US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates departed for Europe yesterday for talks with NATO allies amid a concerted push by Washington to reverse the course of the seven-year-old war in Afghanistan.
The visit comes as thousands of US reinforcements pour into the fragile Asian country in a bid by US President Barack Obama to gain the upper hand in a conflict that commanders say has turned into a stalemate.
Most of the 21,000 additional US troops are heading to the south, a Taliban stronghold and the center of a thriving opium trade that helps finance the insurgency.
Gates is scheduled to discuss the outlook in volatile southern Afghanistan today in Maastricht with NATO counterparts who have troops in the region. He will then head to Brussels tomorrow for a meeting of alliance defense ministers, the Pentagon said.
“They will discuss a range of organizational and security issues confronting the alliance, but, as you might expect, the NATO operations in Afghanistan will likely dominate their discussions,” Department of Defense press secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters on Monday.
With the US force in Afghanistan expected to double to about 68,000 by the end of the year, the US military presence — combined with plans to send in US civilian experts — would eclipse the 33,000 other foreign troops now stationed there.
And in the south, the Dutch are expected to hand over command there next year to a US officer.
The troop buildup and transfer of command in the south would mean the US military will have a dominant role in shaping the coalition effort, analysts say.
NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told European allies not to complain about an “Americanization” of the mission in Afghanistan if they did not match US contributions there.
US officials and lawmakers, critical of what they call an unwieldy command arrangement, have spoken of reorganizing the NATO-led command structure in Afghanistan to grant top US officers more control over coalition units engaged in combat — but it remained unclear if Gates would push for major changes.
Allied defense ministers are also expected to endorse plans to cut the NATO peacekeeping force in Kosovo by a third in January, possibly freeing up some troops for the Afghan mission.
Recommendations by top NATO officers would see the Kosovo Force (KFOR) contingent slashed to 10,000 troops from about 15,000 but officials and diplomats insisted that troop numbers would only drop as security conditions allow.
NATO discussions on Afghanistan also come as a new US commander is scheduled to take charge there after Gates sacked General David McKiernan, saying he wanted “new thinking” in the seven-year-old war.
Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal, with years of experience running special operations, is expected to take over soon as commander of US and NATO forces, pending confirmation.
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