Tag Archives: Jim Mattis

Mattis signs orders to send additional troops to Afghanistan

FILE PHOTO: U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis looks on during a bilateral meeting with South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-Moo at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, U.S., August 30, 2017. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Thursday he had signed deployment orders to send additional troops to Afghanistan but did not specify the size of the force.

“Yes, I have signed orders but it is not complete. In other words I have signed some of the (orders for) troops that will go and we are identifying the specific ones,” Mattis told reporters.

Mattis declined to comment on how many additional troops were included in the orders, but U.S. officials have told Reuters that President Donald Trump has given Mattis the authority to send about 4,000 additional troops to Afghanistan.

“It is more advisers, it is more enablers, fire support, for example,” Mattis said. He added that no additional troops had moved in yet and could take a “couple of days.”

After a months-long review of his Afghanistan policy, Trump committed the United States last week to an open-ended conflict in the country and promised a stepped-up campaign against Afghan Taliban insurgents.

The security situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated for the United States and Afghan government over the past few years.

The Afghan government was assessed by the U.S. military to control or influence almost 60 percent of Afghanistan’s 407 districts as of Feb. 20, a nearly 11 percentage-point decrease from the same time in 2016, according to data released by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

About 11,000 U.S. troops are serving in Afghanistan, the Pentagon said on Wednesday, thousands more than it has previously stated.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali; Editing by James Dalgleish and Alistair Bell)

Trump says ‘talking not the answer’ on North Korea, Mattis disagrees

A missile is launched during a long and medium-range ballistic rocket launch drill in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang on August 30, 2017. KCNA/via REUTERS

By Idrees Ali and Soyoung Kim

WASHINGTON/SEOUL (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Wednesday said “talking is not the answer” to the tense standoff with North Korea over its nuclear missile development, but his defense chief swiftly asserted that the United States still has diplomatic options.

Trump’s comment, coming a day after Pyongyang fired a ballistic missile over Japan that drew U.N. and other international condemnation, renewed his tough rhetoric toward reclusive, nuclear-armed and increasingly isolated North Korea.

“The U.S. has been talking to North Korea, and paying them extortion money, for 25 years,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Talking is not the answer!”

When asked by reporters just hours later if the United States was out of diplomatic solutions with North Korea amid rising tensions after a series of missile tests by Pyongyang, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis replied: “No.”

“We are never out of diplomatic solutions,” Mattis said before a meeting with his South Korean counterpart at the Pentagon. “We continue to work together, and the minister and I share a responsibility to provide for the protection of our nations, our populations and our interests.”

Trump, who has vowed not to let North Korea develop nuclear missiles that can hit the mainland United States, had said in a statement on Tuesday that “all options are on the table.”

North Korea said the launch of an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) on Tuesday was to counter U.S. and South Korean military drills and was a first step in military action in the Pacific to “containing” the U.S. island territory of Guam.

The 15-member U.N. Security Council condemned the firing of the missile over Japan as “outrageous,” and demanded that North Korea halt its weapons program. The U.S.-drafted statement, which did not threaten new sanctions on North Korea, urged all nations to implement U.N. sanctions and said it was of “vital importance” that Pyongyang take immediate, concrete actions to reduce tensions.

Trump’s mention of payments to North Korea appeared to be a reference to previous U.S. aid to the country.

A U.S. Congressional Research Service report said between 1995 and 2008, the United States provided North Korea with over $1.3 billion in assistance. Slightly more than 50 percent was for food and about 40 percent for energy assistance. The assistance was part of a nuclear deal that North Korea later violated.

Since early 2009, the United States has provided virtually no aid to North Korea, though periodically there have been discussions about resuming large-scale food aid.

The latest tweet by the Republican U.S. president drew criticism from some quarters in Washington. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy wrote on Twitter: “Bar is high, but this is perhaps the most dangerous, irresponsible tweet of his entire Presidency. Millions of lives at stake – not a game.”

North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, ordered the launch to be conducted for the first time from its capital, Pyongyang, and said more exercises with the Pacific as the target were needed, the North’s KCNA news agency said on Wednesday.

“The current ballistic rocket launching drill like a real war is the first step of the military operation of the KPA in the Pacific and a meaningful prelude to containing Guam,” KCNA quoted Kim as saying. KPA stands for the Korean People’s Army.

