CSMABUL, Afghanistan - The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan pledged Monday to retake the symbolic Taliban home ground of Kandahar in a campaign that builds on early signs of progress from the huge infusion of American and foreign forces.
"We're absolutely going to secure Kandahar," Gen. Stanley McChrystal told reporters travelling with U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who arrived Monday to talk with his commanders and Afghan officials.
The recent three-week military offensive by coalition and Afghan troops to evict insurgents from the strategic south Afghanistan town of Marjah is a model in spirit if not in practice for the larger, more complicated task of squeezing the Taliban in Kandahar and persuading Afghans to support the Kabul government instead.
The Afghan war is in its ninth year and unpopular with a majority of Americans. The challenge for the Obama administration is to demonstrate clear progress against the entrenched Taliban insurgency this year, when the number of U.S. forces in the country will reach roughly 100,000 - nearly triple the size of the force when Obama took office.
Preparations for the fight in the southern Afghan region around Kandahar have already begun, McChrystal said Monday.
Gates cited "bits and pieces of good news," but cautioned against overconfidence. His visit was his first since the start of a successful campaign to rout Taliban fighters from Marjah, once so thoroughly under militant control that a Taliban flag flew on a main road.
The NATO-led force is now growing in districts surrounding the city of Kandahar that are under the Taliban thumb. That is part of a gradual increase in pressure ahead of an eventual military operation, McChrystal said.
"There won't be a D-Day that is climactic," he said. "It will be arising tide of security when it comes."
Gates met Monday with Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai and said he was of "like mind" with the Afghan leader, who is finishing details of a plan to offer jobs, vocational training and other economic incentives to tens of thousands of Taliban foot soldiers willing to switch sides.
Getting top Taliban leaders to the negotiating table is an even greater challenge. The Afghan government on Monday announced it was holding a three-day peace gathering in Kabul beginning April 29 to chart a plan for moving forward on reintegration and reconciliation.
Karzai said the government will embrace thousands of Taliban "who are sons of this soil and have been forced into militancy by circumstances or by various other events ... and that's a process that has the approval of our allies."
Gates cautiously agreed, saying: "The timing of this, really I think, in many respects depends on the conditions on the ground in terms of when people, particularly the more senior commanders, realize that the odds against their success are no longer in their favour."
Gates said the military offensive launched last month is encouraging, but stopped short of saying that success in Marjah suggests that the war is at a turning point.
"People still need to understand there is some very hard fighting, very hard days ahead," Gates told reporters travelling with him.
The major military phase of the campaign around the town of Marjah ended without a high casualty toll for U.S. troops and the Afghan security forces fighting alongside them.
At least 19 civilians were killed during the allied operations. The losses likely would have been worse without strict new rules pushed by McChrystal that limit air strikes, raids on homes and other risky combat operations.
Such operations are deeply unpopular with locals even if they can be successful against militants. McChrystal told reporters the campaign around Marjah could have gone quicker, but the cost in civilian casualties would have been unacceptable.
"Just as in Marjah, what we need to do is bring the local people into both having a sense of ownership of the government agenda, but also having some control and influence over it," said Mark Sedwill, the new senior civilian representative serving alongside McChrystal.
Sedwill called Marjah a template for the way the NATO-led forces intend to prosecute the war for the next year or more. The coming fight in Kandahar will be part of that redrawn plan, he said.
The 30,000 additional U.S. forces Obama approved are now arriving and most will be in place by summer. Without being specific, McChrystal suggested that any heavy fighting in Kandahar will wait until more U.S. and NATO troops are ready.
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Associated Press Writer Deb Riechmann contributed to this report.
Does anyone find it slightly ridiculous that 8.5 years after this war started, the "New York City of Afghanistan" is not under Coalition control, and they're building up to take it?Afghanistan war: Fight for Kandahar won't be like fight for Marjah
In the next stage in the Afghanistan war, coalition forces are expected to build up gradually on the outskirts of the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, perhaps for months. That strategy departs from the one executed in the Marjah offensive, in which troops entered quickly.
By Gordon Lubold Staff writer
posted March 9, 2010 at 7:29 pm EST
Washington —
The operation that American and coalition forces are planning for Kandahar in southern Afghanistan won’t look like D-Day, the top commander there said Tuesday.
Fresh off a recent success, so far, in Helmand Province, American military planners are thinking ahead to the next phase of challenging the Taliban in southern Afghanistan: Kandahar. But the fight for Kandahar – described as the New York City of Afghanistan for its cultural, political, and economic significance – is expected to be more measured than the operation in Marjah in Helmand, which was a precision strike that began with the insertion of hundreds of US marines by helicopter.
“There won’t be a D-Day that is climactic,” said Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top commander there told reporters in Kabul, during a trip in which he escorted Defense Secretary Robert Gates. “It will be a rising tide of security when it comes.”
The operation in Marjah included about 2,500 marines and 1,500 Afghan soldiers – with as many as 10,000 troops in support. The top Marine commander in Marjah said last week the objective there was to come in “big, strong, and fast, [to] put the enemy on the horns of a dilemma.”
By contrast, the mission in Kandahar, expected to begin by summer, will be more gradual. Few details are clear, even in a counterinsurgency in which the NATO command has telegraphed its intentions before starting an operation, such as in Marjah last month. But military officials say Kandahar will require a more nuanced, measured approach in which forces will build up slowly, probably on the outskirts, before entering the city itself perhaps months later.
Kandahar is a much larger city and province, and coalition forces will take their time to enter due to the area's more complex political and tribal nature.
Marjah in 'hold and build' phase
McChrystal has had his eye on Kandahar, which the Taliban took over years ago, for a long time. But when he took charge of the mission last year, many American forces were already amassed in Helmand to the west.
While Helmand was a Taliban stronghold and much of the poppy crop that provides financial support for the insurgency grows there, many experts say it is not a strategic prize. Nonetheless, McChrystal mounted his first operation there under the new US strategy (and increased troop strength), as a demonstration of what could be done. Citing the clear-hold-build approach, military officials say that most combat operations are over in Marjah and that it is now in the “hold and build” phase.
That leaves room to begin planning for Kandahar and the districts that surround it, including Zhari, Panjawai, Khakrez, Arghandab, and Dand. (Monitor report: the importance of Kandahar to winning the Afghanistan war.)
Counterinsurgency experts say these outer areas hold the key to success for coalition forces entering Kandahar itself.
Gates warns of 'dark days' ahead
While not referring to operations in Kandahar specifically, Secretary Gates sought to prepare the military and the American and international community for the likelihood that the next few months will be no cakewalk.
“There is still much fighting ahead, and there will assuredly be more dark days,” Gate said at a press conference Tuesday with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, in Kabul. But there is reason to be hopeful that Afghan and coalition forces can rout the hardest elements of the Taliban and establish security for the rest of the population, he said.
“Looking forward," Gates said, "there are grounds for optimism as our countries pursue what President Karzai has called an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned initiative to ensure peace and stability.”
[insert obligatory Vympel snide remark about 2001/2002 "we did what the Soviets couldn't" triumphalism]
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- PeZook
