U.S. plans to boost troops, aid for Afghanistan
Source: Reuters
(Adds quotes, details, background) By Andrew Gray and Arshad Mohammed WASHINGTON/BRUSSELS, Jan 25 (Reuters) - The United States said on Thursday it had extended the tours of 3,200 troops in Afghanistan and would ask Congress for $10.6 billion in fresh aid for the country to combat the renewed Taliban insurgency. The troops from the 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, were due to complete a one-year deployment next month, defense officials said. But their tour of duty had been extended by up to 120 days, the Defense Department said in a statement. Given other troop movements, the extension means the Pentagon will have about 2,500 more soldiers in Afghanistan than planned for the next few months. Separately, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters the Bush administration would ask Congress for $8.6 billion in new money to train and equip the Afghan army and police and $2 billion for reconstruction projects. With more than 4,000 people dying in violence, last year was the bloodiest in Afghanistan since U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban hardline Islamist government in 2001 in response to the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. "The challenges of the last several months have demonstrated that we want to, and should, redouble our efforts," Rice said as she flew to Brussels for a NATO foreign ministers' meeting on Friday that will focus on Afghanistan. The troop increase comes as U.S. President George W. Bush is sending 21,500 more troops to Iraq to try to contain an insurgency and sectarian strife. Critics including Senator Hillary Clinton, a Democratic presidential hopeful, have urged Bush to focus instead on bolstering forces in Afghanistan. Rice is expected to lay out the U.S. approach at NATO in the hopes that it will encourage other nations, some of whom are reluctant to commit their soldiers to increasingly bloody combat in Afghanistan, to send more troops and aid. U.S. commanders have said they expect the Taliban to try to increase the level of violence again in spring, when fighting in Afghanistan traditionally picks up after a winter lull. By keeping in place both the brigade and the soldiers who have arrived to replace them, commanders can significantly boost the size of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, most of whom form part of a NATO force charged with stabilising the country. "The whole goal is to lay it out to the allies and say, OK, we're there. You've got to be there, too," a senior U.S. official said of the U.S. plans for more aid and troops. MONEY AND MANPOWER A senior State Department official who asked not to be identified said the security assistance would help equip and train about 70,000 Afghan soldiers and 82,000 Afghan police. He said the $2 billion in reconstruction assistance would pay for roads, power, anti-drugs efforts, rural development and other projects. The official said the White House would ask for the money in a supplemental budget request to Congress and that it was his understanding that it would be spent over two years. The request would be a substantial increase on previous years, officials said, saying the United States has pumped a total of $14 billion in aid into Afghanistan since 2001, with nearly two thirds going to security. One senior official said the new U.S. push may help quell some concerns in the European press that "with our increased effort in Iraq, we might be scaling back our efforts in Afghanistan and leaving it to them. "Our efforts now ... have the benefit of showing the Europeans that it is not all-Iraq, all-the-time," he said. (Additional reporting by Sue Pleming and Steve Holland)
| AlertNet news is provided by |  |
