NATO tries to sap Taliban by creating Afghan jobs

Kabul, Afghanistan —- NATO troops facing ever more aggressive Taliban insurgents are planning a winter “development surge” of civil works projects in eastern Afghanistan designed to win over tribes in regions near the Pakistan border and to prevent their sons from joining the Taliban’s ranks, according to military officials here.

At the same time, troops will keep up armed pressure with a winter offensive that seeks to get a head start on blunting the Taliban’s traditional spring fighting season.

U.S. military and NATO officials said that reversing recent gains by Taliban forces will require more troops, time, confidence-building among the Afghan populace and cooperation from Pakistan in denying the guerrillas sanctuary inside its borders.

“There is no doubt the enemy has bounced back,” said Brig. Gen. Mark A. Milley, deputy commander for U.S. operations under NATO in eastern Afghanistan. “They are not unified, and they only have support of 10 percent of the people. But they have achieved a perception of insecurity. Our challenge is to create a perception of security.”

Describing plans for cold-weather attacks, Lt. Col. Rumi Nielson-Green, a spokeswoman for U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan, said, “Our fighting season is 365 days a year.”

“We are not going to let them rest and reconstitute themselves,” she said.

The simultaneous development surge, in the meantime, should help “separate the people from the enemy by presenting alternatives and undermining their recruiting pool,” she said.

One development project will be in Khost province, where suicide bombers attacked a U.S. base last month and followers of the Taliban are active.

In the past several months, attacks and armed encounters with insurgents have increased by about a third compared with the same period last year, reaching more than 1,000 incidents. As Western forces have responded with more aggressive actions, including airstrikes, the insurgents have won propaganda points by quickly denouncing and sometimes exaggerating the civilian deaths that result.

In the interviews, NATO and U.S. officials said they have taken strong new measures to avoid civilian casualties, not only for humanitarian reasons but because reports of civilian bombing deaths are a way for insurgents to undermine Western air power that they cannot challenge militarily.

“If we inadvertently kill civilians, we pay a price because we go against what we are trying to achieve overall,” said Brig. Gen. Richard Blanchette, chief spokesman for the 53,000-strong NATO forces here. “If there is the likelihood of even one civilian casualty, we will not strike, not even if we think Osama bin Laden is down there.”