Afghan Offensive Is Set To Follow Karzai's Inauguration; More US Troops Move To Iraq.

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NICOSIA - The US is preparing two major military offensives to protect general elections, one in Afghanistan and the other in Iraq. The first US-led offensive will begin days after the Dec. 7 inauguration of Hamid Karzai as Afghanistan's first directly elected president - an event which itself is a potential target for a coalition of Taliban, Al-Qaeda and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's insurgents.

The second offensive will take place in Iraq later this month. It will focus on Mosul, Iraq's third largest city of almost 2 million people, and other parts of the Sunni Triangle. The number of US troops in Iraq before the Jan. 30 elections will have risen to about 150,000. One of their main tasks, after the offensive, is to secure 9,000 polling stations (see overleaf).

Thousands of US soldiers are preparing an operation against the insurgents to pre-empt an expected spring offensive which could upset plans for Afghan parliamentary elections. The Associated Press on Nov. 30 quoted senior US commander Maj. Gen. Eric Olson at the main American base at Bagram, north of Kabul, as saying: "There could be an unhappy coincidence between the enemy's spring offensive and the parliamentary elections".

Gen. Olson said the aim of the US-led operation is to tighten the Afghan-Pakistan border by sending special forces on raids against rebel leaders. He said the offensive - which will cover the entire US-led force of about 18,000 - would attempt to disturb militants in their "winter sanctuaries" so that they will be in no shape to move against the parliamentary vote slated for April. The military will be "attempting to attack him (the enemy) in those sanctuaries while he's resting and refitting, staging and planning", said Olson, the operational commander of US forces in Afghanistan.

The new operation, dubbed Lightning Freedom, follows Lightning Resolve, a security push begun in July to protect the Oct. 9 presidential election, the first vote since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001. Forty people were reported killed on Oct. 9, but Taliban holdouts failed to make good on threats to assault polling stations across the country. More than 8 million Afghans voted, handing Karzai a majority which foreign donors bankrolling the country's democratic rebirth hope will bring stability after more than 20 years of fighting. Still, violence continues to plague the south and east, where militants are strongest.

A roadside bomb recently killed two US soldiers in Uruzgan province. US officials say militants continue to cross to and from Pakistan. To re-inforce the border, US forces will establish several new camps close to the border. Olson said Afghan forces will also reposition "along and astride" routes used by militants. There will be close co-ordination with Pakistani troops on the border, where they will also have an operation (see survey of Pakistan in SBME6 of this week's Diplomat Package).

US special forces have moved near the main Torkham border crossing in Nangarhar province, where they recently conducted raids on suspected Al-Qaeda targets. Olson said there was concern militants could attempt a "spectacular act" during Karzai's inauguration.

The Dec. 7 event is expected to attract officials from around the world, with the US government to be represented by Vice President Dick Cheney. Still, the general said the military had no information on any specific plans to attack the ceremony.

The US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, on Dec. 2 called on the Taliban to give up their insurgency, pledging "non-criminal" fighters will be left in peace if they acknowledge President Karzai's authority. But a Taliban spokesman immediately rejected the call, saying Afghanistan's problems "will not be solved through peace".

Previous amnesty offers have drawn opposition from armed factions who helped the US drive out the Taliban in late 2001, but could see their influence diluted under Karzai's new government. Ineligible for the new offer are about 100-150 chiefs, including the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar and top commanders of the insurgency, and those associated with Al-Qaeda.

Khalilzad said he was working with Karzai's government on a full reconciliation plan which could be expanded to include Afghans exiled by earlier conflicts. Young Afghans, in particular, should turn themselves in to village elders or US troops as an "interim step" towards reintegration, he said, adding at a news conference in Kabul: "There's no need to fight, to stay in the mountains, Afghanistan has entered a new stage. It's time for this to end".

Officials say many members of the Pashtun-dominated Taliban have contacted them seeking assurances that they will not be thrown into prison if they return to their villages. There has even been speculation that moderate, Taliban-linked figures could resurface in the cabinet, which is expected to be announced shortly after Karzai's inauguration. Winning over more former Taliban could broaden the government's base and allow it to focus on what Karzai says are already more pressing priorities - tackling the country's booming narcotics trade while resuscitating the impoverished country's legal economy.

However, few militants appear to have taken the plunge, and violence has continued since Karzai won in the Oct. 9 election, with aid workers and civilians as well as US and Afghan soldiers among the victims. The Taliban have vowed to continue their jihad (holy war) until all foreign troops leave Afghanistan. A Taliban spokesman, Abdul Latif Hakimi, mocked Khalilzad's call, saying: "We thank him for his kind offer. They are the criminals for destroying our homeland. Our problems will not be solved through peace. The door of reconciliation and peace is not open to us. This is just a deception".

