Vice Adm. Greg Smith, the top military spokesman in Afghanistan, said the intent was to integrate almost all of the 20,000 US troops currently serving in eastern part of the country under a separate command known as Operation Enduring Freedom, into the 100,000-strong NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.
The reorganization will not add any new forces to those already deployed, Smith said. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the senior NATO and US commander in Afghanistan, will still command all allied forces in the theater.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates signed off on the reorganization before he visited Kabul last week, Smith said.
“It's just a matter of moving things from one account in the ledger to another,” he said. “For the military we clearly need unity of command so that elements on the battlefield are not working at cross-purposes with each other.” Operation Enduring Freedom was set up in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. It covered anti-terrorist operations in Afghanistan, the Philippines and the Horn of Africa.
Smith said that once the reorganization is carried out, only small special forces detachments and a detention unit will remain outside the NATO command structure.
ISAF was established in 2002, and currently numbers about 100,000 troops - nearly 60,000 of them Americans.
