Afghanistan — Forces Work Through ‘Tough’ Summer in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON, Aug. 20, 2010 — As U.S. and inter­na­tion­al forces in Afghanistan close a dif­fi­cult sum­mer of fight­ing, the top com­man­der there remains opti­mistic about the country’s future and com­mit­ted to the mil­i­tary mis­sion.

“We’re mak­ing progress,” Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, com­man­der of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said. “But we’ve got to make a lot more. It’s a tough fight. 

In an inter­view broad­cast last night on “The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,” Petraeus talked about the way for­ward and chal­lenges his forces and the Afghan gov­ern­ment face. 

“There is no intent to look for exits and turn out the light, come next July 2011,” he said. 

Despite an uptick in vio­lence, U.S. and inter­na­tion­al forces remain stead­fast in their mis­sion in Afghanistan, the gen­er­al said. Near­ly 100,000 U.S. troops and 40,000 from oth­er nations are on the ground there. 

“We should remem­ber why we’re here,” Petraeus said. “This is where the 9/11 attacks were planned. [Afghanistan] is very much a vital nation­al secu­ri­ty inter­est to the Unit­ed States and real­ly all the coun­tries of the world that are fight­ing extrem­ism to make sure that there are not sanc­tu­ar­ies in this coun­try once again from which transna­tion­al extrem­ists can launch attacks.” 

The gen­er­al laud­ed Pakistan’s mil­i­tary and gov­ern­ment for their efforts against extrem­ism on their side of the bor­der with Afghanistan. He said the Pak­ista­nis are “tight­en­ing the noose” and that root­ing out extrem­ists in north­west­ern Pak­istan “is a tough nut to crack.” 

“The Pak­ista­nis have put a lot of short sticks into a lot of hor­nets’ nests,” he said. “If you’d asked me 18 months ago would they have con­duct­ed the oper­a­tions they have con­duct­ed, I would have doubt­ed it.” 

Petraeus pre­vi­ous­ly com­mand­ed coali­tion forces in Iraq and over­saw the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as com­man­der of U.S. Cen­tral Com­mand. He said Iraqi secu­ri­ty forces won’t be on their own when U.S. com­bat oper­a­tions offi­cial­ly end and Oper­a­tion New Dawn begins Sept. 1. He called the 50,000 remain­ing “advise and assist” U.S. troops an “enor­mous capa­bil­i­ty” that will con­tin­ue to be avail­able in Iraq. 

“The real bot­tom line in Iraq, I think, is that it is – despite all of its chal­lenges – it is a much, much more hope­ful place than it was in Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary 2007 when the surge was launched and when there were 50 dead bod­ies in Bagh­dad every 24 hours,” he said. 

Vio­lence like­ly won’t end in Iraq, he said, because extrem­ist ele­ments such as al-Qai­da and ille­gal mili­tias still remain there. How­ev­er, Iraqi forces are more than capa­ble, he added, with assis­tance from the remain­ing U.S. troops. 

“The 70,000 Iraqi secu­ri­ty forces on the ground there gen­er­al­ly can deal with this with some assis­tance from the Unit­ed States,” he said. 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

Face­book and/or on Twit­ter

Team GlobDef

Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

Alle Beiträge ansehen von Team GlobDef →