AP

KABUL – The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan pledged Monday to retake the symbolic Taliban home ground of Kandahar in a campaign that builds on early signs of progress from the huge infusion of American and foreign forces.

“We’re absolutely going to secure Kandahar,” Gen. Stanley McChrystal told reporters traveling with U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who arrived Monday to talk with his commanders and Afghan officials.

The recent three-week military offensive by coalition and Afghan troops to evict insurgents from the strategic south Afghanistan town of Marjah is a model in spirit if not in practice for the larger, more complicated task of squeezing the Taliban in Kandahar and persuading Afghans to support the Kabul government instead.

The Afghan war is in its ninth year and unpopular with a majority of Americans. The challenge for the Obama administration is to demonstrate clear progress against the entrenched Taliban insurgency this year, when the number of U.S. forces in the country will reach roughly 100,000 — nearly triple the size of the force when Obama took office.

Preparations for the fight in the southern Afghan region around Kandahar have already begun, McChrystal said Monday.

Gates cited “bits and pieces of good news,” but cautioned against overconfidence. His visit was his first since the start of a successful campaign to rout Taliban fighters from Marjah, once so thoroughly under militant control that a Taliban flag flew on a main road.

The NATO-led force is now growing in districts surrounding the city of Kandahar that are under the Taliban thumb. That is part of a gradual increase in pressure ahead of an eventual military operation, McChrystal said.

“There won’t be a D-Day that is climactic,” he said. “It will be arising tide of security when it comes.”

Gates met Monday with Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai and said he was of “like mind” with the Afghan leader, who is finishing details of a plan to offer jobs, vocational training and other economic incentives to tens of thousands of Taliban foot soldiers willing to switch sides.

Getting top Taliban leaders to the negotiating table is an even greater challenge. The Afghan government on Monday announced it was holding a three-day peace gathering in Kabul beginning April 29 to chart a plan for moving forward on reintegration and reconciliation.

Karzai said the government will embrace thousands of Taliban “who are sons of this soil and have been forced into militancy by circumstances or by various other events … and that’s a process that has the approval of our allies.”

Gates cautiously agreed, saying: “The timing of this, really I think, in many respects depends on the conditions on the ground in terms of when people, particularly the more senior commanders, realize that the odds against their success are no longer in their favor.”

Gates said the military offensive launched last month is encouraging, but stopped short of saying that success in Marjah suggests that the war is at a turning point.

“People still need to understand there is some very hard fighting, very hard days ahead,” Gates told reporters traveling with him.

The major military phase of the campaign around the town of Marjah ended without a high casualty toll for U.S. troops and the Afghan security forces fighting alongside them.

At least 19 civilians were killed during the allied operations. The losses likely would have been worse without strict new rules pushed by McChrystal that limit air strikes, raids on homes and other risky combat operations.

Such operations are deeply unpopular with locals even if they can be successful against militants. McChrystal told reporters the campaign around Marjah could have gone quicker, but the cost in civilian casualties would have been unacceptable.

“Just as in Marjah, what we need to do is bring the local people into both having a sense of ownership of the government agenda, but also having some control and influence over it,” said Mark Sedwill, the new senior civilian representative serving alongside McChrystal.

Sedwill called Marjah a template for the way the NATO-led forces intend to prosecute the war for the next year or more. The coming fight in Kandahar will be part of that redrawn plan, he said.

The 30,000 additional U.S. forces Obama approved are now arriving and most will be in place by summer. Without being specific, McChrystal suggested that any heavy fighting in Kandahar will wait until more U.S. and NATO troops are ready.