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Gates Lands in Afghanistan

02 September 2010 18:01 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates arrived here on an unannounced visit Thursday for meetings with American military commanders and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, APA reports quoting The New York Times.
It is Mr. Gatesâ€™s first visit to the country since Gen. David H. Petraeus became the top American and NATO commander, replacing Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who was fired by President Obama in June.
In a briefing on Thursday afternoon to reporters traveling with Mr. Gates, General Petraeus said that the United States was still trying to fix its intelligence-gathering operation in Afghanistan, which was sharply criticized earlier this year in a report by Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the top American military intelligence officer in the country.
â€œWe have never had the granular understanding of local circumstances in Afghanistan that we achieved over time in Iraq,â€ General Petraeus told reporters at Camp Eggers, an American military base in Kabul. â€œOne of the key elements in our ability to be fairly agile in our activities in Iraq during the surge was a pretty good understanding of who the powerbrokers were in local areas, how the systems were supposed to work, how they really worked, which tribe was which.â€
Without providing details, General Petraeus said that â€œwe are just completing the process of getting the inputs right here.â€
The general also said that insurgents were still fighting hard for full control of the farming area of Marja, the site of a major United States military operation in February. General Petraeus said, however, that shops and a school had reopened, that the district center has been rebuilt and that a voter registration drive occurred there last week.
In Kandahar, he said, United States forces continue to kill insurgents in the surrounding districts, but he said the operation would take more time. He offered these statistics: In June, July and August, American and NATO forces killed or captured 235 insurgent leaders, killed 1,066 rank-and-file insurgents and captured another 1,673 rank-and-file insurgents.
Mr. Gates and Mr. Karzai were to have a joint news conference in Kabul on Thursday night.