Sat, May 02, 2009 page5

• Western forces face ‘bloody’ Afghan summer

  • REUTERS
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  Western forces face a bloody summer as thousands of new US troops deploy in southern Afghanistan, but hope to reach a “pivot point” this year reclaiming territory back from the Taliban, a commander said.

  “We’ve been very clear that we are expecting a spike in fighting ... where we’re expecting to take significant casualties,” said British Brigadier David Hook, deputy commander of the NATO-led force in the south of the country.

  “There is going to be a fight this summer, and where there’s a fight, you take casualties. It’s going to be a bloody summer,” Hook said in an interview at the alliance’s southern headquarters in Kandahar.

  

  Petty Officer 2nd Class Rusty Baker, center, holds his daughter Rosemary while kissing his wife Elizabeth before he deploys with the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade to Afghanistan from Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina on Thursday.

  PHOTO: AP

  Violence in Afghanistan is already at its highest levels since the Taliban were driven from power in late 2001. Insurgent attacks in the first three months of this year were 73 percent higher than the same period a year ago, NATO statistics show.

  The coming weeks will see the arrival of a wave of US reinforcements, with 17,000 soldiers and marines joining a NATO force in the country’s south, heartland of the Taliban and the opium crop that provides most of the world’s heroin.

  Violence would rise, Hook said, because the thousands of new US troops are going to move into areas currently under control of insurgents who have been able to prepare for the fight.

  But by the end of the summer, the traditional fighting season in the mountainous country, international forces would be able to provide a “degree” of security to more than 90 percent of the population in the south, up from 60 percent now, he said.

  “That is the pivot point. That is the point where we will have created the humanitarian space to allow the agencies to come in behind and do the reconstruction and development,” he said.

  The new US troops will bolster British, Canadian, Dutch and other NATO troops fighting a resurgent Taliban in the south of the country, where senior US officials have said foreign and Afghan forces had reached a stalemate with the militants.

  The additional US forces for the south are the biggest wave of an increase that will see overall US troop numbers in Afghanistan more than double from 32,000 at the start of this year to a projected 68,000 by the end of the year. About 32,000 other Western troops are in the country, increasing by a few thousand.

  “We have reached a point in the south where we can go no further because of the limited number of troops. That is why we are having the additional 17,000,” Hook said.

  The biggest immediate challenge is preparing the ground for the expansion of the force, Hook said. The new troops will nearly double the size of the force in the south in a matter of weeks.

  Camp Bastion, the main British base built in the desert of Helmand province, is undergoing expansion to house more than 8,000 US Marines. Four new bases, as well as several air strips, are being constructed across the south of the country.
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