The death last week of the Taliban\u2019s senior leader in southern Afghanistan in a US air strike highlights a surge in operations amid pressure to coax the increasingly confident insurgents to accept talks to end the 17-year war.<\/p>\n
As US special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad makes a fresh round of visits to Afghanistan and neighbouring countries this week and resumes meetings with Taliban representatives, military operations have spiked sharply across the country.<\/p>\n
The aim, say Afghan and US officials, is to build as strong a position as possible for the hoped-for start of peace talks with the Taliban.<\/p>\n
Khalilzad told US broadcaster PBS last week that he was \u201cin a hurry\u201d to secure an agreement with the Taliban, ideally ahead of presidential elections scheduled for April 20.<\/p>\n
While US officials have avoided talk of deadlines, the new urgency has raised fears among many in the Afghan government that the United States seeks a quick way out of its longest war.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe United States basically wants a dignified withdrawal,\u201d said one senior Afghan government official who is in near-daily contact with US diplomats working on the peace process.<\/p>\n
\u201cProgress towards peace remains elusive,\u201d the Pentagon Lead Inspector General told Congress in the latest report last month, as civilian and military casualties grow and just 65 percent of the population lives under government control.<\/p>\n
Large Taliban forces have this year overrun the western city of Farah and the central city of Ghazni, fuelling perceptions that the insurgents, estimated to number 60,000 fighters, are winning.<\/p>\n
To regain the initiative, Gen. Scott Miller, who arrived as commander of US forces in Afghanistan in September, has pushed Afghan forces to go on the offensive, backed by US Special Forces and air strikes.<\/p>\n
Defence ministry spokesman Ghafoor Ahmad Javed said 161 air strikes in the past two weeks by Afghanistan\u2019s own fledgling air force were part of operations which he estimated had killed hundreds of Taliban fighters.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve lost many commanders and suffered lots of casualties, they\u2019ve lost training centres and economic support centres including narcotics,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen they\u2019re under pressure, they know they can\u2019t get anywhere without the peace process.\u201d<\/p>\n
The death of two US Special Forces soldiers and an airman in a roadside bomb blast near Ghazni last week also highlighted the Americans\u2019 increasingly active role.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is more fighting now than a few weeks ago,\u201d said Samilhullah, a resident of Ghazni, overrun this year by thousands of Taliban fighters in one of their biggest operations in years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI see many American and Afghan forces in my village and everyday there are sounds of explosions, gunfire and helicopters flying around.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The death last week of the Taliban\u2019s senior leader in southern Afghanistan in a US air strike highlights a surge in operations amid pressure to coax the increasingly confident insurgents to accept talks to end the 17-year war. As US special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad makes a fresh round of visits to Afghanistan and neighbouring countries […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49327,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49326"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49328,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49326\/revisions\/49328"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}