KABUL: US envoy Richard Holbrooke was due to meet President Hamid Karzai Saturday on the second full day of a visit to Afghanistan to assess US-led efforts to tackle a Taliban-led insurgency.The meeting, due in the evening, comes as Afghanistan marks 20 years since the withdrawal of Soviet forces after a 10-year resistance that the Taliban claims has parallels with its own battle against US and other troops
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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