Trump’s secretaries of defense and state have emphasized finding a diplomatic solution to North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. Earlier this month, Mattis told reporters the U.S. effort “is diplomatically led. It has diplomatic traction. It is gaining diplomatic results.”

Trump has offered divergent comments on North Korea in recent weeks. On Aug. 22, he tweeted that “I respect the fact that he is starting to respect us,” referring to Kim, and that maybe “something positive can come about.” On Aug. 8, Trump had threatened to unleash “fire and fury” against North Korea if it threatened the United States, and two days later delivered some more menacing words.

North Korea threatened to fire four missiles into the sea near Guam, home to a major U.S. military presence, after Trump’s “fire and fury” remark.

‘KEY MILESTONE’

The U.S. Defense Department’s Missile Defense Agency and the crew of the USS John Paul Jones conducted a “complex missile defense flight test” off Hawaii early on Wednesday, resulting in the intercept of a medium-range ballistic missile target, the agency said.

The agency’s director, Lieutenant General Sam Greaves, called the test “a key milestone” in giving U.S. Navy Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense ships an enhanced capability, but did not mention North Korea.

The United States and South Korea are technically still at war with North Korea because their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. North Korea routinely says it will never give up its weapons programs, saying they are necessary to counter perceived American hostility.

In Geneva, American disarmament ambassador Robert Wood, addressing the U.N.-sponsored Conference on Disarmament, called for “concerted action” by the international community to pressure North Korea into abandoning its banned nuclear and missile program by fully enforcing economic sanctions.

Washington has repeatedly urged China, North Korea’s main ally and trading partner, to do more to rein in Pyongyang.

Speaking during a visit to the Japanese city of Osaka, British Prime Minister Theresa May called on China to put more pressure on North Korea.

Asked about her comments, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said some “relevant sides” were only selectively carrying out the U.N. resolutions by pushing hard on sanctions yet neglecting to push for a return to talks.

She said this was not the attitude “responsible countries” should have when the “smell of gunpowder” remained strong over the Korean peninsula.

“When it comes to sanctions, they storm to the front but when it comes to pushing for peace they hide at the very back,” Hua told a daily news briefing.

North Korea has conducted dozens of ballistic missile tests under Kim in defiance of U.N. sanctions, but firing a projectile over mainland Japan was a rare and provocative move. Tuesday’s test was of the same Hwasong-12 missile Kim had threatened to use on Guam, but the test flight took it in another direction, over northern Japan’s Hokkaido island and into the sea.

For an interactive on North Korea’s missile capabilities, click: http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/NORTHKOREA-MISSILES/010041L63FE/index.html

For a graphic on North Korean missile trajectories, click: http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/NORTHKOREA-MISSILES/010050CG0RT/NORTHKOREA-MISSILES.png

For a graphic on Kim’s new act of defiance, click: http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/NORTHKOREA-MISSILES/010050KV1C3/index.html

(Additional reporting by Jack Kim in Seoul, and Philip Wen and Michael Martina in Beijing, Susan Heavey, Yeganeh Torbati and David Alexander in Washington, Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru and William James in Osaka, Japan; Writing by Will Dunham; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Alistair Bell)

Defense Secretary Mattis promises support to Ukraine, but no arms

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko (R) shakes hands with U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis during a meeting in Kiev, Ukraine August 24, 2017. Mykola Lazarenko/Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Pool via REUTERS

By Idrees Ali and Pavel Polityuk

KIEV (Reuters) – U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on a visit to Ukraine on Thursday said Washington would continue to put pressure on Russia over what he called its aggressive behavior, but stopped short of promising to provide lethal weapons to Kiev.

Mattis said Russia has not abided by the Minsk ceasefire agreement meant to end separatist violence in eastern Ukraine.

“Despite Russia’s denials, we know they are seeking to redraw international borders by force, undermining the sovereign and free nations of Europe,” Mattis told reporters, alongside Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

Mattis’s visit, timed to coincide with Ukrainian Independence Day, is the second high-profile show of U.S. support in as many months, after U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson came to Kiev in July.

Ukraine has counted on U.S. support against Russia since a pro-Western government took power following street protests in 2014 when the Kremlin-backed president fled the country.

But some of President Donald Trump’s comments during the election campaign last year, such as appearing to recognize Crimea as part of Russia, stoked fears in Kiev that Trump might mend ties with Moscow at Ukraine’s expense.

Kiev wants the U.S. to supply lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine — a move that the previous administration under Barack Obama shied away from.

