul.
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last month that Afghanistan could get up to 30,000 new U.S. troops in 2009, depending on the security situation in Iraq. Col. Greg Julian, a U.S. military spokesman, said Monday that one ground brigade should arrive by spring, a second by summer and a third by fall.
Nicholson said he expects the U.S. forces to be deployed in Kandahar city and along vital Highway 1, which links Kandahar to Kabul, and in neighboring Helmand province, the world's largest producer of opium poppies for heroin.
NATO forces are well positioned in three key areas of northern Helmand, said British Lt. Gen. J.B. Dutton, deputy commander of the NATO's Afghan mission.
"What we have not yet achieved is to join those areas up, so there is a security presence that allows locals to drive safely between those areas. That's the sort of thing we are going to want to improve," he said.
Since 2006, the U.S. has concentrated its forces in eastern Afghanistan, along the border with Pakistan, while the south is policed by 8,500 British troops, 2,500 Canadians and 2,500 Dutch.
Their overall commander is Dutch Maj. Gen. Mart de Kruif — who would also have command of any incoming U.S. forces in the south next year. By the fall of 2010 the top officer in the south will be American.
The infusion of U.S. power risks Americanizing a war that until now has been a shared mission of 41 coalition countries. But Dutton, the British general, suggested there was no choice. "It has to do with national capacity and a number of political considerations in those countries," he said.
In Canada and many European countries, governments face low public support for keeping troops in Afghanistan combat zones.
Dutton said the British contribution is "significant," as well as that of Canada, which he noted has lost more troops per capita in Afghanistan than any other nation.
Nicholson, the U.S. general, said the Canadians have fought "heroically" but simply don't have enough forces to secure all of Kandahar. The Canadian Embassy declined to comment.
More U.S. troops — 151 — died in Afghanistan in 2008 than any of the seven years since the invasion to oust the Taliban, and U.S. officials warn violence will probably intensify next year.
"If we get the troops, they're going to move into areas that haven't been secured, and when we do that, the enemy is there, and we're going to fight," said Nicholson, who spent 16 months commanding a brigade of 10th Mountain Division troops in eastern Afghanistan in 2006 and 2007.
That fighting should eventually clear the way for security and governance to take hold, he said.
"If you want to summarize that as it's going to get worse before it gets better, that's exactly what we're talking about," he said.
US deaths down in Iraq in 2008, up in Afghanistan
BAGHDAD – U.S. military deaths in Iraq plunged by two-thirds in 2008 from the previous year, a reflection of the improving security following the U.S. military's counterinsurgency campaign and al-Qaida's slow retreat from the battlefield. By comparison, the war in Afghanistan saw American military deaths rise by 35 percent in 2008 as Islamic extremists shift their focus to a new front with the West.
According to a tally by The Associated Press, at least 314 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq in 2008, down from 904 in the previous year. In all, at least 4,221 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began in 2003.
For Iraqis, the plunge was also marked: During 2008, at least 7,496 Iraqis died in war-related violence according to an AP count, including 6,068 civilians and 1,428 security personnel, down 60 percent from 2007.
The Associated Press tally does not reflect a comprehensive total for Iraqi deaths because reports do not come in from all of the country. The estimate, however, has proven accurate for tracking trends.
In Afghanistan, 151 U.S. soldiers died in 2008, compared with 111 in the previous year, according to an AP tally. The count recorded 1,160 civilians killed in insurgency-related violence, up from 875.
At least 625 U.S. soldiers have died because of the war in Afghanistan since the fighting began in 2001.
The AP count is based on figures from Afghan, U.S. and NATO officials.
The combined total of at least 465 U.S. deaths in both Iraq and Afghanistan for 2008 is the lowest combined total for both wars since 2003, when the U.S. invaded Iraq.
Many critics have said the U.S. focus on Iraq led it to neglect the war in Afghanistan, allowing both al-Qaida and Taliban militants to regroup after being routed in 2001. The Taliban, in the last year, moved into wide swaths of Afghan countryside, where Afghan security forces or international troops don't operate. Military commanders in Baghdad say they have enough troops to win all battles but not enough to hold territory, or to keep remote villages safe.
Seth Jones, an analyst with the RAND Corp., said he thinks the insurgency is still quite weak because there is no central command structure and because it doesn't have the support of local Afghans. But levels of violence have increased because of the continuing use of sanctuaries by militant groups in Pakistan.
"I think the second issue is the ability of groups to move into a vacuum in significant parts in Afghanistan, including in the east and south, where the Afghan government simply has not been able protect villages in rural areas," Jones said.
The plunge in violence in Iraq follows the U.S. "surge" of 2007, when thousands of additional troops were sent in to try to rein in a country that appeared to be on the verge of disintegration. That was coupled with a counterinsurgency campaign that included a decision by Sunni tribesmen to switch allegiances and fight al-Qaida. A focused effort to rout Shiite extremists gave U.S. and Iraqi forces the upper hand.
U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. David Perkins said recently that attacks in Iraq had declined to an average of 10 a day from 180 a year ago, and the murder rate in November was less than 1 per 100,000 people — far lower than many cities in the world.
The drop in violence has bolstered the Iraqi government's confidence as it takes what it calls full sovereignty of the country on Thursday. Under a new security agreement, Iraq will take the lead in security away from U.S. forces, regain control of its airspace, and take back the Green Zone, a wide area of downtown Baghdad that the U.S. occupied after its 2003 invasion.
But the deaths of two soldiers on the last day of the year underscored that significant violence persists. One soldier was killed by a mortar round in Baghdad and the other died from wound sustained in combat a day earlier in Tikrit, the military said.
Iraq remains gripped by hostility between Shiite and Sunni Muslims and disputes within the creeds.
Police announced Wednesday the arrest of a leading figure in a messianic Shiite cult that has battled Iraqi and U.S. forces, possibly thwarting plans by the group to carry out attacks against hundreds of thousands of pilgrims that will gather next week at one of Iraq's holiest shrines.
A top adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Sadiq al-Rikabi, described Thursday as a "historic day" during which "the symbols of sovereignty, which are highly cherished by Iraqis, will be restored."
U.S. and Iraqi forces continue to battle al-Qaida in Iraq and other insurgents in the north and in Mosul, the country's third-largest city, where economic and political problems persist. Eight people were killed Wednesday in four bombings in the north.
In the southern city of Basra, Police Chief Maj. Gen. Adil Dahham said his forces had arrested a leader of the "Soldiers of Heaven" cult that has carried out bloody attacks during the Shiite Ashura holiday in the past two years.
