For the US, Afghan war is far from over

Washington, May 11: The United States has no immediate plans of abandoning the Afghan war just because Osama bin Laden is dead, rather it plans to stay back and bring the war on terrorism to its logical end.

John Campbell, US Major General and Commander of the International forces in Eastern Afghanistan was quoted as saying, "One man does not make this war on terrorism. They'll find somebody to replace him."

Insisting that the war on terror is far from over, he said, "I don't think the war's over. I don't think the loss of bin Laden causes us to change our strategy."

Campbell, also informed that the killing of Osama bin Laden has caused no surge in insurgency in eastern Afghanistan. He said that this may be due to NATo operations in the winter that destroyed twice the number of Taliban weapons caches than the preceding years and damaged the group's leadership structure.

He said, "We have not seen, really, an uptick in Regional Command East on attacks. For about the 30 days prior to 1 May, the number of insurgent-initiated attacks was between 25 to 30 per month. That number after 1 May has continued to be the same."

Campbell, also said that Laden's death has opened up a huge potential to wipe out terrorism from Afghanistan and said, "I think because of ... the death of bin Laden that there's great potential that there will be many people out there that will want to come back in....Mullah (Mohammed) Omar has seen what the coalition says: 'We're going to hunt you down. It may take awhile, it took almost 10 years here (with bin Laden). But we're not going to forget.'"

He went on to say, "And he (Mullah Omar) is in that category there, so I think for Mullah Omar, for the Taliban ... re-integration with the government of Afghanistan is the right future."

OneIndia News