CAMP LEATHERNECK: Defence Secretary Robert Gates on Wednesday hailed US Marines for reversing Taliban gains in one of the toughest Afghan battlefields as he toured the south ahead of a key war review.
He struck an upbeat note, with an imminent White House report likely to credit an extra 30,000 American troops with bolstering security while stressing that the nine-year insurgency is far from defeated.
“The Marines, since arriving a year ago last summer, have really been in the fight and I think have not just… stopped the momentum of the Taliban but in a lot of places reversed it as well,” Gates told members of the 1st Marine Logistics Group at Camp Leatherneck in Helmand province.
“You are making a difference,” he told the marines, concluding that the war effort was “on the right track”.
His comments were the latest indication that Obama will likely stick to his current strategy in Afghanistan, with nearly 100,000 US troops on the ground at the end of what has been the coalition’s deadliest year in the country. A video emerged this week, purportedly released by the Taliban and appearing to show Bowe Bergdahl, the US soldier captured in Afghanistan in June 2009.
The IntelCenter monitoring group said the video contains brief “new footage” of someone that appears to be Bergdahl and another that seems to be “Taliban commander Maulawi Sangin”, who had threatened to kill Bergdahl in July 2009.
Another two NATO troops were killed in the south on Wednesday, taking to 682 the number of foreign troops killed in 2010, according to an AFP tally based on the independent icasualties.org website. The alliance lost 521 troops in 2009. Gates travelled on to the Taliban’s spiritual home of Kandahar province on Wednesday and was later due to meet President Hamid Karzai.
US and NATO Officials are touting what they call slow but steady progress, a year after Obama gave orders for the deployment of extra troops to Afghanistan. Major General Richard Mills, the overall commander in Helmand, greeted Gates at the sprawling Camp Leatherneck desert base and told reporters that Afghan forces were assuming an increasingly prominent role in some districts.
“Things are progressing along at a very steady and satisfactory rate,” Mills said, adding that “conditions are set in certain parts of the province right now” for a possible handover to Afghan forces.
NATO leaders at a summit last month in Lisbon endorsed plans for the beginning of a “transition” to Afghan forces providing security across the country in 2011, with an aim of ending the combat mission by the end of 2014.
A defence official told reporters that the White House’s assessment will back that plan and “there will be a line-up of certain events in 2011 that will include various recommendations on transition”.
US officials and military leaders have said for months that the review was unlikely to produce a dramatic shift in the current strategy, which focuses on strengthening security in strategic areas.
On Tuesday, Gates visited eastern Afghanistan, where he heard a frank assessment of the “tough” fight facing US forces but insisted American troops were making progress.
