Nato scales back joint Afghan operations
2012-12-12 21:57
Kabul - Nato troops are scaling back joint operations
with their Afghan allies and are focused instead on providing air power and
other logistical support as Western combat forces gradually withdraw, a senior
US general said on Wednesday.
While the US-led coalition once stressed
"shoulder-to-shoulder" offensives with Afghan troops, the priority
now is to have Afghans carrying out operations on their own with Western forces
offering back-up, Major General Larry Nicholson told reporters.
"We are now unpartnering from ANSF [Afghan National
Security Forces]," said Nicholson, deputy chief of staff for operations
for the Nato force.
"I call it tough love."
Afghan army and police had improved markedly but still
needed help from US-led forces with air strikes, artillery fire, helicopter
medical evacuations, explosive disposal teams and special vehicles designed to
clear roadside bombs, Nicholson said.
Nato's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was
working to train and assist the Afghans to build up those capabilities, he
said.
"We will push them as far as we can to be
self-sufficient, to take care of their own problems," he said.
"We look at ourselves as an enabling force."
The general's comments reflected a concerted effort by
the US and Nato to wrap up the alliance's role in Afghanistan after 11 years of
grinding war against the Taliban insurgency.
Nato has pledged to withdraw combat troops by 2015, with
the US planning a small follow-on force. The US currently has about 66 000
troops on the ground, roughly two-thirds of the ISAF mission.
Nicholson predicted that by the end of 2014, when ISAF
troops plan to withdraw, Afghan forces likely will no longer need back-up
"enablers" from the coalition with the exception of air strikes.
In the meantime, US and Nato commanders are pressing
their Afghan allies to operate independently, he told journalists travelling
with Pentagon chief Leon Panetta who arrived in Kabul earlier on Wednesday.
"What we say is we want them to see failure, we want
them to smell it, we want them taste it, we just don't want them to achieve
it," he said.
- SAPA