“On the defensive lethal weapons, we are actively reviewing it, I will go back now having seen the current situation and be able to inform the Secretary of State and the President in very specific terms what I recommend for the direction ahead,” Mattis said.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Pavel Polityuk; editing by Matthias Williams and Richard Balmforth)

U.S. defense secretary in Iraq as troops battle for Tal Afar

FILE PHOTO: U.S. Secretary of Defence Jim Mattis gives a news conference after a NATO defence ministers meeting at the Alliance headquarters in Brussels, Belgium on June 29, 2017. REUTERS/Eric Vidal/File Photo

By Idrees Ali

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis visited Iraq on Tuesday just days after the start of an offensive to oust Islamic State from the city of Tal Afar, with talks focused on backing Iraqi efforts to stabilize areas recaptured from the militant group.

Prior to arriving, Mattis said the fight against Islamic State was far from over despite recent successes by Western-backed Iraqi government forces. The battle for Tal Afar would be difficult, U.S. officials said.

Iraqi security forces opened the offensive to take back Tal Afar on Sunday, their latest objective in the war following the recapture of Mosul after a nine-month campaign that left much of the city in ruins.

Lying 80 km (50 miles) west of Mosul in Iraq’s far north, Tal Afar is a long-time stronghold of the hardline Sunni Muslim insurgents,

“ISIS’ days are certainly numbered, but it is not over yet and it is not going to be over anytime soon,” Mattis told reporters in Amman.

Mattis said that after retaking Tal Afar, Iraqi forces would move against the western Euphrates River valley.

Brigadier General Andrew Croft, responsible for coalition air operations over Iraq, said that between 10,000 and 20,000 civilians remained in Tal Afar. The plight of civilians was a big factor in the battle of Mosul as Islamic State tried to keep them areas it controlled to act as human shields against air strikes and artillery bombardments. Several thousand are believed to have been killed.

Croft said that over the past two or three months, he had seen a fracturing in Islamic State leadership.

“It just seems less coordinated. It appears more fractured, less robust, and sort of flimsy, is the word I would use… it is sporadic,” Croft told reporters.

Islamic State leaders fled Mosul during the fighting there and the whereabouts of its chief, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, are unknown. Unconfirmed reports in the past few months have said he is dead.

Brett McGurk, U.S. special envoy to the coalition, said that while the battle for Tal Afar would be difficult, Iraqi forces had retaken 235 square km (90 miles) in the first 24 hours.

U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Mattis, who will meet Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and Defence Minister Arfan al-Hayali, will discuss the future of U.S. forces in Iraq after the recapture of the remaining cities under Islamic State, and the role they could play in stabilizing operations.

The officials said that while big cities like Mosul have been largely been cleared of Islamic State militants, there were concerns about the ability of Iraqi forces to hold territory.

Mattis said pockets of resistance remained in west Mosul, including sleeper cells. Iraqi security forces were capable of carrying out simultaneous operations, he added.

Islamic State is also on the back foot in Syria, where Kurdish and Arab militias backed by the U.S.-led coalition have captured swathes of its territory in the north and are assaulting its main Syrian stronghold of Raqqa.

McGurk said about 2,000 Islamic State fighters remained in Raqqa and as much as 60 percent of the city had been retaken.

The jihadist group is now falling back deeper into the Euphrates valley region of eastern Syria.

Mattis said the next step for forces fighting Islamic State in Syria would be a move against the middle Euphrates valley, a reference to the militants’ stronghold in Deir al-Zor province southeast of Raqqa.

KURDISH REFERENDUM

A U.S. official also said Mattis would press Massoud Barzani, president of the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government, to call off a planned referendum on independence.

Iraq’s Kurds have said they will hold the referendum on Sept. 25 despite concerns from Iraq’s neighbors who have Kurdish minorities within their borders and a U.S. request to postpone it.

However, a senior Kurdish official said the Kurds may consider the possibility of a postponement in return for financial and political concessions from the central government in Baghdad.

McGurk said the Kurdish delegation’s recent visit to Baghdad was encouraging.

The Pentagon signed an agreement with Peshmerga forces last year to provide hundreds of millions of dollars in weapons and equipment.

The U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the memorandum of understanding would expire soon and suggested that Mattis could use it as a bargaining chip.

