NATO struggles to tame Taliban

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NATO struggles to tame Taliban - Yahoo! News UK

KABUL (Reuters) - Almost a week into its biggest offensive against the Taliban, NATO says it has cornered a large group of fighters and killed about 300, but still needs more troops and aircraft to finish the job.

More than 20 Taliban guerrillas were killed in Operation Medusa in the southern province of Kandahar on Thursday, NATO said in a statement, adding that the remaining rebels had dug into fixed positions.

"We are steadily putting pressure on insurgent fighters," NATO spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Nick Grant-Thorold said in the statement received on Friday.

"The insurgents have chosen to stay in prepared positions."

But NATO says it needs more soldiers, helicopters and planes to crush the Taliban in their southern stronghold before the alliance also takes over in the east, bordering Pakistan, from U.S. forces by the end of the year.

The alliance has roughly 18,500 troops in Afghanistan.

Analysts say the Taliban and their allies are the strongest they have been since they were ousted by a U.S.-led coalition in 2001 in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the United States and fighting across Afghanistan is the bloodiest since then.

WORSE THAN IRAQ?

More than 2,300 people have died this year and some officials say the fighting in Afghanistan is now worse than in Iraq.

The guerrillas have moved beyond small-scale hit-and-run operations to pitched battles and larger strikes, sheltering and training in Pakistan despite Islamabad's efforts to stop them.

They are in part being bolstered by drug lords, who are expected to reap a record crop this year worth about $3 billion and who are keen to keep the army and police at bay.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, criticised by some Afghan leaders for doing too little to stop militants operating from largely lawless borderlands, visited Kabul this week and pledged to join President Hamid Karzai in crushing the Taliban.

NATO leaders are pressing alliance members to send more troops and equipment to the volatile south after a high-level delegation visited this week, highlighting divisions over where and how some countries deploy their forces.

"Those allies who perhaps are doing less in Afghanistan should think: Shouldn't we do more? ... There are certainly a number of allies who can do more," NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told reporters in Brussels on his return.

GERMANY UNDER PRESSURE

He did not single out any nation, but diplomats say Germany, which leads the NATO mission in the relatively calm north, where troops have no need even to patrol highways, is under pressure to offer reinforcements for the south.

British, Canadian and Dutch forces are providing the backbone of the operations in the south and taking heavy casualties.

At least five Canadian soldiers and 14 Britons have been killed in Operation Medusa and many more in separate fighting. The Taliban disputes NATO's estimates of rebel deaths in Medusa.

As these countries face pressure at home over their casualties, their allies face stiff domestic debate over the dangers of sending their soldiers to more perilous areas.

NATO military chiefs are to discuss deployments at a meeting in Warsaw on Friday and Saturday, and alliance defence ministers will address the issue late this month in Slovenia, where Canada has said it will ask other nations to send more soldiers south.

While Afghan leaders and analysts say the Taliban has regrouped with the failure of the world community to bring development and jobs, NATO says fighting has increased because it is moving into new areas to take the battle to the rebels.

"It's something akin to poking the beehive, and the bees are swarming," top commander of operations General James Jones said.

[Snowden]

Can't get rid of Taliban: Minister
Sep. 8, 2006. 06:06 AM
BILL SCHILLER AND BRUCE CAMPION-SMITH
IN TORONTO AND OTTAWA

CP PHOTOA Canadian soldier calls in an air strike during the first day of Operation Medusa.


With Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan locked down in one of this country's biggest battles in modern times, Ottawa's top military officials conceded yesterday the Taliban cannot be eliminated by force.


The revelations — first by Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor in an interview from Australia, and later confirmed by Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Rick Hillier in Ottawa — are certain to stun Canadians who are increasingly concerned about the rising number of Canadian casualties in Afghanistan.


Thirty-two soldiers have died since Canada deployed troops there in 2002. Sixteen have died in the past three months alone.


The comments came on a day when NATO's supreme commander, U.S. Gen. James Jones, called for reinforcements from member nations for the embattled southern region, where Canadians, Americans, Dutch and British are leading the fight.


"We cannot eliminate the Taliban," O'Connor told a Reuters reporter in Australia, "not militarily anyway. We've got to get them back to some sort of acceptable level ..."


O'Connor's candour was a clear shift from just more than three months ago when he told a Commons' committee he welcomed large-scale Taliban attacks because it gave Canadian soldiers the opportunity to kill them in large numbers.


