AFP
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates flew into Afghanistan on Wednesday to make preparations for deploying an extra 21,000 US soldiers as Washington escalates its war against Taliban insurgents.
Gates arrived from Saudi Arabia on an unannounced trip that came as the US military opened an investigation into allegations that US-led air strikes on insurgents in western Afghanistan killed scores of civilians this week.
“We have a new policy, a new strategy, a new ambassador and we have a lot of new troops going into the area,” Gates told reporters in Riyadh before setting off for the Afghan capital Kabul.
“Most of this visit will be spent out in the field. I just want to get a sense out on the ground level what the needs are, what the challenges are, what the solutions to the some of the problems are,” he said.
US President Barack Obama has approved the deployment of 21,000 reinforcements as part of a new strategy to turn the tide against a growing Islamist insurgency challenging the Kabul government.
“Mainly I want just to see how it’s going in terms of the new infrastructure to accommodate the additional troops,” Gates said. “I want to ask right at the ground level — ‘what do you need out here you’re not getting?’”
Members of an 8,000-strong Marine brigade have begun arriving in Afghanistan as part of the build-up focused mainly on the country’s southern flashpoints.
By September, Washington plans to have about 68,000 troops in Afghanistan, more than doubling the US force numbers on the ground when Obama took office.
Gates said he wanted to ensure that combat troops had the equipment and support they needed, including new armoured vehicles and helicopters for medical evacuations.
The Pentagon chief has been concerned that the “golden hour” — the time it takes to get a wounded soldier to an operating table — in Afghanistan tends to lag behind that in Iraq.
He said he had already deployed about 10 extra helicopters for medical evacuations and two more field hospitals, and that a new combat aviation brigade was due to arrive later this month.
Gates said the added resources were part of a bid “to try and ensure our troops in Afghanistan have the same golden hour as the troops in Iraq”.
Washington’s reinforcement of the NATO mission in Afghanistan comes amid growing unrest in neighbouring Pakistan, where Islamabad has sent in troops to counter the Taliban’s advances in the northwest.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari is due to meet Karzai and Obama in Washington Wednesday for talks on how to fight the raging Taliban insurgency.
The summit, one of Obama’s most high-profile diplomatic engagements yet, comes as US lawmakers voice increasing fears that Pakistan is losing the fight against Islamic extremists.
Karzai has said he planned to raise with the US leader concerns about civilian casualties in military operations in Afghanistan.
In a statement earlier Wednesday, he ordered an investigation into allegations of civilian casualties in air strikes in the western Afghan province of Farah.
Afghan police said 100 people were killed, most of them civilians including women and children.
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