Task Force Saber soldiers wonder if Afghan troops will stay at remote border crossing after they lea

[unhappycamper]

An Afghan border policeman searches a man before allowing him to pass a checkpoint in Gowardesh Valley in east Afghanistan’s Nuristan province.


Task Force Saber soldiers wonder if Afghan troops will stay at remote border crossing after they leave
By Drew Brown, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Friday, May 2, 2008

GOWARDESH VALLEY, Afghanistan — An operation by the 173rd Airborne Brigade to secure this key valley in eastern Afghanistan and rebuild a border police station destroyed by insurgents last year is nearing completion.

U.S. officers with the brigade’s Task Force Saber say they plan to begin pulling out the first U.S. troops in the coming days.

Nearly 200 U.S. and Afghan government troops have been in the Gowardesh Valley and in the surrounding mountains for the past two weeks.

U.S. officers hope that by rebuilding a small Afghan border police outpost at a bridge over the Kunar River they can maintain control over the Gowardesh and restart improvements on the main road into Nuristan province. They say a widened and improved road into Nuristan will bring jobs and badly needed economic development into the remote mountainous region and help undercut the insurgency there.

It’s a key strategic goal for U.S. forces in this remote province of Afghanistan, which has always remained largely beyond the authority of government control and whose people have fiercely resisted foreign incursions into their territory in the past.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=54480