The second US Army Brigade Combat Team coming to Kandahar/COIN priority over CT

And lots more on the second Obama surge and operational emphases:

1) Wall St. Journal (order of paras changed for Canadian relevance):

Surge Focus Is Roads, Police
Offering First Details, General Says U.S. Will Create Safe Corridor, Revamp Force
...
In the second wave of the surge, in March to May, another U.S. Army brigade combat team, from the 101st Airborne Division, will deploy to the districts around Kandahar City, Afghanistan's second-largest and the birthplace of the Taliban movement [want to wager when that will get major play in our media?]. Canadian forces stationed in and around Kandahar in recent years have lacked the strength to check the Taliban rise in the area, and the insurgents exert heavy influence over the city [the Army's 5th Stryker BCT has been in the area since this summer; this post gives details on three separate US Army battalions that are attached with the CF]...

The troop surge in Afghanistan will focus on expanding and connecting safe areas of the country, and on revamping the troubled Afghan police, the U.S.-led coalition's day-to-day commander said in an interview.

U.S. Lt. Gen. David M. Rodriguez outlined Tuesday how the surge would unfold, in the most specific terms since President Barack Obama authorized early this month the dispatch of 30,000 extra American troops to Afghanistan. Asked how he would measure success a year from now, he said the crucial marker would be opening up insurgent-infested roads between Afghanistan's agricultural heartland in Helmand province and the Pakistan border ["Afstan: Roads, dear boy, roads", map of the main "ring road" at end of this post]...

It will take about half a year and possibly longer for the planned American reinforcements to deploy here in full. According to Gen. Rodriguez, the bulk of additional American forces will be composed of four brigade-size combat teams, with the rest made up of engineers, aviation personnel, intelligence staff and other "enablers."...

[One of the brigades will be Marines to Helmand, much larger than an Army brigade, more here (including links to units) with this observation:

So the surge is indeed serious; as I wrote earlier:

...If, besides the Marines, President Obama plans to dispatch fewer than three Army BCTs with a combat focus (such a new overall commitment would amount to almost doubling current US ground combat strength) then I think it will be an indication that he is not really interested in making a success of Gen. McChrystal's COIN strategy...]

The second major U.S. unit deploying in coming months will be a 4,000-strong brigade combat team of the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division, Gen. Rodriguez said. The brigade's artillery battalion will focus on running a police-training school, while much of the remaining three battalions will be scattered throughout the country at joint outposts where platoon-size American forces would live and operate together with Afghan police units.

Turning the Afghan National Police -- seen as corrupt and lagging behind Afghanistan's army in performance -- into an effective law-enforcement and counterinsurgency force is key to rolling back the Taliban and restoring government authority, U.S. officials say...

The U.S. military hasn't yet decided from where to draw the fourth brigade combat team, expected to deploy to eastern Afghanistan "a little later," Gen. Rodriguez added. "It's the issue of how fast you can get them in -- and we're trying to get in as fast as we can."..

2) LA Times:

U.S. steps up special operations mission in Afghanistan
Under the shift in strategy, the teams now focus on targeting key Taliban figures rather than mainly hunting Al Qaeda leaders and have increased the number of raids they conduct, officials say.

The U.S. military command has quietly shifted and intensified the mission of clandestine special operations forces in Afghanistan, senior officials said, targeting key figures within the Taliban, rather than almost exclusively hunting Al Qaeda leaders.

As a result of orders from Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and allied commander in Afghanistan, the special operations teams are focusing more on killing militants, capturing them or, whenever possible, persuading them to turn against the Taliban-led insurgency.

The number of raids carried out by such units as the Army's Delta Force [unofficial site here] and Navy's SEAL Team Six in Afghanistan has more than quadrupled in recent months. The teams carried out 90 raids in November, U.S. officials said, compared with 20 in May. U.S. special operations forces primarily conduct missions in eastern and southern Afghanistan [emphasis added, where our special forces are too--but our government releases practically nothing about what they do; though I think it a fair assumption they work closely with their American, as well as Brit and Aussie, counterparts].

The numbers reflect the evolving strategy and increased pressure on U.S. military leaders to show swift results against the Taliban...

The shift could be controversial among some administration officials and lawmakers who want the U.S. military to focus primarily on the long-term fight against terrorism and on eradicating Al Qaeda. Senior military leaders, however, believe that rolling back Taliban gains has become the overriding short-term priority...

In other words, COIN priority over CT.

By the way, if the Germans are to replace anyone in the south I don't think it will be the CF (the US Army is all over our area)--more likely the Dutch in Uruzgan, where the level of insurgent violence is considerably less than in Kandahar or Helmand.

Update: More on special forces from the NY Times:

Elite U.S. Force Expanding Hunt in Afghanistan