Tuesday, September 01, 2009 PARIS: US and NATO troops have inflicted “vast damage” on the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, seizing strongholds and making a dent in the militia’s drug trade, US special envoy Richard Holbrooke said on Monday.Holbrooke, who has visited the southern Helmand province twice in recent weeks, told France 24 in an interview that a major US offensive launched last month was showing results. “The coalition forces including the British and Americans have done vast damage to the Taliban, disrupted them, captured major caches of opium, heroin and drug paraphernalia,” he said. His comments came as the US and NATO commander in Afghanistan submitted a review calling for a revised strategy to defeat the Taliban and reverse the country’s serious situation.General Stanley McChrystal’s review, compiled since he took up command in mid-June, had been widely anticipated under US President Barack Obama’s strategy putting Afghanistan at the heart of his foreign policy. Holbrooke was in Paris ahead of a meeting on Wednesday with his counterparts from France, Germany, Britain and the United Nations to chart a way forward in Afghanistan following the elections. The US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan reiterated that the “door is open for dialogue with members of the Taliban who renounce Al Qaeda and violence”.
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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