US plans for Kandahar (and RC South)

Further to the end of this post,

Afstan: Hell no, we're gonna go/Meanwhile Kandahar shaping

lots more from the Washington Post:

U.S. forces set sights on Taliban bastion of Kandahar

U.S. forces have begun the initial phases of a political-military offensive in this Taliban bastion and hope to control the city and surrounding areas by late summer, according to senior U.S. military officials.

Officials have pressed local leaders and tribal elders over the past several weeks to begin holding shuras, or conferences, in Kandahar city and outlying districts, telling them that they must improve governance, address corruption and eject the Taliban. Otherwise, their areas will be the focus of expanding military operations scheduled to begin in June with the arrival of 10,000 new U.S. troops, the officials have said...

In interviews, senior U.S. military and civilian officials stressed the difference between the operations in Kandahar, an urban area that is the Taliban's heartland, and operations in neighboring Helmand province, where Marines have taken control of the Marja district and installed government officials appointed by the central government in Kabul.

"Marja is rural and was ungoverned," said Frank Ruggiero, the senior U.S. civilian official in southern Afghanistan. "Kandahar city is controlled by the Afghan government." But 80 percent of the Zhari district to the west is controlled by the Taliban, as is 40 percent of the Panjwayi district, to the southwest. There are scattered insurgent operations in the Arghandab district to the northwest [emphasis added], Ruggiero and other officials said.

Together, the three districts and the city proper have a population of 2 million, making Kandahar Afghanistan's second-largest population center, after Kabul...

The military aspects of the operation began about two months ago with targeted operations leading to the detention of about 70 mid- and senior-level Taliban leaders, with a slightly smaller number killed [emphasis added, any CF Special Forces involved?], according to U.S. officials. The next stage, an official said, will involve a "body blow" to areas under Taliban control, with the arrival of two U.S. combat brigades and Special Forces contingents that will move quickly to take control of the main highway into the city, through Zhari, to the west.

The bulk of U.S. troops will remain outside the city, while a trained and uncorrupt police force -- yet nonexistent -- will be installed inside Kandahar city.

"We have about four months," a military official said. "In that time, we have to flow our forces in and stay on that timeline." If U.S. and Afghan officials have retained and expanded security control in Helmand, while "moving toward a solution in Kandahar that the people support . . . then we've got the momentum," the official said.

The timeline also has larger goals, including a new police training structure and increased recruitment, as well as continued growth in the strength and competence of the Afghan army.

By fall, an additional 5,000 U.S. troops will be deployed to eastern and northern Afghanistan, for a total of 98,000 in the country, with about 40,000 from international partners. At the same time, the four-region command structure under McChrystal, with a U.S. command in the east, British in the south, Italian in the west and German in the north, is to be grown to five regions [there is also Regional Command Capital (Kabul), so six command in all].

Helmand and the rest of the southwest will be broken off to form a new U.S. command with the Marines and British troops. The British commander in the south, scheduled to depart in November, will be replaced by a U.S. general, leaving the United States in command of three of the five regions [more on the new RCs here].

As for the situation around Kandahar city, compare with this CBC story:

A combined force of 1,000 Afghan and Canadian troops conducted a sweep of the last major Taliban stronghold southwest of Kandahar this week, but encountered little resistance.

The soldiers carrying out Operation Lion II arrived in the eastern Panjwaii district only to be told by local villagers that insurgents had already been chased away


Troops and a tank from the Edmonton-based Lord Strathcona's Horse Tank Regiment are shown on March 26 during Operation Lion II in Khenjakak, Afghanistan. (Murray Brewster/Canadian Press)
...

Rather a different, and more positive spin, what?