“NATO Wants More Troops in Afghanistan”
How many more troops? Will the numbers guarantee any success against what I have been describing as fearless and independent Afghanis?
Five years have passed of the occupation of Afghanistan by American troops and we still witness a killer bomb attack in the most protected area of Kabul.
So if such a central place like the US Embassy cannot be secured, how would any number of NATO troops do anything in remote and treachrous mountains of south Afghanistan?
The Soviets had to pay a heavy price fighting in Afghanistan – the empire just disintegrated!So let’s be realistic and do what finally Israel had to do in Lebanon.
Here’s the Associated Press story about the recent deadly Kabul blast: “A suicide car bomber struck a convoy of U.S. military vehicles Friday in downtown Kabul, killing at least 16 people, including two American soldiers, and wounding 29 others. It was the Afghan capital’s deadliest suicide attack since the Taliban’s 2001 ouster.
“The blast near the U.S. Embassy came as NATO chiefs appealed for member nations to send reinforcements to combat resurgent Taliban militants fanning the deadliest violence in five years. A top British general said the fighting in volatile southern Afghanistan was now more ferocious than in Iraq.
“The bomb blew pieces of an American Humvee and U.S. uniforms into trees, which were set ablaze by the explosion. The blast shattered windows throughout downtown, and a cloud of brown smoke climbed hundreds of feet into the sky.
“The bombing came three days ahead of the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and as Afghans remembered Ahmad Shah Massood, the fabled Northern Alliance commander who fought Soviet forces and the Taliban and was assassinated by suspected al-Qaida operatives posing as journalists on Sept. 9, 2001.
“The Kabul blast went off about 50 yards from the landmark Massood Square, which leads to the main gate of the heavily fortified U.S. Embassy compound. It dug a 6-foot-wide crater and left body parts, Muslim prayer caps, floppy khaki-colored military hats and shoes scattered on the ground.
“Afghanistan is facing its deadliest spate of violence since U.S.-led forces toppled the hard-line Taliban regime for hosting Osama bin Laden. Hundreds on both sides have been killed each month this year.
“A roadside bomb hit an Italian military convoy in western Farah province Friday, wounding four troops, one seriously, NATO and the Italian Defense Ministry said.
“Some 20,000 NATO soldiers and a similar number of U.S. forces are in Afghanistan trying to crush an emboldened Taliban insurgency. The heaviest fighting takes place across vast desert plains in southern Helmand and Kandahar provinces, also center of the country’s massive opium trade.
” ‘The fighting is extraordinarily intense. The intensity and ferocity of the fighting is far greater than in Iraq on a daily basis,’ Brig. Ed Butler, the commander of British Forces in Afghanistan, told British ITV news.”
