‘Roads key to Afghan security’

* US forces preparing for a possible spring offensive

KHOST: New roads are an important part of a secure and stable Afghanistan, a United States military official said on Sunday.

“When it comes down to it, roads are very, very significant,” said Brigade Operations Officer Major Dan Morgan in an interview. “If you have a paved road here, you have fewer improvised explosive devices (IEDs),” he said, referring to the deadly roadside bombs the Taliban and other militants use to target US and Afghan convoys. “Once you have a road you can also get Afghan forces to where they need to be more quickly, which improves security. As some have said: where a road ends, instability begins.”

In Afghanistan, where much of the country is semi-lawless and inaccessible, trying to draw communities away from the influence of the Taliban depends on building roads, so that locals can easily reach markets and join the economy.

However, the problem is that building roads takes time and costs huge amounts of money, up to $250,000 per kilometre for asphalt, according to US engineers. And US or Afghan forces need to ensure security in an area before construction can begin. “It’s not quick, that’s for sure,” said Morgan. “It takes vision and it takes tactical patience.”

US forces are heavily engaged in southern Afghanistan, where hundreds of US Marines were deployed last week to take on the Taliban in Helmand province, the main base for more than 7,000 British troops serving as part of a NATO-led force.

US troops are also under pressure east of Kabul, along the Pakistan border, where militants filter across to carry out attacks, and where a suicide bomber last week killed more than a dozen people south of the city of Jalalabad.

Spring: Now that winter has passed and the trails over the mountains between Pakistan and Afghanistan are more accessible, US forces are also bracing for an upsurge in militant attacks — the type of spring offensive seen in the past.

So far US commanders say that they have not seen a significant rise in the number of Taliban sneaking over the frontier, and Morgan says most infiltration points in his 62,000-square-kilometre area have been secured by Afghan units or US special forces. But a potential peace deal between Pakistan’s new government and Taliban in the country’s northwest, along the Afghan border, could mean those militants will start focusing attention across the border. “It’s a definite concern,” Morgan said of the possibility of a spring offensive. reuters