Rumsfeld Visits Afghanistan
Seeking to reassure jittery allies that Afghanistan is safe for reconstruction, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld declared Thursday that major combat operations there are over.
The secretary made the announcement during a news conference with President Hamid Karzai at the presidential palace here.
It came just hours before President Bush was to make a similar statement regarding the war in Iraq, meaning the major fighting is considered done in both the major battlegrounds of the president's "war on terrorism" so far.
Rumsfeld, who arrived Thursday from Iraq, visited a training facility where U.S. troops are working with the Afghan national army.
Rumsfeld has said that most of Afghanistan is secure but he also has said the region along the border with Pakistan remains dangerous.
At the military training center in Kabul, where soldiers from the United States and nine other countries are training 700 Afghan soldiers each month, Maj. Gen. Karl Eikenberry told Rumsfeld he hopes to have 9,000 Afghan soldiers trained by June 2004.
Rumsfeld saw some of the basic training being given to the Afghan soldiers, including first aid training and exercises in setting off mortars. He also spoke to dozens of the U.S. special operations forces who are training the Afghans.
"It's been slow getting going but it's now under way and everything I hear says it's going the right way," Rumsfeld said. "I believe that the fate of this country depends in large part on their having their own national army."
Also at the compound, Lt. Gen. Dan McNeill, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, told reporters he hopes the declaration that major combat is over will encourage more international assistance with rebuilding Afghanistan. The international community needs to step up and help to rebuild the country, which has been devastated by decades of war, he said.
McNeill said he hopes U.S. force could be out of Afghanistan by the end of summer 2004. There are 11,500 soldiers from 23 countries still in Afghanistan.
More than thirty coalition soldiers have died in combat since the war in Afghanistan began in October 2001.
In one recent incident, two American soldiers were killed and several wounded when U.S. troops exchanged fire last week with suspected Taliban fighters in eastern Afghanistan.
The gunbattle at Shkin, near the border with Pakistan, involved at least 20 suspected Taliban fighters, King said at Bagram, the U.S. military headquarters north of the capital, Kabul.
He said a second group of 35 U.S. soldiers was quickly called in, and two F-16 fighter jets, an A-10 fighter aircraft and helicopter gunships pounded the area.
At least three enemy fighters were killed, while the remainder escaped across the nearby border into Pakistan.
The area in eastern Afghanistan has been one of the most active in the country, with frequent rocket attacks on U.S. bases. Taliban remnants are believed to have linked forces with al Qaeda fugitives and followers of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former prime minister who has gone underground and vowed to undermine the government of President Hamid Karzai.