Gates confident of gains in Afghanistan this year

(Reuters) - Defense Secretary Robert Gates voiced confidence on Wednesday that sufficient progress would be made in the war in Afghanistan to allow Afghan forces to take more authority in parts of the country this winter.

Gates predicted "a very tough summer" of growing violence as U.S. forces push deeper into the southern provinces where the Taliban are strongest, but he said success in Afghanistan depended on far more than securing Kandahar and Helmand alone.

"I think it's important to remember that Kandahar is not Afghanistan," Gates said in comments that appeared to play down a U.S.-led operation for control of the area, known as the birthplace of the Taliban.

Gates said the United States had confidence in Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who some U.S. officials had described as the weak link in the U.S. strategy, citing his reluctance to tackle rampant corruption.

U.S. President Barack Obama last year embraced a strategy to push the Taliban from key population centres and is sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. He has also set a goal of starting a gradual drawdown of those forces in July 2011, security conditions permitting.

"All of us, for our publics, are going to have to show by the end of the year that our strategy is on the right track and making some headway," Gates told reporters after talks with British leaders in London. "I don't think anyone has any illusions that we'll be done or that there'll be big victories or something like that."

SUFFICIENT PROGRESS

But Gates said General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, was "pretty confident that by the end of the year he will be able to point to sufficient progress that validates the strategy and also justifies continuing to work at this."

"I think there will be measures of effectiveness that he (McChrystal) will be able to show by the end of the year."

McChrystal envisions a gradual campaign in Kandahar to deliver security and governance, as opposed to one big military assault.

In March, Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, described Kandahar as Afghanistan's "center of gravity" and the key to reversing the Taliban's momentum this year, Obama's goal when he ordered the troop surge in December.

Gates made clear he believed Kandahar was an important piece of a successful strategy, but not the only piece.

"Kandahar and Helmand are important but they are not the only provinces in Afghanistan that matter in terms of the outcome of this struggle," he said.

Gates said the transition to greater Afghan control would begin in areas where not only security has improved but where gains have been made in "civil governance, the ability to deliver some measure of a rule of law and government services to people."

"The ground has to be ready on both the civilian and the military sides to begin the transition process," Gates said. "I am pretty confident that we will, in fact, be able to begin that process sometime this coming winter in various parts of Afghanistan."