US to keep strong force in Afghanistan
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The US and its allies must maintain conventional forces in Afghanistan capable of large-scale operations against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the American commander in the country said on Friday.
Although US military officials have consistently reported that the tactics of their foe have evolved towards a low-level insurgency, and that they are unlikely to regroup in any significant way, Major General Franklin Hagenbeck would not rule out the possibility.
"I'm not prepared to draw that conclusion yet," he told the Financial Times. "There are not at the moment large targets or formations. However, that doesn't mean that at some future date they may not have that capability again, so I believe we must maintain a coalition capability to execute missions across the spectrum of operations."
This week, the commander of the British force, Brigadier Roger Lane, indicated that "the role of war fighting forces like my own [the 1,700-strong 3 Commando Brigade] will greatly diminish" amid a declining need for large-scale operations.
Gen Hagenbeck was more cautious. "I would say that we hurt them, that we do have them on the run, but I think that they retain a command-and-control capacity, and that they're working hard to recreate an environment in which they can train more soldiers.
"We do know of instances where al-Qaeda and the Taliban, in the last couple of months ... have gone into local areas and spread a lot of money around in an effort to garner support from the local people ... That effort is ongoing and we are watching it very closely."
The contrasting military analysis on the ground forms part of an intense debate in Washington over the US military's role in Afghanistan's security.
The Bush administration remains implacably opposed to joining international peacekeeping operations in Afghanistan, currently led by British forces. That position has prompted sharp criticism from senior Democrats, including Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate's foreign relations committee.
But the administration remains committed to defending the interim Afghan government led by Hamid Karzai. "There are still al-Qaeda and Taliban in the country," Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary, said this week. "They still intend to do what they can to destabilise the Karzai interim authority. We intend to see that that doesn't happen."
Gen Hagenbeck said the British troops' Operation Snipe, in which they this week claimed a significant arms find, had been an important step in disabling the terrorism infrastructure, although he said the US had had a good idea the cache was there. |
