WASHINGTON (AFP) — The arrival of more US troops in southern Afghanistan this summer will trigger a rise in violence but the reinforcements will help improve security in the longer run, a NATO general said on Friday.
More US boots on the ground are needed and could turn the tide, but will mean more contact with insurgents in the volatile south, said the Dutch commander of NATO forces in the region, Major General Mart de Kruif.
"I'm absolutely sure that we will see a very important year in RC (Regional Command) South, that we will see a spike in incidents once the US force hits the ground, but the situation will significantly change in a positive way within the next year," Kruif told reporters by video link.
President Barack Obama last month approved the deployment of 17,000 additional troops to join US and other NATO forces in Afghanistan, and is expected to unveil a new war strategy within days.
The Dutch general said the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) had pushed out insurgents associated with the Taliban in parts of Helmand and Oruzgan provinces but that they lacked the troops to expand security efforts.
"From an ISAF point of view, we are not stopped by the insurgency, but we just ran out troops," he said.
The deployment of more US soldiers was a welcome move that Kruif said could transform the terms of the war.
"The influx of additional forces... will really be a game-changer from my point of view," he said from Kabul.
At the moment, international troops control about 60 percent of populated areas in the south, he said.
Most of the US reinforcements are headed to the south, where Australian, British, Canadian and Dutch troops in ISAF are deployed under NATO command.
After being ousted in 2001 by a US-led force, the Taliban have rebounded and are now challenging the Kabul government in the south and east despite the presence of more than 70,000 foreign troops.
Violence has been on the rise in the past two months and the US military reported 30 militants died Thursday in a major clash with Afghan and US-led forces in the southern Helmand province. A prominent anti-Taliban lawmaker was killed in a bomb attack in Helmand the same day.
Four Canadian soldiers and an Afghan interpreter were killed Friday and nine others were injured in two separate explosions in southern Afghanistan.
The additional US forces will allow NATO to put more pressure on the insurgent leadership, and enable troops to secure a wider area for reconstruction and development projects, according to Kruif.
The general said the expanded security effort needed to be accompanied by a similar expansion of civilian development efforts, which the Obama administration is expected to announce soon as part of its new strategy.
Improving governance at the local district level would be "decisive" in allowing for the eventual withdrawal of foreign forces, said Kruif, who oversees about 23,000 troops.
For the insurgents, the weapons of choice were relatively crude makeshift bombs, known as improvised explosive devices (IEDs), with Afghans as the main victims, he said.
The explosives were much simpler than the devices used by insurgents in Iraq, and were rarely detonated by remote control, he said.
The key to defending against the explosives was attacking the bomb-making networks and winning the trust of the local Afghan population, the general added.
The thriving opium trade from poppy crops formed a "financial nexus" with the insurgency, with some elements of the Taliban motivated mainly by drug profits, Kruif said.
British troops and other NATO forces were targeting the insurgents' drug networks with success, he said.
"Once we've got that information, that intelligence firmly established, we will try to hit that nexus. And I can tell you, every time we target the nexus, we find it," he said.
Kruif said local government and NATO efforts were also aimed at providing alternative livelihoods to Afghans who rely on the profitable poppy crop.
Dutch General says Afghanistan will get worse before it gets better
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