The United States and other Western nations fear the vote could ignite a new conflict with Baghdad and possibly neighboring countries, diverting attention from the ongoing war against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali, Editing by Angus MacSwan)

In Afghanistan, U.S. senators call for coherent policy from Trump

U.S. Senator John McCain speaks during a news conference in Kabul, Afghanistan July 4, 2017. REUTERS/Mohammad Ismail

(This story corrects the number of U.S. and other foreign troops in Afghanistan, paragraphs 15, 16.)

KABUL (Reuters) – A bipartisan delegation of U.S. senators visiting Afghanistan on Tuesday called for a new strategy from the Trump administration to turn the tide against an increasingly strong Taliban insurgency and end the longest war in U.S. history.

The delegation led by Senator John McCain was in Kabul on a regional trip that included two days in neighboring Pakistan.

The visit preceded an expected Trump review later in the month of the strategy for the United States’ longest war, now in its 16th year, a subject that was largely absent from last year’s presidential campaign.

Since the exit of most foreign troops in 2014, Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed government has lost ground to a Taliban insurgency in a war that kills and maims thousands of civilians each year and has made Afghanistan the second-ranking country in people seeking refugee status abroad last year, behind Syria.

McCain said in a Kabul press briefing on Tuesday at NATO-coalition headquarters that “none of us would say that we are on a course to success here in Afghanistan”.

“That needs to change and quickly,” added McCain, a sharp critic of Trump within their Republican party.

McCain was accompanied by U.S. senators Lindsey Graham, Elizabeth Warren, Sheldon Whitehouse and David Perdue on the regional tour.

Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, said she came to get “the view on the ground about what is happening” in Afghanistan.

“We need a strategy in the United States that defines our role in Afghanistan, defines our objective and explains how we can get from here to there,” Warren said.

U.S. officials have told Reuters that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis will present Trump with strategic options for Afghanistan by mid-July.

Last month, Trump gave Mattis the authority to set American troop levels in Afghanistan, but as commander in chief Trump must sign off on an overall strategy for the war.

U.S. security officials have privately said the most likely options will be to increase training and air support by 3,000-5,000 troops for still-inexperienced Afghan security forces, while also tracking down al Qaeda, Islamic State and other global Islamist militants based in Afghanistan.

The commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, has said “several thousand” more foreign troops – mostly trainers – are needed to break a military stalemate with the Taliban.

In 2001, a U.S.-backed military intervention in Afghanistan toppled the Taliban regime, whose ultra-hardline interpretation of sharia (Islamic law) banned most women from public life and executed people not seen as sufficiently pious, such as men with beards not considered long enough.

More than 15 years later, about 13,000 U.S. and allied troops remain in Afghanistan as part of a training and advising mission in support of an elected government that has increasingly been losing ground to a Taliban insurgency that now controls or contests some 40 percent of territory.

Several thousand more American troops operate under a counterterrorism mission aimed at groups like Islamic State and al Qaeda.

(Writing by Kay Johnson; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

China, U.S. agree on aim of ‘complete, irreversible’ Korean denuclearization

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visits the newly-built Dental Sanitary Goods Factory in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) June 20, 2017. KCNA/via REUTERS

BEIJING (Reuters) – China and the United States agreed that efforts to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula should be “complete, verifiable and irreversible”, Chinese state media said on Saturday, reporting the results of high level talks in Washington this week.

“Both sides reaffirm that they will strive for the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” a consensus document released by the official Xinhua news agency said.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had said on Thursday that the United States pressed China to ramp up economic and political pressure on North Korea, during his meeting with top Chinese diplomats and defense chiefs.

China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi and General Fang Fenghui met Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis during the talks. Yang later met with U.S. President Donald Trump in the White House, where they also discussed North Korea, Xinhua reported.

The consensus document also highlighted the need to fully and strictly hold to U.N. Security Council resolutions and push for dialogue and negotiation, which has long been China’s position on the issue.

Military-to-military exchanges should also be upgraded and mechanisms of notification established in order to cut the risks of “judgment errors” between the Chinese and U.S. militaries, the statement also said.

Chinese state media described the talks, the first of their kind with the Trump administration, as an upgrade in dialogue mechanisms between China and the United States, following on from President Xi Jiping’s meeting with Trump in Florida in April.

Xi and Trump are next expected to meet again in Hamburg during the G20 Summit next month.

A day last week’s talks, President Donald Trump said China’s efforts to use its leverage with North Korea had failed, raising fresh doubts about his administration’s strategy for countering the threat from North Korea.

