U.S. will raise civilian Afghan presence

WASHINGTON, Nov. 24 (UPI) -- U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke says more than 900 U.S. civilians are expected to be assigned to Afghanistan by next year.

Holbrooke, whose jurisdiction includes Afghanistan and Pakistan, spoke Monday while briefing reporters in Washington on U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's recent Kabul visit to attend the inauguration of President Hamid Karzai to a second term.

Holbrooke cited 974 as the number of civilians expected to be in Afghanistan by next year, up sharply from about 300 at the start of this year. The civilians will no longer be on six-month tours as before, a State Department news release quoted him as saying.

"When we came into office, there were about 300 American civilians in all of Afghanistan, and most of them were on six-month tours and they had very substantial leave arrangements to go to Dubai or Abu Dhabi or somewhere else regularly. And there was no continuity," Holbrooke said.

Saying the current "civilian effort is going quite well," the ambassador said: "This is an extraordinary increase. And if you consider that each one of the Americans has a footprint of nine or 10 support people -- Afghans, third-country nationals, NGOs -- it's a very large increase, proportionally larger than the military."