Rumsfeld arrives in Afghanistan
BayBak, Azerbaijan | 2509 days ago | Tuesday, 11th July , 2006 , 12:55 [pm] | International
Six British soldiers have been killed in Helmand’s Sangin district in the past month. In all, more than 60 foreign soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan this year.
The Taliban said the British reinforcements would have a torrid time. “We’ll attack the British troops with such ferocity they will flee,” Taliban commander Mullah Hayat Khan told Reuters by telephone. |
|---|
By Kristin Roberts
KABUL (Reuters) – Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld arrived in Afghanistan on Tuesday in the midst of the most intense phase of Taliban violence since the Islamists were ousted from power in 2001.
Rumsfeld, on his 11th trip to Afghanistan, was set to meet U.S. commanders and President Hamid Karzai to discuss the violence and plans for NATO to take over military operations from a U.S.-led force in the south this month.
In the latest fighting on Tuesday, U.S.-led forces and Afghan troops killed about 30 militants in a notoriously volatile district of the southern province of Helmand.
“Early this morning, a joint Afghan-coalition raid resulted in the death of an estimated 30 extremist fighters,” said a spokeswoman for the U.S.-led force, Lieutenant Tamara Lawrence.
Coalition and Afghan troops suffered no casualties in the operation in the Sangin district, she said, adding that one helicopter made a hard landing and had to be destroyed.
Groups of Taliban have infiltrated large parts of the Afghan south and east this year and unleashed their most bloody wave of bombings, ambushes and raids.
The violence, nearly five years after the Taliban were ousted, has taken the government and its Western backers by surprise and raised concern for the NATO peacekeeping mission that is due to take over in the south.
The U.S.-led coalition has responded to the violence with offensives to push the insurgents back. Hundreds of people, most of them Taliban, have been killed in the past two months, according to U.S. and Afghan figures.
The Taliban are being fueled by drug money and benefit from sanctuaries on the Pakistani side of the border, Afghans and U.S. officials say. They are also capitalizing on dissatisfaction with a government many say has failed to help them, analysts say.
POWER VACUUM
The commander of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, said power vacuums in the south where the government had little presence had contributed to the violence.
“It’s important to remember that the areas the Taliban is operating in are areas that the government of Afghanistan has not heretofore had the strength and the presence,” he said.
“So it’s not a question of the enemy being strong; it’s very much a question of the institutions of the state of Afghanistan still moving slowing to stand up the Afghan security forces.”
But analysts and military officials, including the commander of NATO’s Afghan force, have said the international community’s attention was diverted by Iraq, allowing power vacuums in Afghanistan that the Taliban have filled.
Rumsfeld on Monday dismissed arguments that the U.S. military’s focus on fighting in Iraq has allowed narcotics trafficking and violence to rise in Afghanistan.
Eikenberry said the Afghan insurgency had adopted new tactics in its fight, such as roadside bombs, but he said intelligence did not indicate Iraqi fighters were migrating to Afghanistan.
Britain announced on Monday it would send 900 more troops and additional helicopters to Helmand where British troops have faced fierce Taliban resistance. The reinforcements will arrive over coming months bringing the total to 4,500 in the south.
Six British soldiers have been killed in Helmand’s Sangin district in the past month. In all, more than 60 foreign soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan this year.
The Taliban said the British reinforcements would have a torrid time. “We’ll attack the British troops with such ferocity they will flee,” Taliban commander Mullah Hayat Khan told Reuters by telephone.
British colonial forces suffered heavy defeats in Afghanistan in the 19th century when Britain tried to win over Afghanistan’s tribes and make their lands a protective buffer against perceived Russian designs on British India.
The Taliban were ousted after refusing to hand over Osama bin Laden. They are fighting to expel foreign troops and defeat the Western-backed government.
, Voice of a Nation[2] Print
- 19/07/2008 Obama arrives in Afghanistan
- 14/07/2008 Heavy Fighting in Afghanistan Kills 9 Americans, Many Insurgents
- 26/05/2006 Taliban ambush Afghan police, five killed
- 21/07/2008 Obama speaks out on Afghanistan
- 18/02/2009 More US troops set for Afghanistan
- 31/03/2013 Building a country for Pashtun Taliban in Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai holds key Qatar talks on Taliban office in US command
- 03/08/2009 Afghanistan Violence Raises Concerns About Election Security
- 05/11/2009 UN decides to evacuate Afghanistan staff
- 22/02/2012 Six dead in Afghanistan protests against “Koran burning by NATO forces”
- 15/12/2007 Korean troops out of Afghanistan
No Comments
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
azeribaybak[at]gmail.comURLs used in the text:
[1] today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2006-07-11T102101Z_01_SP109033_RTRUKOC_0_US-AFGHAN.xml: http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2006-07-11T102101Z_01_SP109033_RTRUKOC_0_US-AFGHAN.xml
[2] Print : http://en.baybak.com/rumsfeld-arrives-in-afghanistan.azr?print=1