U.S. to Stay for Years in Afghanistan, Rumsfeld

WASHINGTON, Aug 16 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The new Afghan government is having difficulty getting on its feet because the international community has been slow to fulfill its promises of aid, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Thursday, August 15, 2002.

Rumsfeld rejected a growing perception that the government of President Hamid Karzai is being undermined by a deteriorating security situation as former warlords vie for power and influence.

"The real problem, in my view, in Afghanistan is not security," he said. "It is rather the challenge of bolstering the new government, the new central government, and the fact that the international community is not yet delivering the level of assistance to President Karzai and his team that is needed."

Rumsfeld acknowledged that violence persists in the region southeast of Kabul, where U.S. forces have come under sporadic attack from fighters who move back and forth across the border with Pakistan.

A U.S. Army Green Beret (special forces) soldier died August 7 of wounds suffered in an ambush in the area. Other U.S. troops have been wounded in a flurry of recent attacks, prompting reports that al-Qaeda and the Taliban may be regrouping.

Rumsfeld said the current phase of the war was aimed at preventing a large concentrations of Taliban and al-Qaeda forces from re-gathering.

But Army General Tommy Franks, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, attending the news conference with Rumsfeld, told reporters that, "it will only be a matter of time until in fact we have that in the box that we want it in." but the need for U.S. troops to stay in Afghanistan will remain, and may involve years in order to keep it from reverting to "a terrorist training camp."

"We didn't go in there to leave in a way that allows it to turn back into a terrorist training camp, we went in there so that that would not happen," said Rumsfeld. "And the end-state is when the Afghan government has the capability to provide for its own security."

Anticipating concerns over long-term U.S. troop deployment in the country, Franks said, "We are engaged in military-to-military relationships in a great many countries around the world so it does not surprise me that someone would say, 'Oh gosh, the military's going to be in Afghanistan for a long, long, time…Sure we will be."

Although Franks made no specific prediction about how long U.S. forces would remain there, when asked specifically whether he agreed with a U.S. official's assessment that the U.S. military would stay in Afghanistan for years, Franks replied, "I would agree with that."

Franks said cooperation with the government of President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan "is very good today."

Elsewhere in the country, Rumsfeld said the security situation was better than it has been in a quarter of a century.

U.S. troops may remain in Afghanistan for years

"But the ministers don't have a structure under them so that they can actually govern the entire country; nor do they have the budgets necessary to conduct a government," he said.

"And it simply takes time to get that infrastructure in place so that they can actually function as a working government as opposed to a government essentially in name," he added.

"They need to get on their feet. To do that, they need resources," he said.

"One would expect a maturation of the government inside Afghanistan, one would expect the training of the Afghan national army, border security forces, police forces and so forth, to come along in accordance with a plan," added Franks.

Despite aid pledges by international donors totaling some five billion dollars, Rumsfeld said the money has been slow in coming.

Less than a third the aid pledged for this year at the Tokyo donors conference has been delivered, he said.

Other aid is spread out over several years - much of it in the form of goods and services rather than money, and often with strings attached that prevent it from being used for security purposes, he said.

He said the United States is also looking for another country to replace Turkey as the lead country of the International Security Assistance Force, the multinational force that has been policing the Afghan capital. Turkey's six-month rotation in command of the 4,000-member force ends in December.

In a related development, the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, Major General John Vines, received orders to deploy with his headquarters to Afghanistan to replace the 10th Mountain Division command team, the military announced.

Rumsfeld said the U.S.-led coalition's mission in Afghanistan will slowly shift from combat operations to nation building efforts like building roads, schools and hospitals.

"Truth be told, the security situation in Afghanistan is reasonably good," Rumsfeld said. "Is the situation perfectly tidy? No ... But I suspect it would be accurate to say that the security situation in Afghanistan is the best it's been probably in close to a quarter of a century."

"The real problem, in my view, in Afghanistan is not security," he said. "It is rather the challenge of bolstering the new government, the new central government, and the fact that the international community is not yet delivering the level of assistance to President Karzai and his team that is needed."