 NATOÂ’s supreme commander said Thursday a spring offensive by Taliban fighters appears aimed at discouraging US allies taking part in an expanded NATO-led force in southern Afghanistan.
| Really? Do tell. We'd never have guessed that. |
General Jim Jones predicted, however, that the NATO troops will be able to quickly bring the region under control once they complete their move into the south by July. He said the deployment of British, Canadian, Dutch, Romanian and US troops under the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force will put more military forces into the region than have been there until now, he said.
| They're gonna have to do more than fire warning shots at the bad guyz. This isn't peacekeeping. It's pacification, and it's complicated by the presence of the Pak safe areas. |
“The ratio will be very favorable to our side, and ... very quickly we will establish order in parts of the country that have not known that,” he said in a question-and-answer session at the National Press Club. Jones said levels of violence were up but he tied that to the movement of Afghan and coalition forces into new areas and Taliban moves against the NATO expansion. “Some people say it is active, it is message sending, a strategic move, a way to discourage and intimidate countries that are thinking of sending troops there, to get the political discussion going,” said the general, who also leads the US European command. “I think we’ll have to wait and see,” he said.
| I don't think that would be a good idea, which is probably why nobody ever made me a general. I think to make headway you've got to aggressively carry the fight to the enemy: grab him by the nose and kick his ass. And then when he runs back to Waziristan or Bajaur, you've got to follow him and burn his house down, even if you have to do it using aircraft or missiles. |
Jones said he was more concerned in the long term over the outcome of the war on drugs in Afghanistan than a resurgent Taliban.
| He's making the assumption, possibly for public consumption, that the two aren't tied tightly together... |
With narcotics accounting for about half the country’s gross domestic product, the drug trade “bleeds into the system of law and order, the police system, the corruption, and the like.”
Meanwhile, a provincial governor citing Afghan intelligence said that an upsurge in violence over the past week was the result of pressure on the Taliban from Al-Qaeda and other supporters. This included Al-Qaeda and other militants based in neighbouring Pakistan, said Asadullah Khalid, governor of Kandahar province, which has seen the bulk of the unrest. “Al-Qaeda and certain countries were pressuring the Taliban to capture some ground, particularly in Kandahar, to claim their active presence,” the governor said, citing Afghan intelligence presented to him. “The latest violence was more than the insurgency,” Khalid said.
Khalid said intelligence reports showed that “senior Taliban leaders” were living and training recruits in Pakistan, notably in the city of Quetta – about 100 kilometres from the border and opposite Kandahar. “I can tell you that their leadership body has been destroyed, at least in Kandahar,” he said. Khalid admitted he did not have sufficient government forces to crack down on rebels. “About police being weak, yeah. You’re talking about good police, I’m telling you even we don’t have enough bad police,” he said. |