The top US military commander yesterday visited Marjah, the frontline of US-led operations against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan where troops are gearing up to widen the fight to Kandahar in June.
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, was in the battle zone a day after US President Barack Obama left Afghanistan after a surprise visit, pledging to defeat the Taliban and “to get the job done.”
Operations in the farming community of Marjah, set in poppy fields and desert in Helmand Province, are the first test of the US’ counter-insurgency campaign aimed at ending an increasingly deadly war now into its ninth year.
“Admiral Mullen is in Marjah,” said Lieutenant Colonel Todd Breasseale, a spokesman for NATO’s International Security Assistance Force.
Further details of his visit were not immediately released.
The US and allies have boosted their troop numbers to 126,000, with the number set to peak at 150,000 by August as the fight expands from Helmand into Kandahar Province, the heartland of the insurgency.
Obama has said he wants to start drawing down troops from the middle of next year, putting pressure on Afghan President Hamid Karzai to take over responsibility for security by then.
During his five-hour overnight visit, Obama defended his sweeping new push to flush out Taliban strongholds in the south where the insurgency is concentrated.
“Our strategy includes a military effort that takes the fight to the Taliban while creating the conditions for greater security and a transition to the Afghans,” he told US and NATO troops at Bagram Airfield outside Kabul.
Military and political efforts against the Taliban around Kandahar, Afghanistan’s third-biggest city and the Islamist militia’s spiritual capital, are the next step in the US-led strategy.
In Washington, a US military official said NATO forces would begin the offensive on Kandahar in June with preparatory operations already under way.
The offensive in the region “has already begun” and in Kandahar “operations will begin [in June],” the official said on condition of anonymity.
The US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, told Obama by video conference earlier this month that he would take on Taliban militants in Kandahar when enough reinforcements were in place.
The commander said the military was on course to pour thousands of extra troops into the region in coming months.
He has also said that the build-up to a full operation on Kandahar had begun with initial military and political efforts, including operations to secure roads and districts.
Speaking to reporters in Washington earlier this month, McChrystal said the effort would “ramp up in the weeks and months ahead,” lasting “a significant time.”
The campaign follows the launch of Operation Mushtarak in Marjah on Feb. 13, which six weeks later appears to have largely pushed back the Taliban and given the Afghan government a chance to take control.
Upon his return to Washington, Obama stressed the immediate need for progress in Afghanistan.
“I think he is listening,” Obama said of Karzai in an interview with NBC TV. “But I think that the progress is too slow and what we’ve been trying to emphasize is the fierce urgency of now.”
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
RSS