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Report: Security Situation in Southern Afghanistan Fundamentally Changed

15 January 2011 03:55 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. A new report on the war in Afghanistan says the security situation in the southern part of the country is fundamentally different than a year ago, APA reports quoting â€œThe Voice of Americaâ€.

It says the Taliban has lost almost all of its safe havens in the south and the momentum of the insurgency there has been arrested and probably reversed.

The report by the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War says one year after U.S. President Barack Obama decided to deploy an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan substantial progress has been made. "The security gains that have been made in the south are very important and they are unprecedented," he said.

Frederick Kagan is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who spent 150 days in Afghanistan in 2010 assessing the success of the surge of additional troops and their effort to defeat the Taliban and provide security for the local population. "We have never before conducted multiple, large-scale, simultaneous clear and hold operations in Helmand and Kandahar, continuing to hold in an area that we have cleared while also clearing other areas. We have not done that before," he said.