Pat Dollard

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Agencie France Presse:

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday it was probably a good idea to put US forces in charge of NATO’s counter-insurgency efforts in southern Afghanistan.

Such a move would mark the return of the US military to an area that has seen a Taliban resurgence since American troops were replaced less than two years ago by a NATO-led force consisting of Canadian, British and other European troops.

“We’re basically just trying to see how do we best provide for unity of command, how do you have the most effective operations possible in Afghanistan,” Gates told reporters here.

“But we won’t do anything without prior consultations and agreement with our allies.”

Asked whether putting southern Afghanistan under US forces had merit, Gates diplomatically said: “I certainly think it is worth taking a look at.”

The United States currently has about 34,000 troops in Afghanistan, 16,000 of them under the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in eastern Afghanistan.

The other 18,000 are involved in counter-terrorism operations and training of Afghan security forces.

But a contingent of some 2,500 US Marines deployed to Afghanistan last month to reinforce NATO forces in the south for seven months in anticipation of another round of tough fighting with the Taliban this year.

President George W. Bush told allies at a NATO summit in Bucharest last month that the United States would significantly increase its force levels in Afghanistan next year.

Gates also has pushed other European allies to provide combat troops and equipment to fill shortfalls in the south, but the response so far has been tepid.

The defense secretary infuriated countries with troops in southern Afghanistan earlier this year when he complained in a newspaper interview that allies were sending troops unprepared for counter-insurgency warfare.

Although he said he had been misunderstood, the incident highlighted the political sensitivities of “re-Americanizing” the south.

Gates said the US military had problems of its own to work out in Afghanistan, principally a bifurcated command structure in which US troops in ISAF fall under the US European Command and those involved in training and counter-terrorism answer to the US Central Command.

“I think we also need to take a look at some of our own command and control arrangements,” Gates said. “For example, does it continue to make sense to have two combatant commands involved in one country?”