From Reuters: General David Petraeus, Washington’s new intelligence chief, handed over command of U.S. and NATO-led troops in Afghanistan Monday, a day after a tentative start was made to a gradual process of transferring security to Afghan forces.
Petraeus, credited with reversing a spiral toward civil war in Iraq, took over in Afghanistan a year ago after his predecessor, General Stanley McChrystal, was sacked by President Barack Obama for comments made in a magazine story. He is leaving the military to take over as director of the Central Intelligence Agency as part of a wider shake-up of senior U.S. security officials and takes over from Leon Panetta, the new U.S. defense secretary. Petraeus, who hands over to U.S. Marine Corps General John Allen, oversaw a "surge" of 30,000 extra U.S. forces which helped stop the momentum of a growing insurgency, especially in the Taliban heartland in the south. He led a similar escalation of forces that helped turn around the Iraq conflict in 2007-08.
However, despite gains in violent southern provinces during Petraeus’ year in charge, the Taliban-led insurgency is still far from quelled. Violence across Afghanistan in 2010 hit its worst levels since the Taliban were ousted by U.S.-led Afghan forces in 2001, with civilian and military casualties hitting record levels, and this year has followed a similar trend.
In an especially gruesome incident, two Afghans were beheaded in Afghanistan’s west Monday, villagers and police said. They were kidnapped along with 33 others last week for apparently supporting the Afghan government. Their beheaded bodies were sent back to their families.
In the south, the police chief of a district in Kandahar — the birthplace of the Taliban — and three other officers were killed by a roadside bomb, the provincial government said.
From NYT: Gen. David H. Petraeus handed over command of the Afghan war on Monday, leaving behind a country racked by deep political instability whose fledgling security forces are fighting a weakened but deadly insurgency that kills coalition troops and Afghan civilians and officials nearly every day.
His successor, Gen. John R. Allen, will confront those challenges — and many more — as he guides NATO-led forces through the handoff of security control to Afghan forces by the end of 2014 — a process that is still in its earliest stages. “There will be tough days ahead,” General Allen said in prepared remarks, which he delivered at a ceremony at the headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force here, “and I have no illusions about the challenges we will face together.”
His first day in command offered a grim snapshot of those difficulties. Three NATO soldiers were killed on Monday by an improvised bomb in eastern Afghanistan, and another died in a separate incident in the south, NATO forces . said in statements.
Elsewhere in Kabul, Afghan officials gathered at the presidential palace to pay tribute to the second powerful political figure to be assassinated in less than a week. The politician, Jan Mohammed Khan, was a former governor from the south and a close ally of the president who was gunned down at his home Sunday night.
Photo credit: Musadeq Sadeq/AP