The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff has said the US is "not winning" in Afghanistan and needs a new strategy which includes Pakistan's border area.

"I'm not convinced we are winning it in Afghanistan - I am convinced we can," Adm Mike Mullen told a hearing at the US House of Representatives.

Adm Mullen said he was Prosecutors Investigate Soldiers After Afghan Civilians Killed ...
Pakistan bans Taliban after suicide bombings ...
US regrets death of Pakistani troops killed in air strike ... already looking at a new strategy covering both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border.

Meanwhile, Canada has confirmed its troops will quit Afghanistan by 2011.

The announcement came a day after US President George W Bush announced that about 4,500 extra US troops would be sent to Afghanistan by February 2009, boosting the 33,000 currently in the country.

'Inextricably linked'

Relations between the US and Pakistan have been strained by US-led cross-border operations against Taleban and al-Qaeda militants in which Pakistani civilians and members of the Pakistani security forces were killed or injured.

The alleged deaths of civilians as a result of US actions in Afghanistan have also created tension between Washington and Kabul.

Giving evidence to the House Armed Services Committee months before the seventh anniversary of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan to overthrow the Taleban and pursue al-Qaeda, Adm Mullen argued that militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan were waging a common fight.

"In my view, these two nations are inextricably linked in a common insurgency that crosses the border between them," he said.

"We can hunt down and kill extremists as they cross over the border from Pakistan... but until we work more closely with the Pakistani government to eliminate the safe havens from which they operate, the enemy will only keep coming."

Adm Mullen conceded the challenge was great, pointing to Afghanistan's drugs and economic problems, and the "significant political uncertainty" in Pakistan.

But Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Wednesday that his nation - which has suffered significant losses in Afghanistan in recent years - had no appetite for keeping its troops on in Afghanistan past a 2011 deadline imposed in March by parliament.

"You have to put an end date on these things," he told Canadian reporters.

"We intend to end it."

(BBC)

<< Back