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NATO is set to assume command of US-led troops in eastern Afghanistan, completing its expansion across the country in a move that the alliance describes as the most significant in its history.
The US-led coalition, which ousted the fundamentalist Taliban regime in late 2001, is due to officially hand over control to NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) at a ceremony in the capital Kabul.
But the move east, which will swell ISAF's numbers to 33,000, comes as NATO struggles to find extra troops to hold off an escalating Taliban-led insurgency in southern Afghanistan and boost reconstruction.
“What you are seeing here is the completion of something which is of huge symbolic importance for NATO, because it is different from anything we have ever done,” Mark Laity, the NATO spokesman in Kabul, told AFP.
“It shows NATO taking complete security assistance charge of this country.”
There are 21,000 ISAF troops from 37 countries working in the north, west and south of Afghanistan and on Thursday the force will absorb some 12,000 of the 20,000 US-led coalition soldiers based in eastern Afghanistan.
The other 8,000 US troops from the east will remain under the command of the coalition and be used for counterterror — principally hunting Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden — training and aircraft support duties.
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There are 21,000 ISAF troops from 37 countries working in the north, west and south of Afghanistan and on Thursday the force will absorb some 12,000 of the 20,000 US-led coalition soldiers based in eastern Afghanistan.
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NATO says the expansion into Afghanistan's seven forest-cloaked eastern provinces is expected to be less “challenging” than when it moved into the Taliban's southern heartland on July 31.
It would also permit NATO's commanders to move US soldiers from the east down to the dusty south, where British, Dutch and Canadian troops have been locked in battle with Taliban-led Islamist fighters.
Thirty-two NATO soldiers have been killed in action since the force took over in south Afghanistan, while a plane crash killed 14 British servicemen. NATO says it killed more than 1,000 rebels in a major operation last month.
But eastern Afghanistan is regarded as the cradle of the Al-Qaeda terror network and is a possible hiding place for bin Laden himself, although NATO stresses that it is not its job to catch him.
The region also remains dangerous. The US-led coalition said last week that attacks have increased up to threefold opposite a Pakistan tribal zone where pro-Taliban militants agreed a truce with the authorities.
Two US soldiers died in eastern Afghanistan on Monday.
Afghan and Western officials have been pushing Pakistan to crack down on Taliban and other Islamic militants allegedly based in its border regions. Islamabad says it is fulfilling its commitments in the “war on terror”.
The Taliban have unleashed a wave of more than 90 suicide bombings this year, mainly in the south, as part of a stepped-up campaign against foreign and Afghan troops, government officials and aid workers.
While ISAF seeks to reclaim insurgent strongholds, it also hopes to win “hearts and minds” by helping build new roads, bridges and schools, as well as provide jobs.
Laity this week described the overall task facing NATO in Afghanistan as “the most significant mission in NATO's recent history.”
But development is lagging and NATO's enterprise faces failure if Afghans lose interest in democracy and turn once again to the fundamentalist militia.
