Gates Praises Building of Afghan Army After Visiting War Zone
March 10, 2010, 5:29 AM ESTBy Viola Gienger
March 10 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates praised Afghanistan’s efforts to build the army it needs to take over from American troops due to begin leaving next year.
Visiting the sprawling Camp Blackhorse training center east of Kabul with his counterpart Abdul Rahim Wardak, Gates said he’s “impressed with the growing number of Afghans who have stepped forward to defend their nation,” while reiterating the U.S. goal of drawing down troop levels from 2011. Afghanistan’s military and police should take full control of national security by 2015, a London conference on the country’s future agreed in January.
On the third day of a trip to assess military gains from a surge in U.S. troops ordered by President Barack Obama last year, Gates said the increase in American forces is “just getting under way and we shouldn’t be too impatient.” The U.S. will provide equipment Afghanistan needs, with troops already fighting the Taliban given priority, he said.
Afghan soldiers demonstrated three scenarios and how they’ve been trained to respond, including a roadside bomb attack, an ambush and patrolling and securing a perimeter.
“This is your country and ultimately your fight to win,” Gates told the soldiers afterwards. “The future of Afghanistan is in your hands.” Wardak said Afghans were “anxious to recover” responsibility for securing the country.
Gates yesterday flew to the southern province of Kandahar to meet with commanders and visit a forward operating base that has borne heavy casualties and will play a role in the war’s next major offensive.
‘Ghost Town’
He then traveled to a combat post in neighboring Helmand Province, where a re-opened mud-hut market in the town of Now Zad illustrates U.S. hopes of guaranteeing enough security in most of Afghanistan to restore commerce and a semblance of normal life.
“Essentially for four years, that town was a complete ghost town. There wasn’t anybody there,” Gates told reporters traveling with him to the base, an outpost flanked by mountains with patches of fertile farmland in a distant valley.
U.S. Marines working with Afghan National Army soldiers and British troops in Operation Cobra’s Anger in December wiped out the insurgents who controlled the area, according to commanders.
The market, made of the adobe-like material common in rural Afghanistan, now has about 15 shops selling juice and produce such as potatoes. Residents are beginning to return to the town, once the second-largest in the province.
The operation became a model for an offensive the NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan is wrapping up in Marjah, farther south in Helmand Province. That, in turn, provides lessons for a bigger operation being planned in Kandahar, the heartland city of the Taliban.
‘Faster Demining’
Now Zad also shows the difficulties facing international organizations in supporting development after areas are cleared of insurgents and violence subsides.
Gates heard appeals from the town’s market-stall operators for faster demining of roads so they can get more of their goods to markets elsewhere and customers can come to them.
“I feel reinforced the path we’re on is the right path,” Gates said after the visit. It also is “going to take a while, and it’s going to be complicated.” Afghan Brigadier General Muhiudin Ghori, who accompanied Gates on his tour, agreed change would take time, in part because of the low levels of education and literacy in his country.
The Pentagon chief also visited the 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment, which has lost 22 soldiers and seen 62 wounded in seven months on the ground.
The unit was diverted from a planned mission in Iraq and was deployed last year to Afghanistan, said battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Neumann.
‘Tommy Taliban’
The switch was part of Obama’s shift of troops. The battalion’s new charge was to secure the northern approach to Kandahar City, which included the pomegranate- and wheat-growing Arghandab River Valley, the site of an irrigation dam built with U.S. funding in the 1950s.
That meant avoiding roads littered with makeshift bombs by scaling tall mud walls farmers use to mark off property.
U.S. soldiers intercepted militants yesterday who were planting bombs on a route into a village that was going to be visited by a medical unit, Neumann said.
The action by the reconnaissance platoon prevented an aid effort “from being interrupted by Tommy Taliban,” Neumann said, using a nickname for the enemy fighter.
Gates assured the soldiers that he had read a memo from their commander on improvements needed to the Stryker combat troop-transport vehicle, and said he would move “urgently” on the recommendations.
“You all have had a very tough tour here,” Gates told them in front of a cement block carved with the names of those who died. “You’re in an area that once again is going to be important, part of a decisive phase in this campaign, and once again you will be the tip of the spear.”
--Editors: Mark Williams, Julian Nundy
To contact the reporter on this story: Viola Gienger in Now Zad, Afghanistan, at vgienger@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Kirk in Washington at jkirk12@bloomberg.net
