General McChrystal: Kandahar Operation Will Take Longer - Craig Whitlock, Washington Post.
The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan is finding himself squeezed between a ticking clock and an enemy that won't go away. On Thursday, during a visit to NATO headquarters here, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal admitted that preparations for perhaps the most critical operation of the war - the campaign to take control of Kandahar, the Taliban's birthplace - weren't going as planned. He said winning support from local leaders, some of whom see the Taliban fighters not as oppressors but as their Muslim brothers, was proving tougher than expected. The military side of the campaign, originally scheduled to surge in June and finish by August, is now likely to extend into the fall.
"I don't intend to hurry it," McChrystal told reporters traveling with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. "It will take a number of months for this to play out. But I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. It's more important we get it right than we get it fast." But McChrystal does not have time on his side. The day before he revealed the Kandahar delay, his boss, Gates, said that the U.S.-led coalition has until the end of the year to show progress in the war and prove to the United States and its allies that their forces have broken a stalemate with the Taliban...
More at The Washington Post.
General Forecasts Slower Pace in Afghan War - James Kanter, New York Times.
The top United States and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, acknowledged Thursday that efforts in Kandahar to drive back Taliban insurgents were likely to take significantly longer than planned, raising new questions about what can be achieved in southern Afghanistan before the end of the year. During a visit here to NATO headquarters, General McChrystal used a briefing with reporters to outline what he saw as progress on a number of fronts since last year. But operations in the southern province of Kandahar, the Taliban heartland, "will happen more slowly than we originally anticipated," he said, even while acknowledging the need to show progress before the end of year to maintain political support in Washington.
"But it's my personal assessment that it will be more deliberate than we probably communicated or than we thought earlier and communicated," he said, referring to the Kandahar operation. "And so I think it will take a number of months for this to play out. But I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I think it is more important we get it right than we get it fast." The general's remarks seemed to recognize what other American and NATO officials had previously played down: that military operations in Kandahar were getting under way more slowly than previously envisioned...
More at The New York Times.
What Marja Tells Us of Battles Yet to Come - New York Times.
Each day, American foot patrols move through farmers' fields and irrigated villages. And each day some are ambushed or encounter hidden bombs. The patrols turn into gunfights in withering heat, or efforts to dismantle the bombs or treat the wounded. Casualties accumulate with the passing weeks, for Americans and Afghans alike. A few months ago, Marja was the focus of a highly publicized assault to push the Taliban from a stronghold and bring Afghanistan's densest area of opium production under government control. The fighting remains raw. What does it mean?
Is the violence a predictable summer fight for an area the Taliban and those who profit from the drug economy do not want to lose; in other words, an unsurprising flare-up that can be turned around? Or will Marja remain bloody for a long time, allowing insurgents to inflict sustained losses on American units and win merely by keeping the fight alive? As NATO and Afghan forces flow into neighboring Kandahar Province, where for the next many months the latest high-profile effort to undo the Taliban's hold will unroll, the continuing fighting in Marja can be read as a sign of problems in the American-led surge. It can also be read as something less worrisome: a difficult period in a campaign always expected to be hard...
More at The New York Times.