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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: paret who wrote (239346)	6/30/2005 1:22:55 AM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1570939

U.S. sees fighting rekindled in Afghanistan By Matt Kelley, USA TODAY WASHINGTON — The United States has stepped up military activity in Afghanistan, spurred by a resilient insurgency that includes al-Qaeda terrorists and rebels associated with the former Taliban government, according to Afghan officials, Pentagon leaders and Afghanistan experts. The renewed fighting led to the downing Tuesday of a U.S. Chinook helicopter carrying 17 troops, many of them members of the Navy's elite SEAL commando unit. Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said it was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade. If all aboard the helicopter were killed — U.S. forces were still searching for the wreckage and any survivors — Tuesday's crash would be the deadliest incident for U.S. troops in Afghanistan since they invaded in October 2001. Before the crash, 189 American servicemembers had died in or around Afghanistan, according to Pentagon figures. Afghan Defense Minister Rahim Wardak said the government had intelligence information that at least a half-dozen al-Qaeda operatives had slipped into the country and that two of them had blown themselves up with car bombs. Remnants of the Taliban launched an offensive this spring against coalition troops and the U.S.-backed government that replaced the hard-line Islamic regime. The United States invaded Afghanistan to oust the Taliban government, which had sheltered al-Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The U.S. military says about 270 Taliban fighters have been killed since March. At least 29 U.S. servicemembers have died in Afghanistan in the past three months. The deadliest previous incident was the crash of another Chinook in a sandstorm in April. That crash killed 15 troops and three civilian contractors. The only other helicopter shot down in Afghanistan was part of Operation Anaconda in March 2002. Seven soldiers died in the crash and related fighting. Like the one downed Tuesday, the Anaconda copter was the special operations version of the Chinook, the Army's workhorse transport helicopter that's roughly the size and shape of a school bus. Much of the fighting has been along Afghanistan's rugged border with Pakistan, including the battle that downed the helicopter Tuesday. The area is home to anti-American terrorists and drug traffickers who want the Afghan government to fail, said Thomas Gouttierre, director of the Center for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. Drug traffickers and insurgents have joined forces, Gouttierre said, "because they recognize that a stabilized Afghanistan is not in their interest." Many of the militants in the border areas, Afghan and U.S. officials said, are foreign fighters who hide out in the remote mountain passes. They remain in the border areas because of their historic ties with some officials in Pakistan, said Frederick Starr of Johns Hopkins University's Central Asia-Caucasus Institute in Washington. Although the site of the latest fighting is farther north than most previous battles, Gouttierre said, the insurgency is not gaining popularity within Afghanistan. "The fear we might withdraw or lessen our support is much greater than any feelings that the presence of the United States is not desirable," he said. "Right now, Afghanistan is at a critical juncture, but it's also one that augurs more favorably for a successful conclusion than does the situation in Iraq." The renewed fighting, which has gained strength in the past three months, comes as the nation prepares for parliamentary elections in September. Gouttierre and Starr said Afghan militants may be desperate to interfere with the upcoming elections because they know they could not hope to win any seats in the national assembly. One such figure, they said, is Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former Afghan government minister and warlord who has switched his allegiance to the Taliban. On Wednesday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai used a twin-rotored Chinook helicopter to fly to Gardez, capital of the southeastern province of Paktia, which borders Pakistan. There he told local elders, "Voting is power, a power that you can use to elect a delegate of your choice and deny power to a government that fails to serve you." In October, Karzai abandoned a trip to Gardez because insurgents had fired a rocket over his helicopter. Contributing: Steven Komarow and wire reports usatoday.com