washingtonpost.com
The U.S. military plans no troop cuts in Afghanistan before March, as fighting intensifies against Taliban forces that have gained influence in a political and security "vacuum" in the southern part of the country, according to a senior U.S. commander.
"Our troop levels in Afghanistan will remain about steady through . . . February," said Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, who leads the Combined Forces Command in Afghanistan. There are approximately 20,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the highest number since the U.S.-led invasion in October 2001 to overthrow the Taliban government. Eikenberry said Taliban fighters and extremists have grown more numerous, organized and determined in some parts of the south and southeast, where foreign troops were limited and the Afghan government was weak. "You do have challenges where Taliban has moved into an area you could perhaps call a vacuum, or at least very weak governance," Eikenberry said at a Pentagon news conference. "In some areas there are more Taliban extremists than there were at this point last year. And within some areas they . . . demonstrated better command-and-control and they're fighting harder."
[...]The primary challenge in Afghanistan is not military but rather one of extending the reach of the central government and bolstering economic development, Eikenberry said.
Nevertheless, he said, Afghanistan's burgeoning drug trade presents a fundamental threat that could ultimately undermine both the U.S. military mission and the nation's government. The sheer scale of the drug trafficking and the money involved creates "the prospect of absolute corruption of the government," he said, as well as the likelihood that drug money will fund terrorism.
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