Afghanistan

[ThomasWach]

NATO Chief Gives Details of Afghan Training Mission

BRUSSELS — NATO, criticized by the United States for not doing enough in Afghanistan, will start training the Afghan police in the coming weeks, the alliance’s new leader said.

Mr. Rasmussen said the training was also part of an attempt to make NATO’s contributions more helpful to the United States, which supplies the lion’s share of troops and resources in Afghanistan. NATO has 35,000 troops there, while the United States has 65,000.

A three-star American general, who will be appointed this month, will command the police and army training missions. The United States will pay most of the bill for 2009, which will total $7 billion. NATO diplomats said the cost for 2010 would be about $17 billion.
Current goal was to increase the number of Afghan soldiers to 130,000 by 2011 from about 93,000 today, and the Afghan police force to 84,500 from about 77,000 now.

Quelle:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/07/world/07nato.html

NATO Says Afghan Battle Proved Costly for Militants

WASHINGTON — A battle that killed eight Americans at a pair of remote military bases in Afghanistan last weekend also left more than 100 insurgents dead, NATO said in a statement released on Tuesday.

The NATO statement said that the attack was conducted by “local anti-Afghan forces,” as originally thought, but that local Taliban and insurgents connected to the militant network of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar might have helped in the assault.

The attack, a daylight strike on two bases near the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, also killed four Afghan security officers

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the senior NATO and American commander in Afghanistan, is pressing for a change in strategy that would move American troops out of remote bases like the ones in Nuristan and into more heavily populated areas to protect civilians.

Quelle:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/07/world/...itary.html

Britain Is Mired in Its Own Debate Over Troop Levels in Afghanistan

LONDON — In an echo of the American tug of war over troop levels in Afghanistan, Britain’s recently retired top general said in an interview published Tuesday that Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government had repeatedly rebuffed his own military’s calls for an increase in troops.

Officials on Downing Street held fast to their insistence that Mr. Brown had never refused such a request. Noting that Britain has 1,200 more troops in Afghanistan now than when Mr. Brown took office in 2007, one official, speaking under ground rules of anonymity, said Tuesday that “any suggestion that the prime minister has been unwilling to deploy more troops or provide the necessary resources is simply wrong.”

In recent weeks, faced with a renewed request from American commanders for more allied troops, the Brown government has said it may be willing to add as many as 2,000 soldiers to the 9,000 it already has deployed, but only if several conditions are met, and only, by implication, after a British general election that is most likely to be held in May.

Quelle:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/07/world/...itain.html