President Barack Obamas new cabinet sees Afghanistan as its “greatest military challenge”, US defence secretary Robert Gates has told Congress, reports BBC online Thursday.
About 3.000 extra US troops were recently deployed south of the Afghan capital, Kabul. They appear to be the first batch of up to 30.000 additional American troops destined for Afghanistan. The US currently has about 34.000 troops in the Central Asian country.
Mr Gates said the Pentagon would probably be in a position to deploy three more combat brigades to Afghanistan by mid-summer but infrastructure would have to be expanded before a fourth could be sent in. Each of the brigades due to be deployed has about 3.500 soldiers.
– President Obama has made it clear that the Afghanistan theatre should be our top overseas military priority, Mr Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
He said civilian casualties “are doing us enormous harm” in Afghanistan, and US forces had to do better to avoid innocent deaths. -My worry is that the Afghans come to see us as part of the problem, rather than as part of their solution. And then we are lost, he noted.
