Emphasis on ‘main effort’

[unhappycamper]

Sgt. Kenneth Kelly, of Detroit, maneuvers a sheet of plywood into place in September as he works on the flooring for a tent at Forward Operating Base Ramrod in Maiwand district, in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province. Kelly and other soldiers from Bravo Company, 62nd Engineers are building the base, which is the new center of operations for 2nd Battalion, 2nd Infantry Regiment. The battalion moved into the district to reinforce Canadian troops in Kandahar province, the heartland of the Taliban insurgency.


Emphasis on ‘main effort’
By Drew Brown, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Friday, December 26, 2008

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Most of the U.S. reinforcements slated for Afghanistan in the coming year will likely deploy to the southern part of the country, where they will join in the "main effort" in the fight against a resurgent Taliban, the commander of NATO-led troops in the region said.

In separate visits to Afghanistan earlier this month, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the United States will send an additional 20,000 to 30,000 troops to Afghanistan over the next 12 to 18 months.

Most of those forces will deploy to Helmand, Kandahar and Zabul provinces, where the Taliban have increasingly targeted foreign soldiers, Afghan security forces and Afghan civilians with a relentless wave of bombings and other "asymmetric" tactics," said Maj. Gen. Maart de Kruif, commander of the International Security Assistance Force’s Regional Command-South.

"I think it is fair to say that most of them will be deployed to RC-South," said de Kruif, a Dutch general who took command of international forces in southern Afghanistan last month. "From a military point of view … it’s absolutely clear that the main effort is in southern Afghanistan."

The first of the U.S. troops are expected to deploy in May and June, with the effects of their deployment becoming visible on the ground later in the summer, de Kruif said in an interview earlier this week.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=59641