Afghanistan on path to success, declares Bush

US President George W Bush (right) and Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul. Picture / Reuters

LASHKAR GAR, Helmand - President George W Bush visited Afghanistan yesterday for the first time since the invasion by the US and Britain and declared that the country was on the path to success.

Mr Bush, speaking at a public appearance with the Afghan president Hamid Karzai, said the US remained firmly committed to the future of Afghanistan and praised the progress made following the overthrow of the Taleban regime.

However, it was a far from triumphant state visit with the President's arrival kept secret because of a rapidly deteriorating security situation which has claimed 1,500 lives, including dozens of US soldiers, in the last year.

The helicopter carrying Mr and Mrs Bush from the air base at Bagram to the capital, Kabul, opened machine-gun fire at one point during the 15-minute journey.

The President's visit came as the director of the US Defence Intelligence Agency told the Senate's Armed Forces Committee in Washington that a resurgent Taleban and their allies were now at their most powerful since the official end of the war five years ago.

Lieutenant General Michael Maples revealed that the number of suicide bombings had risen by 400 per cent and the use of roadside bombs, of the type used in Iraq, has doubled in Afghanistan in the last 12 months.

At the same time the numbers of attacks by the Taleban and their Islamist allies had risen by 20per cent.

Lt Gen Maples said the Taleban "remains capable and resilient ...We judge that the insurgency appears emboldened by perceived tactical successes and will be active this spring."

Asked why, five years after he vowed "to get" Osama bin Laden "dead or alive", the al Qaeda leader still remained at large and the Taleban leader, Mullah Omar, remained free President Bush insisted: "It's not a matter of if they're captured or brought to justice, it's when they're brought to justice."

The Taleban deputy leader and former Afghan defence minister, Mullah Abdullah Akhund, said that President Bush's "secret visit" showed the control the Taleban had over Afghanistan.

"If the American president's visit had been announced in advance, the Taleban mujahideen would have greeted him with rockets and attacks. But Bush proved his cowardice by coming on a secret visit as a thief," he said.

"The Taleban mujahideen want to tell the American president ... that they will continue attacking your Afghan puppets and American forces, will continue sending bodies of American soldiers to America and this jihad will go on."

During his five-hour trip Mr Bush said Afghans who had met him in the US " ask me with their words, they ask with their stares as they look in my eyes 'Is the United States firmly committed to the future of Afghanistan?' My answer is 'absolutely'."

Afghanistan has held successful elections and a recent World Bank report praised the Karzai government for carrying out economic reforms and establishing a stable currency.

However, attacks by the Taleban and their allies had led to 165 schools and colleges across the country being either burnt down or forced to close with thousands of children affected.

Dozens of teachers have been killed, some of them beheaded.

The Afghan authorities acknowledge that large swathes of the country, particularly in the south and the east, are out of government control either under the influence of the Taleban or warlords involved in producing opium.

The opium poppy crop is at a record high and President Karzai, the beneficiary of Western largesse at the London conference, is under intense pressure to cut production.

A poppy eradication programme is about to start with farmers angry that they are being targeted while, they claim, landlords with connections to the Karzai government are being spared.

Britain is deploying a force of almost 6,000 troops in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan which produces a quarter of the country's opium crop, although British troops will not take part in the eradication programme.

Yesterday Abdul Ahad, head of the shura (council) in Nadali district, told Lieutenant Colonel Henry Worsley, the senior British officer in Helmand: "If the eradication of the crop takes place, a lot of farmers will have no choice but to join the enemy (Taleban)."

There are about 19,000 US troops in Afghanistan, a number which would be reduced to about 16,000 by summer.

Before leaving Afghanistan, President Bush told around 500 soldiers at Bagram "I assure you this government of yours will not blink, we will not yield ...The United States will not cut and run."

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