US Scraps Kandahar Assault Due to Weak Afghan Partnership

The Daily News, Pakistan, Tuesday, May 4, 2010

KANDAHAR AIR FIELD:

NATO commanders scrapped a helicopter assault by hundreds of US and Afghan troops last week because the Afghans were not able to take charge, a US military officer familiar with the planning said.

The decision to cancel the assault, designed to prepare the ground for the biggest offensive of the nearly nine-year-old war, has frustrated US officers on the ground, who say their local partners are not ready to lead.

“It wasn’t Afghan enough ... approval was denied,” a US Army officer with knowledge of the plans told Reuters. “The implication is that the Afghans are in the lead. The bottom line is we’re nowhere near the stage where they can be in the lead.”

The assault in a rural part of Kandahar – due to take place in March and repeatedly postponed – would have been one of the biggest operations so far in the province, where US troops are massing to carry out a major offensive beginning in June.

Its abrupt cancellation exposes limitations of the Afghan security forces and raises doubts over whether they are ready to start taking control of the country’s security this year.

The US officer, who asked not to be identified while discussing the cancelled operation, said approval for it had been blocked by a senior NATO commander in the south.

The commander, a general, stood up during a planning briefing and told the US officers to come back once the Afghan army was in charge of the operation, he said.

The battalion-sized operation would have seen three companies from a US Stryker Brigade and a company of Afghan soldiers launch a helicopter assault into a Taliban-controlled area to the west of Kandahar city. Their job would have been to prepare the district for the arrival of new troops for the summer offensive.

The operation was repeatedly postponed when officers met resistance from NATO commanders concerned that Afghan involvement was insufficient, the officer said. The plan was ditched altogether last Thursday. reuters