Taliban defeat will take years: US Gen

MAIDAN SHAHR (Afghanistan)—It will take “a few years” to defeat the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan, the top US general in the country said, reiterating US support for the fight. Major General David Rodriguez, head of the US-led coalition force, said the US military would stay in the country “as long as they are needed.”
“We definitely think it will take a few years for the Afghan people and the Afghan leaders supported by the coalition forces to defeat them,” he said in a response to a question from a journalist. An insurgency led by the Taliban, who were in government between 1996 and 2001, has been growing in the past two years with a spike in suicide attacks and roadside bombings.
The deadliest blast struck outside the southern city of Kandahar on Sunday, leaving more than 100 people dead. The Taliban denied involvement but officials said they were to blame. On Monday another suicide blast — this time claimed by the Taliban — killed nearly 40 people in Kandahar province’s border town of Spin Boldak.
Deputy US ambassador Christopher Dell, who accompanied Rodriguez on a trip to meet officials in the town of Maidan Shahr, west of Kabul, said that Taliban used terror tactics because they had little support among people. “They are simply trying to terrorise them to play with fear in order to achieve their objectives,” he said. The coalition works alongside a larger NATO-led force and the Afghan military.
Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper conferred with Afghan President Hamid Karzai about the future of NATO’s Afghanistan mission, his spokeswoman said. Speaking by telephone, Harper told Karzai that Canada wishes to extend its deployment of 2,500 troops in battle-scarred Kandahar province to 2011, but only if NATO allies send reinforcements.
To that end, Harper has in recent weeks urged the heads of France, Germany and Australia to boost their troop deployments in southern Afghanistan. Defense Minister Peter MacKay told NATO defense ministers Ottawa’s demand for an extra 1,000 troops in Kandahar to fight alongside Canadian soldiers against insurgents was “not a negotiable item.”
Otherwise, Canada would withdraw from Afghanistan at the end of its current mandate in February 2009, said Harper. Canada’s parliament is expected to vote next month on whether to extend its combat mission in the volatile south.
In his discussion with Karzai, Harper “confirmed that he is in contact with NATO allies regarding additional troops and expressed his hope that Parliament will support a motion that would see an extension of Canada’s mission to Afghanistan,” his spokeswoman Sandra Buckler said in an email.
“President Karzai reconfirmed his support for the Canadian mission, a message he will carry to NATO in the coming weeks,” she added. Harper also announced Tuesday he will meet with Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek in Ottawa on February 28 and 29 to discuss Canadian-Czech cooperation in Afghanistan
Afghan farmers earned about $1 billion from opium production in 2007, by far the country’s largest cash crop, the International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday. The IMF said opium production in Afghanistan had spiraled up to 8,200 tons in 2007 from 185 tons in 2001.
It said Afghanistan’s share of world supply increased to about 93 percent in 2007 from 52 percent in 1995, making it the world’s largest opium producer despite efforts to bring production under control since the fall of the Taliban six years ago.
The IMF said it was not well qualified to comment on Afghanistan’s opium production, and cited figures from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime that estimate the total value of the opium harvest in Afghanistan was worth about $4 billion in 2007, compared with $2.7 billion in 2005.—Agencies