Posted on 02/26/2004 4:23:04 AM PST by Reader of news
Rumsfeld in Afghanistan as U.S. Hunts Osama
By Charles Aldinger
KABUL (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visited Afghanistan (news - web sites) Thursday amid stepped up U.S. and Pakistani operations against Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s al Qaeda network and Taliban militants.
Rumsfeld flew into the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar then on to Kabul for talks with President Hamid Karzai and U.S. military commanders on ways to ensure long-term security for Afghanistan, a country still racked by Islamic militant violance.
His visit, winding up a week-long tour of Iraq (news - web sites) and Central Asia, came just hours after five Afghan aid workers were killed and three wounded in an ambush northeast of Kabul, the worst such attack since U.S.-led forces overthrew the Taliban in 2001.
In Kandahar, Rumsfeld visited a U.S. civilian-military Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) and attended a police graduation.
The United States and its allies see the teams and the training of a new police force and army as the way to stabilize restive provinces, but the approach has been criticized by aid agencies that have suffered repeated guerrilla attacks.
The Afghans killed in the attack Wednesday belonged to the the Serai Development Foundation, a group involved in rebuilding roads and providing clean water. Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali called the attackers "criminals and terrorists."
The killings came less than two weeks after suspected Taliban gunmen killed four deminers in the west of the country.
More than 550 people, including many rebels, have been killed since August. The instability has undermined vital assistance efforts in the south and east and threatens to delay the country's first democratic elections scheduled for June.
Barbara Stapleton, advocacy officer of Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief, said the latest attacks showed the urgent need to boost provincial security.
EXTREME CONCERN
"This is an extremely serious incident which is very, very shocking to the NGO community," she said, adding that the policy of relying on PRTs for security instead of large bodies of peacekeepers was flawed.
"We are extremely concerned about the security situation," she said. "We do not see that the international community's response in terms of the PRTs as a being adequate for the highly complex security challenges we face in Afghanistan.
"This is very worrying in the lead up to elections that seem to be being pushed ahead come what may in a society which is highly militarised and in which a security vacuum exists."
Security was heavy for Rumsfeld's visit.
When his C-130 aircraft flew into Kandahar and Kabul it made a steep "tactical" descent to avoid any possible threat from shoulder-fired missiles. As he stepped off the aircraft, a heavily armed Apache helicopter gunship circled overhead and military vehicles blocked off roads.
In Kandahar Rumsfeld held talks with the provincial governor Yusuf Pashtun who briefed him on problems faced there.
"It not a problem of capabilities, the problem is too much want," Pashtun told him. "The expectations are very high."
Officers with the U.S.-led PRT in Kandahar told Rumsfeld that attacks by Taliban in their region had fallen off sharply in the past two months since they were deployed there. Rumsfeld congratulated 48 police graduates and added: "The work they are going to be doing is certainly important."
His visit comes at a time when the U.S. military appears increasingly confident of finding bin Laden and other senior Islamic militants this year.
Capturing bin Laden, the world's most wanted man after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, would be a huge boost for President Bush (news - web sites) in an election year.
A U.S. military official spoke Wednesday of a renewed sense of urgency in the hunt for bin Laden, and Pakistan launched a fresh operation on its side of the Afghan-Pakistan border during which it detained about 20 suspected militants.
There are about 10,600 U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan hunting the rebels as well as more than 6,000 NATO (news - web sites)-led international peacekeepers in Kabul.
(Additional reporting by Yousuf Azimy, Mike Collett-White and David Brunnstrom)
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