Afghanistan mission hard, McCain warns

Says additional troops will face tough opposition

FIRSTHAND LOOK John McCain and other members of the Senate got a report on the war from American and Afghan officials.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Senator John McCain said yesterday that the situation in Afghanistan will get more difficult before it gets easier - as it did in Iraq - as the United States prepares to send thousands more troops into the country.

The former Republican presidential candidate visited the southern province of Helmand, where he said NATO forces are at a stalemate with insurgents. McCain is touring the region with other members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and he plans to brief President-elect Barack Obama when he returns.

Though Helmand has for years been the responsibility of British forces, McCain said the United States will focus more on the region, which is the heartland of the Taliban movement and a center for opium production.

Many of the US troops due to arrive next year will be deployed near the capital, Kabul. "We're going to have additional troops and additional help," McCain said of the country's south.

McCain's trip comes at a time of increasing violence in Afghanistan, where a record 32,000 US troops are now stationed, with requests for 20,000 more from American commanders.

Insurgents this year have moved closer to Kabul, taking over wide sections of countryside just south of the Afghan capital that are now unsafe. Attacks on supply convoys on the road leading from Kabul to the southern city of Kandahar are commonplace.

In response, US commanders will send about 3,000 to 3,500 troops from the 10th Mountain Division to the provinces of Wardak and Logar for the first time next month, said Lieutenant Colonel Rumi Nielson-Green, a spokeswoman for US forces.

US Brigadier General Mark Milley said last month that road security in the two provinces would be a priority. "We want to get it so that any citizen can go from point A to point B on that road without fear," he said.

Milley said he expected to see an increase in violence south of Kabul over the coming months as the new troops attack insurgents. The militants "will have a choice. Move somewhere else, reconcile, surrender, or die," he said.

McCain said it was clear there has been progress in the eastern part of Afghanistan, the region where most US forces are stationed, but that Afghanistan's south deserves more attention.

"And I want to emphasize again, I think it's going to get harder before it gets easier, just like the surge in Iraq was," McCain said.

Obama asked McCain to report back to him on what he learns on the visit, said Senator Joe Lieberman, who accompanied McCain on the trip to Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Iraq.

McCain, Lieberman, and Senator Lindsey Graham had dinner with the president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, and his Cabinet on Saturday night. The three also met with US General David McKiernan, the commander of US and NATO troops in the country, and a newly arrived US general in Helmand.