KABUL — Secretary of Defense Robert Gates received a sobering update on security in eastern Afghanistan during a visit Tuesday that U.S. officials said would inform an upcoming White House review of the war strategy.
Gates arrived at Bagram Airbase, north of Kabul, almost exactly a year after a White House decision to deploy 30,000 additional U.S. troops. He then flew by helicopter to two U.S. bases near the Pakistani border and later met with Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander.
Though the White House once described the review as a key assessment of the strategy announced last year, U.S. officials lately have played down its importance and have insisted that they see signs of progress, despite little public evidence that the insurgency is weakening.
Gates and other officials are in a difficult position, arguing that the troop surge is beginning to show signs of turning around the nine-year war but also conceding that stability in Afghanistan — and large-scale withdrawals of U.S. and European forces — may not be possible until 2014.
Gates is scheduled to meet with Afghan President Hamid Karzai today.
“We believe that we have arrested the momentum of the Taliban in many parts of Afghanistan,” Petraeus told reporters traveling with Gates. But, he added, “clearly again, the Taliban does still have areas in which it has the freedom of movement and arguably momentum” — namely, eastern Afghanistan.
Briefing Gates at his headquarters in Kunar province, Lt. Col. J.B. Vowell said there had been a “surge in fighting” since his battalion arrived in March and that over the summer, attacks had been running 200 percent above 2009 levels.
Vowell attributed the increase in violence in the remote province in part to the presence of additional U.S. troops, which he said allowed the Taliban to recruit fighters.
