Gates; US technique in Afghanistan was having to pay off

KABUL (AFP) - Defence Secretary Robert Gates on Wednesday stated he was "convinced" the US technique in Afghanistan was having to pay off, a year following President Barack Obama ordered in reinforcements. Signalling the end result of a White Home review with the conflict due out this month, Gates said his go to to crucial battlefronts more than two days confirmed the Taliban was losing ground and below mounting pressure. "I will go back again convinced that our strategy is working and that we will likely be in a position to achieve key goals set out by President Barack Obama last year" and endorsed by NATO allies at a November summit, Gates informed a joint press convention with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. "The bottom line is the fact that inside the final 12 months, we have arrive a lengthy way, creating progress that even just inside the final few months has exceeded my expectations," he said. US officials and commanders have recommended for months that they will stick with the current strategy, but Gates' emphatic public comments -- his strongest to date -- leave little doubt that Washington will maintain its massive troop presence without any main withdrawal on the horizon. The strategy entails practically one hundred,000 US troops plus much more than 40,000 allied forces, engaged inside a bloody, painstaking counter-insurgency battle as well as being a costly energy to coach and arm the Afghan army and police. The strategy is aimed at pushing back again the Taliban from towns within the south and east whilst developing up Afghan forces and nearby governments. The deaths of two far more NATO troopers on Wednesday underscored the high cost of the nine-year-old conflict, and it remains far from clear whether the strategy will force the Taliban to sue for peace. The NATO losses introduced the variety of overseas troops killed in 2010 to 682, according to an AFP tally depending on the independent icasualties.org internet site. The alliance lost 521 troops in 2009. Gates acknowledged the increasing demise toll, declaring NATO leaders had warned the surge would mean more combat and a non permanent spike in casualties. "But there is no denying that the protection local weather is improving and that the sacrifices of Afghan and coalition troops are reaching higher safety and safety for each our nations," Gates stated. Previously, the Pentagon chief compensated a visit to the mostly Pashtun southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, exactly where the military believes the end result from the war will likely be decided. Commanders who met with Gates told reporters the insurgents had been pushed from many of the key population centers in Helmand province, exactly where thousands of Marines have deployed, and that a months-long campaign had secured roads and towns west of Kandahar city. Members in the 101st Airborne had "cleared" the Taliban from a major route and close by areas in Zari district west of Kandahar city, and forced them from Sang Sar, a city known as the birthplace with the Islamist insurgency, officers mentioned. "We now have cleared and held an excellent offer of insurgent-held safe haven territory" in Zari and Maywand districts, Colonel Arthur Kandrian told reporters at Forward Operating Base Howz-e-Madad. NATO leaders at a summit final month in Lisbon endorsed plans for your starting of a "transition" to Afghan forces offering protection throughout the nation in 2011, with an aim of ending the fight mission by the end of 2014. But US war commander Common David Petraeus expressed doubts Monday concerning the prospect of a victory by 2014, admitting that a "resilient" Taliban, squeezed out of some regions, merely pops up in other people. In an interview with ABC tv, Petraeus would not say he was confident that the Afghan government and safety forces would be secure and capable sufficient to take more than from your US-led coalition 4 a long time from now. A video clip emerged this week, purportedly released through the Taliban and appearing to indicate Bowe Bergdahl, the US soldier captured in Afghanistan in June 2009. The IntelCenter monitoring group said the video contains quick "new footage" of an individual who seems to be Bergdahl and another who seems to be "Taliban commander Maulawi Sangin", who had threatened to kill Bergdahl in July 2009.

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