WASHINGTON, May 7, (AFP): Top generals have told US President Barack Obama that his strategy to end the Afghan war with a 30,000 strong troop surge is making “slow but steady” progress, the White House said Thursday.
Obama gathered his top civilian, military and intelligence officials to assess the state of the war, and to monitor the case against a Pakistani-American accused of plotting a failed car bombing in New York.
Top Afghan war commander General Stanley McChrystal told Obama the strategy to pour more troops into the fight against the Taliban to allow a US withdrawal to begin next year, was making “slow but steady” progress.
“I anticipate that that is likely what we’ll see for the remainder of the year,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said after the 75-minute war council meeting in the White House’s secure Situation Room.
McChrystal also briefed the president on the operation to “shape” the battlefield around the city and province of Kandahar, ahead of an expected major offensive against Taliban forces.
General David Petraeus, who heads US Central Command, and was in Obama’s meeting, also offered a measured assessment of the US military operation, saying, that like McChrystal he was a realist. “It’s going to be an expanding tide, if you will, a rising tide of security,” Petraeus said on MSNBC television. The war council meeting also focused on the probe launched after the botched car bombing on Saturday, as US investigators try to find out whether the arrested would-be bomber Faisal Shahzad had ties to Pakistani extremists.
The president’s top anti-terror advisor John Brennan offered an update into the investigation, said Gibbs, adding that Washington was satisfied with the cooperation it had been receiving from the Pakistani government.
He declined to say, however, whether intelligence officials had established links between Shahzad, who was arrested while fleeing New York, and militants in Pakistan where he is accused of going for training in bomb making.
Afghan civilians traveling south of the capital of Kabul died Friday when their vehicle hit a large roadside bomb, police said.
“When you see the car, it is so badly destroyed,” said deputy provincial police chief Mohammad Nabi Charki said, adding that it’s still unclear how many people died in the car traveling in Charkh district of Logar province. “We found shoes, a blue burqa and one mobile phone. We are using the phone to call relatives.”
On Thursday, one service member was killed in an insurgent attack in the south, and another died from a mortar or rocket attack in the east, Nato said in a statement Friday. The international alliance did not provide details about the deaths or disclose the nationalities of the troops killed.
The deaths raise to 10 the number of Nato service members killed in Afghanistan this month. Nato is gearing up for a summer operation in the southern city of Kandahar — the birthplace of the Taliban — which will be a major test of the Afghan war. In Herat province in western Afghanistan, residents were recovering from flooding that has killed more than 60 people and damaged scores of homes, according to the international coalition.
Nato said Afghan military helicopters have delivered enough tents to shelter 300 people to the flood-damaged village of Obeh. The tents were provided by the Italian Cooperation for Development, part of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.