(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-10-07 09:05

Still, US commanders point out that military operations have killed more than 50 mid- and high-level Taliban commanders this year, causing at least a temporary disruption in the militants' abilities. The Afghan army participated in its first jointly planned and executed operation, in Ghazni Province, earlier this summer.

Originally, Pentagon planners thought Bagram would be a "temporary" camp, Ives said, but an increased US commitment to Afghanistan means Bagram needs to grow.

"Where we designed a base around 3,000 (troops), it quickly moved to 7,000 and now we're housing about 13,000, so just in a very short period of time you've grown not necessarily exponentially but you've definitely doubled just about every two years," Ives said.

A new runway accommodates heavier C-5 cargo planes and Boeing 747s. New soldiers' barracks — safer and more comfortable than the wooden structures that dot Bagram — are being built. And more workers are flowing in. Two years ago, some 1,500 Afghans worked in support roles at Bagram; today 5,000 walk through its front gates daily.

Six years after CIA agents and Special Forces soldiers helped the Northern Alliance swoop down from their northern stronghold toward Taliban-controlled Kabul, President Hamid Karzai is increasingly asking that Taliban militants join the government through peace talks. And the UN has said an increasing number of fighters want peace.

But the Taliban and factional warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of the militant group Hezb-i-Islami, have rejected those offers, saying that international troops must first leave the country.

Although the Taliban seems to have an endless recruiting base in the ethnic Pashtun heartland in southern and eastern Afghanistan and the Pakistan border region, some fighters are laying down their arms and joining the government.

Officials in Ghazni province on Saturday said some 50 militants from Andar District — a Taliban stronghold where some of the Korean hostages were held — will join the government's reconciliation process.

But the US will mentor Afghanistan's military for years to come, Ives said. He said America's military and aid commitments to Afghanistan are "speaking volumes."

"Our commitment to them is really saying we will be here until you have the security and stability that allows you to be a developing country on your own, and if that's 10 years then it's 10 years," he said. "But I think the thing is we're looking to help them as much as we can."

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