U.S. command requests new troops to fight Taliban

KABUL, Afghanistan — Radical Islamist Taliban forces, shattered and ejected from Afghanistan by the U.S. military five years ago, are poised for a major offensive against U.S. troops and undermanned NATO forces, prompting American commanders here to issue an urgent appeal for a new U.S. Marine Corps battalion to reinforce the American positions.

NATO's 30,000 troops in Afghanistan are supposed to have taken responsibility for security operations across the country. But Taliban attacks have risen sharply, and senior U.S. officers here describe the NATO operation as weak, hobbled by a shortage of manpower and equipment and by restrictions put on the troops by their home capitals.

The accelerating war here and the critical need for troops complicate the crumbling security picture across the region — from Afghanistan, where the United States chose to strike back after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, to Iraq, where U.S. troops have been unable in almost four years of fighting to establish basic security and quell a bloody sectarian war.

As a last-ditch effort, President Bush is expected to announce this week the dispatch of thousands of additional troops to Iraq as a stopgap measure, an order that Pentagon officials say would strain the Army and Marine Corps as they struggle to man both wars.

Already, a U.S. Army infantry battalion fighting in a critical area of eastern Afghanistan is due to be withdrawn within weeks in order to deploy to Iraq.

According to Army Brig. Gen. Anthony Tata and other senior U.S. commanders here, that will happen just as the Taliban are expected to unleash a major campaign to cut the vital road between Kabul and Kandahar. The official said the Taliban intend to seize Kandahar, Afghanistan's second-largest city and the place where the group was organized in the 1990s.

"We anticipate significant events there next spring," said Tata.

At stake, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, is the key U.S. strategic imperative of preventing al-Qaida and Taliban forces from establishing terrorist sanctuaries, as Afghanistan was in the late 1990s when al-Qaida launched operations to bomb U.S. embassies and warships and eventually hatched the Sept. 11 plot.

"This could be a pivotal year" for U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said Gen. James T. Conway, commandant of the Marine Corps, after a recent series of briefings here.

Despite the presence of about 30,000 NATO troops — roughly 10 percent short of what its member nations had pledged to provide — Taliban attacks on U.S., allied and Afghan forces more than tripled in the past year, from 1,632 in 2005 to 5,388 in 2006, according to U.S. military-intelligence officials.

Suicide bomb attacks increased from 18 in 2005 to 116 in 2006. Direct-fire attacks also more than tripled, from three per day in 2005 to more than 10 per day in 2006.

With NATO unable or unwilling to stem the rising violence, the Taliban are pressing their advantage. Rather than withdrawing to regroup over the winter, intelligence officials and combat commanders said, the Taliban forces — clad in new cold-weather boots and fleece jackets — are fighting through the bitter cold months.

"It is bleak," said Col. Chris Haas, commander of the Joint Special Operations Task Force in Afghanistan.

Conway said U.S. commanders understand that the Afghan war is an "economy of force" operation, a military term for a mission that is given minimal resources because it is a secondary priority, in this case behind Iraq.

Nevertheless, Conway said, he favored dispatching a Marine battalion here, a decision subject to approval by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and by President Bush.

The Taliban are also building up forces in southern Afghanistan. U.S. Special Forces teams have found logistics bases and a field hospital for as many as 900 Taliban fighters in the area of Lashkar Gah.

Taliban operations across Afghanistan, aimed at harassing U.S. and NATO troops and intimidating local government officials and schoolteachers, are also seriously hampering economic development.

U.S. Army Gen. Dan K. McNeill, who takes over next month as the top allied officer in Afghanistan, will command the NATO troops and roughly 17,000 U.S. troops in the field with about 36,000 Afghan soldiers. But they are stretched too thin across this nation of jagged peaks and wind-scoured desert to occupy areas cleared of Taliban, American officers said.