The death of American university student Otto Warmbier earlier this week, after his release from 17 months of imprisonment in Pyongyang, further complicated Trump’s approach to North Korea.

China, North Korea’s main trading partner, has been accused of not fully enforcing existing U.N. sanctions on its neighbor, and has resisted some tougher measures.

Washington has considered further “secondary sanctions” against Chinese banks and other firms doing business with North Korea, which China opposes.

(Reporting by Christian Shepherd; Editing by Simo cameron-Moore)

U.S. soldiers wounded in apparent shooting at Afghan base: official

By Abdul Matin

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan (Reuters) – At least one Afghan soldier was killed and several American soldiers were wounded in an incident at a base in northern Afghanistan on Saturday, a U.S. military official said.

A spokesman for the U.S. military command in Kabul denied earlier comments by an Afghan official that Americans had been killed, but confirmed that an unspecified number of soldiers had been wounded at Camp Shaheen, the headquarters of the Afghan army’s 209th Corps in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

At least one Afghan soldier was killed and another wounded, the U.S. official said.

Abdul Qahar Araam, spokesman for the Afghan army’s 209th Corps, had announced that an Afghan soldier shot and killed four U.S. troops inside the base.

The German military heads the multinational advising mission based in Mazar-i-Sharif. A spokeswoman for the German forces at the joint missions command in Potsdam said “according to what we know right now, no Germans were affected”.

Three U.S. soldiers were killed and a fourth wounded on June 11 when an Afghan soldier opened fire on them at a base in eastern Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province.

In April, scores of Afghan soldiers were killed when militants breached security at Camp Shaheen, detonating explosives and shooting hundreds of troops at a mosque and dining hall on the base.

Coalition countries, led by the United States, are considering sending thousands more troops to Afghanistan to help advise and assist Afghan forces struggling against Taliban and Islamic State militants.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Monday that he would present options on Afghanistan to President Donald Trump “very soon”.

(Additional reporting by Sabine Siebold in Berlin and Josh Smith in Kabul; Writing by Josh Smith; Editing by Dale Hudson and Adrian Croft)

Trump gives U.S. military authority to set Afghan troop levels: U.S. official

U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 13, 2017. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein

By Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump has given Defense Secretary Jim Mattis the authority to set troop levels in Afghanistan, a U.S. official told Reuters on Tuesday, opening the door for future troop increases requested by the U.S. commander.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said no immediate decision had been made about the troop levels, which are now set at about 8,400.

The Pentagon declined to comment.

The decision is similar to one announced in April that applied to U.S. troop levels in Iraq and Syria, and came as Mattis warned Congress the U.S.-backed Afghan forces were not beating the Taliban despite more than 15 years of war.

“We are not winning in Afghanistan right now,” Mattis said in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier on Tuesday. “And we will correct this as soon as possible.”

Mattis said the Taliban were “surging” at the moment, something he said he intended to address.

A former U.S. official said such a decision might allow the White House to argue that it was not micromanaging as much as the administration of former President Barack Obama was sometimes accused of doing.

Critics say delegating too much authority to the military does not shield Trump from political responsibility during battlefield setbacks and could reduce the chances for diplomats to warn of potential blowback from military decisions.

It has been four months since Army General John Nicholson, who leads U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan, said he needed “a few thousand” additional forces, some potentially drawn from U.S. allies.

Current and former U.S. officials say discussions revolve around adding 3,000 to 5,000 troops. Those forces are expected to be largely comprised of trainers to support Afghan forces, as well as air crews.

Deliberations include giving more authority to forces on the ground and taking more aggressive action against Taliban fighters.

Some U.S. officials have questioned the benefit of sending more troops to Afghanistan because any politically palatable number would not be enough to turn the tide, much less create stability and security. To date, more than 2,300 Americans have been killed and more than 17,000 wounded since the war began in 2001.

Any increase of several thousand troops would leave American forces in Afghanistan well below their 2011 peak of more than 100,000 troops.

The Afghan government was assessed by the U.S. military to control or influence just 59.7 percent of Afghanistan’s 407 districts as of Feb. 20, a nearly 11 percentage-point decrease from the same time in 2016, according to data released by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

A truck bomb explosion in Kabul last month killed more than 150 people, making it the deadliest attack in the Afghan capital since the Taliban were ousted in 2001 by a NATO-led coalition after ruling the country for five years.

