Most U.S. forces in Afghanistan to be under NATO

BRUSSELS — The U.S. force in Afghanistan is undergoing a major restructuring that will bring virtually all American troops under NATO command, a top U.S. military official said today.

Vice Adm. Greg Smith, the top military spokesman in Afghanistan, said the intent was to integrate almost all of the 20,000 U.S. troops currently serving in eastern part of the country under a separate command known as Operation Enduring Freedom, into the 100,000-strong NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.

The reorganization will not add any new forces to those already deployed, Smith said. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the senior NATO and U.S. commander in Afghanistan, will still command all allied forces in the theater.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates signed off on the reorganization before he visited Kabul last week, Smith said.

“It’s just a matter of moving things from one account in the ledger to another,” he said. “For the military we clearly need unity of command so that elements on the battlefield are not working at cross-purposes with each other.”

Operation Enduring Freedom was set up in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. It covered anti-terrorist operations in Afghanistan, the Philippines and the Horn of Africa.

Smith said that once the reorganization is carried out, only small special forces detachments and a detention unit will remain outside the NATO command structure.

ISAF was established in 2002, and currently numbers about 100,000 troops — nearly 60,000 of them Americans.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s government will provide more than 1,000 police reinforcements to the southern province of Kandahar after Taliban attacks killed dozens of people there ahead of a coming offensive on the insurgent stronghold, an official said today.

The Interior Ministry agreed with a provincial request for more security, Kandahar Gov. Tooryalai Wesa said.

Wesa asked for more police after multiple bombs over the weekend killed at least 35 people in Kandahar city. The Taliban called the attacks a “warning” that they are ready for the war’s next phase.

Afghan and NATO troops are planning to move into Kandahar, the Taliban’s spiritual birthplace, later this year after securing another stronghold in neighboring Helmand province. The southern push is part of a new counterinsurgency strategy and follows President Barack Obama’s decision to send 30,000 new American troops to Afghanistan to reverse insurgent gains.

Some of the 1,100 new Afghan police in Kandahar will come from the capital, Kabul, and some will be recruited and trained locally, Wesa said. It will take a few months to put the new forces in place.

Interior Minister Hanif Atmar pledged to send more security forces when he visited Kandahar on Monday to attend funerals of the bombing victims. Atmar put the number of new police at 1,200 in Kandahar city and the surrounding province.

Kandahar city’s police now number more than 2,000, and U.S. and Canadian trainers have been working to build up a professional force. The police are traditionally one of Afghanistan’s least-trusted institutions.

Building up Afghan security forces is a key goal of the international coalition in the war, now in its eighth year. Obama hopes to begin withdrawing troops by 2011 and start turning over security to local institutions strong enough to prevent the Taliban’s return to power.

Afghan National Police forces were the first responders to Saturday’s attacks in Kandahar, and the international coalition praised their performance in preventing escapes from the main prison in the city, which was apparently the goal. The Taliban attacks mirrored a 2008 assault that allowed hundreds of inmates, many of them insurgents, to escape.

Wesa also appealed to the central government today to send more agents to gather intelligence about the insurgents, who operate freely in Kandahar city and control many of the surrounding villages.

“One of the big problems we face is lack of intelligence information,” Wesa said.

Also in southern Afghanistan, the international force seized nearly a ton of marijuana seeds discovered in a vehicle today at a checkpoint in the Garmser district of Helmand province, NATO said. Troops detained one person in the vehicle; the seeds will be destroyed.

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