U.S. focuses effort against Taliban inside Afghan capital

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan — The Afghan capital is now the main focus of the anti-Taliban fight, with U.S. special forces conducting raids in the sprawling city and additional American military advisers arriving to help beleaguered local police, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said Wednesday.

“We’ve increased the number of special operations we’re doing in and around the city to target the networks that are attacking the city,” Gen. John Nicholson said in an interview with a small group of reporters. “So Kabul is our main effort right now.”

He said the Afghan government has replaced the top five police officials in each district inside Kabul as part of a plan to more effectively counter the militants.

“This leadership element is key because what we found is many failures at the local level in terms of local security,” he said, noting that the Taliban in recent months have managed to carry out large attacks with high numbers of civilian casualties.

Nicholson said some members of a newly arrived brigade of U.S. Army advisers are being assigned to mentoring Afghan police in Kabul as part of a comprehensive plan for improving security in a city of an estimated 5 million residents.

“I’ll just be very candid. We have a lot of work to do because this city has grown exponentially over the last 15 years” and in a haphazard way that left it vulnerable to movement by insurgents as well as criminal groups, Nicholson said.

In the interview, Nicholson also talked up prospects for peace negotiations with the Taliban.