Thursday, March 24, 2005
Afghanistan more stable: NATO
KABUL: Afghanistan has become more stable as the Taliban and Al Qaeda linked militants have lost momentum over the past three years, the top NATO commander said Wednesday.
“I don’t think we’re facing an organized insurgency that has significant capacities,” General James Jones, supreme allied commander in Europe for NATO, told reporters in Kabul during his two-day visit to the country. “We should understand that their capability to generate an insurgency is simply not there,” he said. Jones said that with its history Afghanistan would always be prey to random acts of violence but the future security of the country was “moving in a very positive direction”.
NATO is due to expand its peacekeeping operations to the country’s west in coming months allowing the US to move its more than 18,000 troops into the south and east where they are battling remnants of the Taliban regime. Five militants were killed late Monday in artillery fire after a rocket attack on a US military base in Salerno in the southeastern province of Khost near the Pakistani border.
The Taliban was thrown from power by a US-led military campaign in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington but loyalists of the ousted regime are still waging an insurgency.
afp
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