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.”
A missing fingertip offers a clue to Mako Nishimura’s criminal past as one of Japan’s few female yakuza, but after clawing her way out of the underworld, she now spends her days helping other retired gangsters reintegrate into society. The multibillion-dollar yakuza organized crime network has long ruled over Japan’s drug rings, illicit gambling dens and sex trade. In the past few years, the empire has started to crumble as members have dwindled and laws targeting mafia are tightened. An intensifying police crackdown has shrunk yakuza forces nationwide, with their numbers dipping below 20,000 last year for the first time since records
EXTRADITION FEARS: The legislative changes come five years after a treaty was suspended in response to the territory’s crackdown on democracy advocates Exiled Hong Kong dissidents said they fear UK government plans to restart some extraditions with the territory could put them in greater danger, adding that Hong Kong authorities would use any pretext to pursue them. An amendment to UK extradition laws was passed on Tuesday. It came more than five years after the UK and several other countries suspended extradition treaties with Hong Kong in response to a government crackdown on the democracy movement and its imposition of a National Security Law. The British Home Office said that the suspension of the treaty made all extraditions with Hong Kong impossible “even if
CAUSE UNKNOWN: Weather and runway conditions were suitable for flight operations at the time of the accident, and no distress signal was sent, authorities said A cargo aircraft skidded off the runway into the sea at Hong Kong International Airport early yesterday, killing two ground crew in a patrol car, in one of the worst accidents in the airport’s 27-year history. The incident occurred at about 3:50am, when the plane is suspected to have lost control upon landing, veering off the runway and crashing through a fence, the Airport Authority Hong Kong said. The jet hit a security patrol car on the perimeter road outside the runway zone, which then fell into the water, it said in a statement. The four crew members on the plane, which
Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner yesterday signed a coalition deal, paving the way for Sanae Takaichi to become the nation’s first female prime minister. The 11th-hour agreement with the Japan Innovation Party (JIP) came just a day before the lower house was due to vote on Takaichi’s appointment as the fifth prime minister in as many years. If she wins, she will take office the same day. “I’m very much looking forward to working with you on efforts to make Japan’s economy stronger, and to reshape Japan as a country that can be responsible for future generations,”
RSS