KABUL, Afghanistan - Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates met here yesterday with President Hamid Karzai and General Stanley A. McChrystal to review plans for a major US-led offensive in the city of Kandahar, the spiritual heart and birthplace of the Taliban, an operation McChrystal indicated could get underway this summer.
McChrystal, the top NATO and US commander in Afghanistan, declined to be more specific, but told reporters at a briefing in Kabul that it would be several more months before US, coalition, and Afghan forces were at full strength around Kandahar, a city of 900,000 and the capital of Kandahar province.
The general said that while “Kandahar has not been under Taliban control, it’s been under a menacing Taliban presence, particularly in the districts around it.’’
He said he had already sent more troops to those districts and more would be on the way.
By early summer, he said, “I think we’ll have enough Afghan forces,’’ adding that “our forces will be significantly increased around there.’’
At this point, only 6,000 of the 30,000 extra US troops ordered by President Obama have arrived.
“I would say it is very early yet and people still need to understand there is some very hard fighting and very hard days ahead,’’ Gates said.
McChrystal said the Kandahar offensive would be different from a recent American-led campaign to largely rout the Taliban from Marja, a smaller town in Helmand Province. While the Marja offensive began with a burst of forces into the area in the middle of the night, he said that the Kandahar offensive would unfold more slowly.