On Saturday, three U.S. soldiers were killed when an Afghan soldier opened fire on them in eastern Afghanistan.

The broader regional U.S. strategy for Afghanistan remains unclear. Mattis promised on Tuesday to brief lawmakers on a new war strategy by mid-July that is widely expected to call for thousands more U.S. troops.

Senator John McCain, the chairman of the Armed Forces Committee, pressed Mattis on the deteriorating situation during the Tuesday hearing, saying the United States had an urgent need for “a change in strategy, and an increase in resources if we are to turn the situation around.”

“We recognize the need for urgency,” Mattis said.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali. Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed and John Walcott.; Editing by Andrew Hay and Bill Trott)

U.S. ‘not winning’ in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary tells Congress

U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 13, 2017. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein

By Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States is “not winning” the war against Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told Congress on Tuesday, promising to brief lawmakers on a new war strategy by mid-July that is widely expected to call for thousands more U.S. troops.

The remarks were a blunt reminder of the gloom underscoring U.S. military assessments of the war between the U.S.-backed Afghan government and the Islamist militant group, classified by U.S. commanders as a “stalemate” despite almost 16 years of fighting.

“We are not winning in Afghanistan right now. And we will correct this as soon as possible,” Mattis said in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee. Mattis acknowledged that he believed the Taliban were “surging” at the moment, something he said he intended to address.

Some U.S. officials questioned the benefit of sending more troops to Afghanistan because any politically palatable number would not be enough to turn the tide, much less create stability and security. To date, more than 2,300 Americans have been killed and more than 17,000 wounded since the war began in 2001.

The Afghan government was assessed by the U.S. military to control or influence just 59.7 percent of Afghanistan’s 407 districts as of Feb. 20, a nearly 11 percentage-point decrease from the same time in 2016, according to data released by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

A truck bomb explosion in Kabul last month killed more than 150 people, making it the deadliest attack in the Afghan capital since the Taliban were ousted in 2001 by a NATO-led coalition after ruling the country for five years.

On Saturday, three U.S. soldiers were killed when an Afghan soldier opened fire on them in eastern Afghanistan.

Reuters reported in late April that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump was carrying out a review of Afghanistan, and conversations were revolving around sending between 3,000 and 5,000 U.S. and coalition troops there.

Deliberations include giving more authority to forces on the ground and taking more aggressive action against Taliban fighters.

Senator John McCain, the chairman of the Senate committee, pressed Mattis on the deteriorating situation, saying the United States had an urgent need for “a change in strategy, and an increase in resources if we are to turn the situation around.”

“We recognize the need for urgency,” Mattis said.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Grant McCool)

North Korea ‘most urgent’ threat to security: Mattis

U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis arrives for a House Armed Services Committee hearing on the Pentagon's budget priorities on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 12, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

By Idrees Ali and Mike Stone

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Monday that North Korea’s advancing missile and nuclear programs were the “most urgent” threat to national security and that its means to deliver them had increased in speed and scope.

“The regime’s nuclear weapons program is a clear and present danger to all, and the regime’s provocative actions, manifestly illegal under international law, have not abated despite United Nations’ censure and sanctions,” Mattis said in a written statement to the House Armed Services Committee.

“The most urgent and dangerous threat to peace and security is North Korea,” the statement added. “North Korea’s continued pursuit of nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them has increased in pace and scope.”

Earlier this month, the U.N. Security Council expanded targeted sanctions against North Korea after its repeated missile tests, adopting the first such resolution agreed by the United States and China since President Donald Trump took office.

The U.S. focus on North Korea has been sharpened by dozens of North Korean missile launches and two nuclear bomb tests since the beginning of last year and by Pyongyang’s vow to develop a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland.

Mattis, speaking before the panel, warned of the potential losses in the case of conflict with North Korea.

“It would be a war like nothing we have seen since 1953 and we would have to deal with it with whatever level of force was necessary … It would be a very, very serious war,” Mattis said.

The Korean War ended in 1953, three years after fighting began in a conflict that would kill 140,000 South Koreans, 36,000 U.S. soldiers and 1 million civilians.

South Korea’s top national security adviser said last week that Seoul did not aim to change its agreement on the deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system to protect against North Korea, despite a decision to delay its full installation.

Chung Eui-yong called the decision to delay installation of remaining launchers of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, system, pending a review of its environmental impact, a domestic measure to ensure a democratic process.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali; Editing by Peter Cooney and Stephen Coates)