Up to 6,000 additional troops are urgently needed in Afghanistan and a failure to deploy them will only prolong the presence of Western forces in the country, a German NATO general said on Sunday.
Egon Ramms told public radio station Deutschlandfunk that alliance members would end up paying a price later if they did not boost troop numbers now.
"We are talking about a total of 5,000, 6,000 soldiers," Ramms said. "We need these soldiers now, very soon, because we need to hold specific areas, we need to win over Afghanistan's citizens and because at some point, in 2010, 2011 or 2012 we will want to hand over responsibility to Afghan forces."
Roughly 60,000 foreign troops are in Afghanistan, most of them part of the NATO-led International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF), but security has deteriorated over the past two years.
Some 6,000 people were killed in 2007, the deadliest year since U.S. and NATO-led forces and gangs of the so-called "Northern Alliance" seized Kabul and established the puppet regime in the country.
Western experts admit that since the departure of the Taliban from large cities the war in Afghanistan did not end. The Taliban have been actively fighting against the US and NATO forces and it does not look like they are going to stop the war. Moreover, judging from the emotional statement by the German general, the fate of the victory in Afghanistan is far from being resolved.
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