"If they concentrate against our military then we can defeat them, and lately they have been concentrating against our militaries," he said confidently on May 30.


Reached by phone near Ottawa yesterday, Hillier told the Star he had no disagreement with his minister's statement out of Australia.


"Not at all," Hillier said. "That's never been the strategy — to defeat them militarily."


The general added, "We don't have to defeat them militarily. What we've got to do is build a country."


Hillier said the surest path to success was the actual reconstruction of Afghanistan. That was what the Taliban feared most, he said. But he also conceded Taliban forces were waging battles that were slowing the reconstruction process.


"Things are not moving as quickly as we want," Hillier said. "(There's) no question that the security situation has constrained that."


Asked whether the current battle raging on the ground, code-named Operation Medusa, was winnable, Hillier replied, "I think it is, otherwise we wouldn't be engaged in it in the manner in which we are right now."


He said Canadian and coalition forces were determined not to let the Taliban get a foothold close to Kandahar, and the coalition would "disrupt" any base the Taliban might establish.


"We're going to make sure that doesn't happen in the Panjwaii area," he said, referring to the district southwest of Kandahar city where the battle is raging.

He was sensitive to concerns, raised by critics of the mission, that combat operations can create enemies on the ground, even as NATO forces kill insurgents.


"There is always a risk when you conduct operations in any area that you're going to cause some damage or some harm and that will cause some people to become your enemy. But we take every measure possible to minimize and mitigate those kinds of risks."


He also insisted it was the Taliban who are on the offensive and that coalition forces were there to defend the Afghan people and give them "breathing space" to develop the country.


Hillier would not be drawn on whether the number of Canadian casualties was "acceptable or not."


"One soldier lost is a price that wounds all of us," he said. "We take every step to reduce the chances of those casualties," he added, calling the 2,300 soldiers in Afghanistan — and their families — "incredible Canadians."


But he also noted, "we know that the mission is high-risk at this point."


After seven days of tough fighting in Operation Medusa, commanders now say they have a large group of insurgents contained in an area of fields and villages roughly measuring 16 square kilometres.


"They're not coming out. The only way they're coming is with their hands up or lying flat ... on a stretcher," Maj. Todd Scharlach said in a telephone interview from Kandahar yesterday.


"We're going to continue to hammer at these guys until there's none of them left," said Scharlach, a top operations officer with the Canadian task force.


The Canadian-led Medusa was launched last weekend to clear the region of insurgents. It has long been a Taliban stronghold.


The operation had been planned for weeks and allied troops even dropped leaflets warning civilians to flee before the shooting started.


NATO commanders were surprised by the number of insurgents — estimated at more than 1,000 — who chose to stay and fight, despite the advance notice. U.S. Gen. Jones said in Belgium that NATO was also surprised by the intensity of the resistance and the fact the Taliban were not relying on traditional hit-and-run tactics.


Jones insisted the call for reinforcements was "not a desperate move; it is more of an insurance package."


But he emphasized in order to "contain the Taliban" it was crucial that nations who promised troops actually deliver.


Today and tomorrow, when military leaders of the 26-member NATO alliance meet in Warsaw, the leadership will press other nations for more troops, helicopters and transport aircraft.


Canada is not expected to be asked for more troops since it is already one of the mission's largest contributors, Jones told CBC Newsworld.


O'Connor told Newsworld he would "be surprised if Canada is asked to do more" in terms of contributing troops.


"We have more than met our commitment," he said.


On the ground in Afghanistan, Scharlach said, Canadian troops aren't complaining and are ready to engage the enemy.


"We want to hit these guys with our strength, which is high-tech weaponry, attack helicopters, close air support, precise artillery. If we can bullet in there, we would rather do that than put a man in there," he said.


He also said coalition forces weren't being "indiscriminate."


"We're very, very careful about making sure that we're going after Taliban and we're not hitting civilians," Scharlach said.


"The way to solve this problem is by bringing prosperity to the people of Afghanistan. If they're living a secure, enriched life under the government of Afghanistan, they're not going to want to side with the Taliban."


TheStar.com - Force can't beat Taliban: Minister

[Caldric]

Democracy's have a hard time fighting prolonged wars.

[Woodmonkey]

NATO, Afghan troops kill scores of Taliban - NATO

Backed by close air support, the militants were killed in two areas of Kandahar province in four encounters that started late on Saturday and lasted until just after dawn on Sunday, NATO said in a statement. It did not say if there were any casualties among NATO and Afghan forces.

The Source