Posts tagged operations

Source: http://www.wired.com

By Spencer Ackerman

U.S. Army Pfc. Andrew L. Hefner fires a .50 caliber machine gun in the eastern province of Kunar, 2010. Photo: ISAF

What might be the final major U.S. offensive of the Afghanistan war has begun, according to the war’s day-to-day commander. Its purpose is a bit harder to grasp.

Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, the outgoing operational commander in Afghanistan, said that US and Afghan troops recently began a push in the eastern province of Ghazni to reduce the potency of the insurgency in an area neglected by the 2010 troop surge.

“In some areas there in the east, south of Kabul, we needed to insert greater combat power, and we’ve needed to do that for quite some time,” Scaparotti told Pentagon reporters via videoconference, contradicting remarks made by the general in charge of east Afghanistan last year. Led by an additional brigade from the 82nd Airborne, the offensive will last through “the current fighting season,” he said — even as about 20,000 US forces withdraw by October, weeks before the fighting season ends.

Scaparrotti declined to provide details on how many forces make up what he described as “greater combat power”; where it goes beyond or outside of Ghazni; and said he preferred not discuss even the “intent” of the operations publicly. He also said not to think of it as the “last” major US offensive of the Afghanistan war. But it follows a recent pattern as NATO nears its 2014 deadline for turning Afghan security to its Afghan proteges: US and Afghan troops will clear areas in the east that the Afghans will be tasked with holding.

All Scaparrotti offered was that US forces were ”now undertaking operations to secure areas in Ghazni and areas surrounding Ghazni that we’ve needed to do for some time, and we’re also working very hard with our Afghan partners to then gain in strength and to hold those areas once these operations are done.”

(more…)