KABUL — For months U.S and NATO military commanders have been preparing for an upcoming assault on the Southern Afghan providence of Kandahar \u2013 even publicly saying it will happen sometime during the first part of the summer.<\/p>\n
Thousands of American, Canadian and Afghan troops have begun assembling in the area preparing for the looming operation.<\/p>\n
But Sunday, during a meeting with 1,000 local and tribal leaders in Kandahar, Afghan President Hamid Karzai appeared to contradicted Western officials, telling village elders \u201cthere will be no operation without your cooperation and consultation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top American commander in Afghanistan, and other NATO officials, have said repeatedly said that an operation in Kandahar cannot succeed without local support. But according to several NATO and Western officials, no one is suggesting, outside of Karzai, that the operation will be placed on hold or canceled if local leaders object.<\/p>\n
Instead, NATO and Afghan officials are trying to convince Kandahar\u2019s citizens to invite coalition and Afghan forces into their towns and communities in an effort to improve security. Slowly injecting security forces into communities that request them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis will not be a military assault like other operations,\u201d said Lt. Col Tadd Sholtis, Gen. McChrystal\u2019s spokesman, \u201cbut instead a slow rising tide of security.\u201d<\/p>\n
But gaining the trust of Kandahar\u2019s people, let alone receiving an invitation from its leaders to expand NATO\u2019s military presence, will likely prove difficult.<\/p>\n
Kandahar is the birthplace of the Taliban movement. Many in Kandahar, while not explicitly members or even outright supporters of the Taliban, are still ideologically linked to the Taliban. They are deeply conservative Pashtuns, Afghanistan\u2019s largest ethnic group, and maintain a fierce distrust of outsiders \u2013 both international and even Afghans from other parts of the country \u2013 particularly government officials from Kabul.<\/p>\n
NATO officials hope President Karzai, a Pashtun tribal leader from Kandahar, and his family\u2019s connections will help bridge the divide. His brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai heads the local provincial council and is considered the main power broker in the region. But AWK, as President Karzai\u2019s half-brother is commonly referred to, is also believed to be the largest drug dealer in Afghanistan \u2013 though Western officials admit they have little concrete evidence to substantiate their claims.<\/p>\n
Sunday\u2019s meeting was the first of many events scheduled between Karzai, NATO commanders and local leaders. But it wont be the last. NATO\u2019s top civilian representative in Afghanistan, Ambassador Mark Sedwill, regularly jokes that NATO\u2019s plan is to hold so many meetings with tribal elders, that they are forced to work with the international community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KABUL — For months U.S and NATO military commanders have been preparing for an upcoming assault on the Southern Afghan providence of Kandahar \u2013 even publicly saying it will happen sometime during the first part of the summer. Thousands of American, Canadian and Afghan troops have begun assembling in the area preparing for the looming […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4603,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-518904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4603"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518904\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}