NATO: Top Pentagon military official visits Afghanistan as US military buildup gears up

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NATO: Top US defense official visits Afghanistan

KABUL — The Pentagon’s top military officer visited Afghanistan on Monday as the first of 30,000 U.S. reinforcements prepared to deploy to the 8-year-old war.

Adm. Mike Mullen arrived in the Afghan capital Kabul for a series of meetings with the government of President Hamid Karzai, a spokesman for the international coalition force said.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman said last week 16,000 troops have received orders for Afghanistan since President Barack Obama announced his new war strategy. The first to be deployed — a battalion of Marines — are to arrive in southern Afghanistan this week. Tens of thousands of tons of construction materials, winter gear and other equipment also are in the pipeline.

Col. Wayne Shanks, a spokesman for the international force, said U.S. troops will begin arriving over the next week or so.

“By the middle of summer, you should see most of the forces that have been pledged arrive here in Afghanistan,” Shanks told a joint NATO-Afghan press conference shortly after Mullen arrived.

Shanks said the new troops would be sent mainly to the south, but he would not disclose exact locations.

Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, spokesman of the Ministry of Defense, said the troop buildup, a decrease in poppy cultivation in southern Afghanistan, and increased pressure on the hotbeds of the insurgency would yield improved security by the summer of 2010.

While an uptick in violence was likely this spring as the weather warms, security would improve by next summer, he said.

“We are slowly taking the responsibility from the international community,” Azimi said. “Joint operations will continue for the next two years, but within four years, all operations will be led by the Afghan forces and they will call on the international forces if they are needed.”

The 10,000-member Afghan army is expected to swell to 150,000 by March 2011.

Azimi said 455 members of the Afghan National Army have died so far this year. In the past eight years, 1,601 Afghan soldiers have been killed.

Despite the danger, Gen. Mohammad Hbraim Ahmadzai, deputy commander of recruiting for the Afghan National Army, said recruitment was on the rise, spurred by a campaign in mosques and other public places. More than 7,050 new soldiers were recruited since the end of November, Ahmadzai said.

A raise in pay has also helped retain soldiers in the force, he said.

Obama ordered the American troop surge to try to curb the burgeoning Taliban insurgency as the bloodiest year of the Afghan war draws to a close.

Underscoring the security crisis, Afghanistan’s Ministry of Interior announced that 16 Afghan National Police were killed Monday in two separate attacks — one in northern Baghlan province and the other in the southern city of Lashkar Gah.

Mullen is one of a host of top military officials and world leaders to visit the country following the announcement of the new U.S. strategy for Afghanistan, which includes a plan to begin pulling troops out in July 2011. All the visitors have sought to reassure Afghan officials that international forces would not abandon the nation in 18 months.

In a visit to the war zone last week, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Afghanistan’s senior military officials while the U.S. looks forward to the day when the Afghans can take control of their country, the United States would have a large number of forces in Afghanistan for some time beyond July 2011. “This is a relationship forged in blood,” he said. “We will see it to the end.”

On Sunday, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown worked to smooth relations with Karzai and renew Britain’s commitment to the war despite its unpopularity back home.

Brown has sharply criticized the Afghan leader, saying that Britain would not continue to risk the lives of its soldiers to defend a corrupt government. Brown was less confrontational when he visited Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan where most British troops are deployed.

The change in tone appears to reflect the fact the two governments must work in concert in coming months if they are to achieve their goals of restoring stability in the south, training Afghan security forces and enabling international forces to eventually leave.

(This version CORRECTS byline)