U.S. may seek more control in Afghanistan

In early stages of the war, the U.S. military commanded forces across Afghanistan. NATO's security role initially was limited to heading an International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, in Kabul, the capital; but it spread, starting in 2004 — first to the north, then west and, in 2006, to the south and the east.

The overall ISAF commander is an American general, Daniel McNeill, but the only sector headed by a U.S. general is the eastern area, where the 101st Airborne is in charge. If the southern sector were to be put under U.S. command, the American in charge there would still be subordinate to NATO.

Gates noncomittal
Last week Gates was asked at a news conference if he expects any changes in the command structure.

"If there were to be any discussion of changes in the command structure, it would require some pretty intensive consultations with our allies and discussion about what makes sense going forward," Gates replied. "There have been no such consultations so far."

The Pentagon chief acknowledged, however, that the subject has been talks about internally.

"I've made no decisions," he said. "I've made no recommendations to the president. We're still discussing it."

The topic is politically sensitive. A U.S. move to limit NATO's role in the south, where the alliance has taken its heaviest casualties over the past two years, could be seen by the allies as implying U.S. superiority. It could be seen in the same light as Gates' comments to the Los Angeles Times in January about the NATO allies not being as well trained as U.S. forces to fight an insurgency. Those remarks were seen in some European capitals as a slap, which Gates said was not his intent.

A new twist may be added with Bush's decision to nominate Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, to head Central Command, which is responsible not only for U.S. operations in Iraq but also Afghanistan. Petraeus will have a chance to air his views on the troop-command issue in the south when he testifies at his Senate confirmation hearing, possibly before the end of May.

NATO mission has changed
David Barno, a retired Army lieutenant general who commanded U.S. forces in Afghanistan from October 2003 to May 2005, has publicly pushed for a change in the command structure. He said in congressional testimony April 2 that the U.S. two-star headquarters at Bagram air base north of Kabul, the capital, is capable of "a broad counterinsurgency fight all across southern Afghanistan."

In an interview Monday, Barno said the Europeans did not get what they expected when NATO agreed to extend its reach in 2006 from the less-volatile north and west into the south, where it looked then like a mission focused more on economic reconstruction and humanitarian aid than on combat.

"NATO came into Afghanistan under one set of expectations and now is faced with a very different reality, and that's not playing well politically at home -- not terribly well with many of the governments but even less well with the populations in many countries," Barno said.

Among the NATO nations fighting in the south are Canada, Britain, the Netherlands and Denmark. A Canadian general is commander of the southern region now and he is scheduled to be replaced by a Dutch general later this year, part of a rotational pattern that Barno and some senior Pentagon officials believe gives the commander and his staff too little time on the ground to be fully effective.

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