Increasing US Military Presence In Iraq: The US military presence in Iraq will grow by nearly 12,000 troops by next month, to 150,000, the highest level since the invasion last year, to provide security for the Iraqi general elections scheduled for Jan. 30 and to quell insurgent attacks around the country. The Pentagon is doing this mainly by ordering about 10,400 soldiers and Marines in Iraq to extend their tours - in some cases for the second time - for up to two months, even as their replacement units begin to arrive. The Pentagon is also sending 1,500 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division for a four-month tour.

By extending the tours of some 8,000 soldiers from two brigades, however, the Army is risking problems with morale and retention by breaking its pledge to keep troops on the ground in Iraq for no more than 12 months. Commanders had signalled for weeks there was a likelihood that additional troops would be needed to provide security for the elections, and the Pentagon took a first step in October by ordering 6,500 troops to extend their tours. But the force levels announced on Dec. 1 are larger than many officers had expected and reflect the insurgents' deadly resiliency and the poor performance by many newly trained Iraqi security forces in the face of rebel assaults.

Senior US officers in Iraq and Washington have been quoted as stressing that, after the Falluja offensive, they did not want to lose the momentum in pressing insurgents in other restive parts of Iraq, like Mosul and Babil Province. At the same time, commanders say they need to keep a sizable force in Falluja to stabilise the city as reconstruction efforts get under way there. But those requirements demand more troops, especially combat-hardened forces whose experience is seen as essential in attacking the insurgents and providing support to Iraqi security forces. Putting even a squad of Americans inside police stations will stiffen the resolve of local forces and prevent routs like that in Mosul, where newly minted Iraqi police forces fled last month when attacked by small numbers of rebels. "It's mainly to provide security for the elections, but it's also to keep up the pressure on the insurgency after the Falluja operation", Brig. Gen. David Rodriguez, a military spokesman, told reporters at the Pentagon.

Under the military's plan, about 3,500 members of the Second Brigade of the First Cavalry Division, based at Fort Hood, Tex., were ordered to stay an additional 45 days, until early March, for a total of about 14 months. The unit had originally been scheduled to leave in mid-November, but that departure was delayed until Jan. 12, General Rodriguez said. The First Cavalry Division is responsible for security in Baghdad, but it also provided soldiers for the cordon around Falluja. About 4,400 troops from the Second Brigade of the 25th Infantry Division, a Hawaii-based unit now operating as part of the First Infantry Division north of Baghdad, had its departure date in early January delayed 60 days, bringing its total deployment to about 14 months, General Rodriguez said. The tours of 160 soldiers from the 66th Transportation Company, based in Germany, were extended by two months, he said. In addition, the departure date of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, with 2,300 Marines from Okinawa, Hawaii and California, will be extended to mid-March. The two 82nd Airborne battalions will be sent to conduct security missions in Baghdad's Green Zone, where top US and Iraqi government officials work. This will free up more experienced troops from the First Cavalry Division to carry out missions elsewhere in Iraq.(In advance of the Oct. 9 elections in Afghanistan, the US military sent about 600 troops from the 82nd Airborne to provide security there).

It was Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top US commander in Iraq, who decided to extend the tours of more experienced troops, and to take advantage of their knowledge of the insurgents and region, rather than accelerate the arrival of fresh troops from units like the Third Infantry Division, which will arrive in January. In particular, US and Iraqi troops have forced insurgent and terrorist leaders to flee their former safe haven in Falluja, and additional forces would ensure that they remained on the run and could not settle in another Iraqi city.

At the Pentagon, civilian officials and military officers said they had been concerned that the order to increase troops would be heard by the American and Iraqi public and by insurgents as an acknowledgement that the mission was in trouble. But a senior US officer said, "what we're really saying today is that we are committed to the mission, and that we are going to do everything we can to achieve security before the elections".

US commanders said they learned an important lesson when insurgents responded to the offensive on Falluja by mounting their own counter-offensive, attacking police stations and a range of Iraqi security forces in other cities. In Mosul, for example, a number of Iraqi policemen simply surrendered their neighbourhood stations and headquarters when they came under insurgent attack, even though the guerrillas were vastly outnumbered. But one US Army commander in Iraq said in those Mosul police stations where American troops were operating, even in small numbers, the new Iraqi security forces had shown resolve and held their ground. The additional US troops will allow commanders to salt more Iraqi police stations with small, squad-size units of American forces to train the police, advise emerging Iraqi commanders and help steel the wills of Iraqi forces to stand up to the insurgents. More troops will also allow commanders to ease, even if slightly, the gruelling days and long nights of missions now assigned throughout the US military in Iraq. But military personnel specialists warned that the temporary force increases, which are scheduled to last from January to mid-March, might last longer than officials expect.

The Pentagon is "managing the force as frugally and carefully as possible, but we may not fall much below the 150,000 level for more than a year", said Richard I. Stark, a retired colonel who is a troop specialist at the Washington Centre for Strategic and International Studies. The US Army has previously extended deployments for soldiers in Iraq twice, causing complaints from some soldiers and some families.