NATO defense ministers meeting here on Thursday reaffirmed their plans to expand the alliance's control of southern Afghanistan in the face of increased resistance by Taliban fighters and drug traffickers.
NATO has been progressively increasing the number of its troops and its reach in Afghanistan. That operation has emerged as a major test of the alliance's ability to respond to new security challenges far from Europe.
Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak of Afghanistan said Taliban fighters had stepped up their attacks to "take advantage of this time of transition." The NATO secretary-general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said allied troops would be tested and they would "react robustly."
The plan for Afghanistan was a main subject at the meeting, which also dealt with plans to establish a NATO Response Force to deal with new crises, among other initiatives that are to be formally ratified when allied leaders hold a summit meeting in November in Riga, Latvia.
US Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld began the session by telling the ministers of the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. "The minister thought, and I think, that this is positive news for the Iraqi people," said Henk Kemp, the Dutch defense minister.
NATO has deployed a 9,700-troop force in Afghanistan that experts expect to grow to 16,000, with 6,000 deployed in southern Afghanistan, one of the most restive regions. The troops are officially part of the International Security Assistance Force and are under a British commander, Lieutenant General David Richards, who said recently that the arrival of NATO troops would make it possible to better control southern Afghanistan.
NATO is deploying double the number of US troops they are replacing in the south.
"They have been relatively short of troops, of boots on the ground," Richards recently said about the Americans.
Experts had been concerned that the rules of engagement might vary significantly among the allies. Some countries have restricted where or how their troops can be used.
A US military officer, who was not identified because he was not authorized to discuss the subject publicly, said there would be no such restrictions on operations in the south, which will involve Australian, British, Canadian and Dutch troops. The deployment in the south is scheduled to be completed by August.
While NATO is deploying troops, the US will keep 20,000 in the country under a separate American chain of command. The US is retaining responsibility for the volatile eastern region that abuts some of the most lawless areas in Pakistan. Those are widely believed to be a sanctuary for Taliban forces and al-Qaida leaders.
The NATO operation will eventually move into a new and even more ambitious phase when the alliance assumes responsibility for all of Afghanistan. At that point, a new joint headquarters will be established and Richards will hand over his responsibilities to a US officer.
The timing of that phase, however, remains uncertain.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the