KABUL — Defense Secretary Robert Gates arrived in Kabul on Saturday with a message that Afghans must assume more responsibility for their security because the international commitment to Afghanistan is “not infinite, in either time or resources.”
Gates, on his last of 12 trips to Afghanistan in his four-year tenure as secretary of defense, emphasized that the U.S. commitment to supporting Afghanistan’s government and training its security forces will be robust. But he added that for the transition to be successful, “the Afghan government and security forces must be willing to step up and take more and more responsibility for governing and defending their own territory.”
Gates spoke at a news conference on the grounds of the presidential palace, alongside President Hamid Karzai, who has been increasingly critical of U.S. military operations, particularly airstrikes on Afghan homes and nighttime raids targeting Taliban insurgents.
Karzai said he had told Gates in a meeting earlier Saturday about the Afghan government’s long-standing concern about civilian casualties and his desire for an end to coalition strikes.
“The bombardment of civilian homes is the issue Afghans definitely want to end,” Karzai said at the news conference. “We cannot take this anymore.”
Gates acknowledged that the coalition’s “military operations have at times impacted the Afghan people in unwelcome ways, from minor but grating inconveniences to, in some rare but tragic cases, civilians accidentally killed or injured — losses we mourn and profoundly regret.”
Gates’ trip to Afghanistan is, in part, a farewell tour.
The defense secretary plans to visit U.S. soldiers and Marines in the south and east, and he met Saturday with Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan.
Before his arrival in Afghanistan, Gates told reporters that although the war has been costly, budget concerns should not be the only consideration.
“The most costly thing of all would be to fail,” he said.
