Agence France-Presse,
Washington: The US military announced Tuesday it was sending 3,200 additional troops to Afghanistan to help counter an expected offensive by the Taliban militia and help train Afghan national soldiers.
The Pentagon announced that President George W. Bush had approved the “extraordinary, one-time deployment” lasting seven months.
The soldiers, all US marines, will make up part of a shortfall of 7,500 troops that NATO countries have failed to send, despite promises to provide men and combat equipment.
Coalition commanders in Afghanistan have complained that they are short three infantry battalions, 3,000 trainers and helicopters, which were promised but not delivered by NATO members.
With its military already heavily engaged in Iraq, Washington has increased pressure on NATO allies to increase their contributions, with little success.
The move to send more US troops comes amid growing concerns about rising violence in neighboring Pakistan. And since the collapse of the hardline Taliban regime in late 2001, Afghanistan has seen a slowdown in the militants' activities each winter, followed by a surge in spring.
Currently, there are 26,000 US troops in Afghanistan, most of them under the 40,000-strong NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
Of the new US troops, 2,200 will be deployed in southern Helmand province, a Taliban stronghold, said a Pentagon official speaking on condition of anonymity.
The remaining 1,000 will help train Afghan forces, the Pentagon said.
“As a member of the NATO alliance,” the Pentagon statement read, “the US is doing its part to ensure ISAF has the forces necessary to ensure the hard fought gains accumulated during the past six years . . . are made irreversible.”
The topic is likely to be a sore point at NATO's summit in Bucharest in April. The Pentagon said Washington “will work intensively with allies and partners to ensure all outstanding ISAF requirements are filled and the need for future extraordinary deployments by the US or any ally and partner is minimized,” ahead of the meeting.
At the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Brussels, Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer thanked Washington, and especially US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates — who called him before the decision was announced — for the move.
Scheffer “hoped the extra American deployment would be followed by the deployment of forces from other countries” that are members of the 26-nation military alliance, a NATO spokeswoman said.
Gates told reporters Thursday that he would weigh the impact of the new deployment on the US military, as well the implications of taking pressure off US allies to fulfill their commitments.
But Gates said that he was “very concerned that we continue to be successful in Afghanistan and that we continue to keep the Taliban on their back foot and that we defeat their efforts to try and come back.”
In Afghanistan, Defense Ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi welcomed the new soldiers.
“At present, we need foreign forces to maintain peace and security. We welcome the increase in numbers and facilities,” Azimi told AFP when news of a troop increase surfaced last week.
“But the long-term solution is that we need support to increase Afghan forces in quality and quantity, so they can take up the responsibility for their country.”
The Afghan army is expected to reach 70,000 troops in the first half of this year.
A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, told AFP in a telephone call that the United States needed more troops to replace those killed in the past year.
Mujahid claimed his group killed over 2,100 foreign forces in 2007. An AFP tally of coalition casualties over the past year put the number killed at 218.
