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Iraq is lost, redux.
Nice.
Afghan victory hopes played down
The UK's commander in Helmand has said Britain should not expect a "decisive military victory" in Afghanistan.
Brig Mark Carleton-Smith told the Sunday Times the aim of the mission was to ensure the Afghan army was able to manage the country on its own.
He said this could involve discussing security with the Taleban.
When international troops eventually leave Afghanistan, there may still be a "low but steady" level of rural insurgency, he conceded.
He said it was unrealistic to expect that multinational forces would be able to wipe out armed bands of insurgents in the country.
The BBC's Martin Patience in Kabul says Brig Carleton-Smith's comments echo a view commonly-held, if rarely aired, by British military and diplomatic officials in Afghanistan.
Many believe certain legitimate elements of the Taleban represent the positions of the Afghan people and so should be a part of the country's future, says our correspondent.
'Taken the sting out'
Brig Carleton-Smith is the Commander of 16 Air Assault Brigade which has just completed its second tour of Afghanistan.
He paid tribute to his forces and told the newspaper they had "taken the sting out of the Taleban for 2008".
But he stated: "We're not going to win this war.
"It's about reducing it to a manageable level of insurgency that's not a strategic threat and can be managed by the Afghan army."
Brig Carleton-Smith said the goal was to change how debates were resolved in the country so that violence was not the first option considered.
He said: "If the Taleban were prepared to sit on the other side of the table and talk about a political settlement, then that's precisely the sort of progress that concludes insurgencies like this.
"That shouldn't make people uncomfortable."
Since the start of operations in Afghanistan in 2001, 120 UK military personnel have been killed.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...ws/7653116.stm
Iraq is lost, redux.
Nice.
U.S. strategy in Afghanistan will fail, leaked cable says
By Elaine Sciolino
Friday, October 3, 2008
PARIS: A coded French diplomatic cable leaked to a French newspaper quotes the British ambassador in Afghanistan as predicting that the NATO-led military campaign against the Taliban will fail. Not only that, but the best solution for the country will be the installation of an "acceptable dictator," the British envoy reportedly added.
"The current situation is bad, the security situation is getting worse, so is corruption, and the government has lost all trust," Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British envoy is quoted by Jean-François Fitou, the deputy French ambassador to Kabul and the author of the cable, as saying.
The two-page cable - which was sent to the Élysée Palace and the French Foreign Ministry on Sept. 2, and was leaked to the investigative and satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné, which printed excerpts in its Wednesday edition - said that the NATO-led military presence was making it harder to stabilize the country.
"The presence of the coalition, in particular its military presence, is part of the problem, not part of its solution," Cowper-Coles was quoted as saying. "Foreign forces are the lifeline of a regime that would rapidly collapse without them. As such, they slow down and complicate a possible emergence from the crisis."
Within 5 to 10 years, the only "realistic" way to unite is for it to be "governed by an acceptable dictator," the cable said, adding that "we should think of preparing our public opinion" about such an outcome.
Cowper-Coles, as quoted, was critical of both U.S. presidential candidates, who have vowed in their campaigns to substantially increase U.S. military support to fight the Taliban for Afghanistan if elected president.
In the short run, "it is the American presidential candidates who must be dissuaded from getting further bogged down in Afghanistan," he is quoted as saying.
On Wednesday, General David McKiernan, the senior U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, called on NATO to send more troops and other support as soon as possible to counter the insurgency.
British officials said that the comments attributed to Cowper-Coles were distorted and did not reflect official British policy.
"It's not for us to comment on something that is presented as extracts from a French diplomatic telegram, but the views it quotes are not in any way an accurate representation of the government's approach," said a spokeswoman for the British Foreign Office, who, like other French and British officials, spoke on condition of anonymity under normal diplomatic rules.
The official confirmed, however, that the two men did have a meeting, but said that the British ambassador's comments were taken out of context. The ambassador's deputy was also present at the meeting, according to the French cable.
But Cowper-Coles, a British career foreign service officer who has served as ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Israel, is known for his frank talk, and other British officials who know him say that his words rang true.
Fitou, meanwhile, is considered a responsible and precise diplomat who would be unlikely to misreport a conversation, a senior French official said.
It is unclear whether the two men spoke in English or French.
French officials, who said they were deeply embarrassed about what they called a serious leak, criticized the broad diffusion of the cable and have started a leak investigation.
The senior French official described it as a "diplomatic disaster" that could put French soldiers at more risk.
Claude Angeli, an executive editor of Le Canard Enchaîné and the author of the article, defended its publication.
"This is not the first time we have been the target of a leak investigation," he said in a telephone interview. "The cable is authentic and we reported its contents accurately."
The pessimistic British analysis comes as France has increased its troops in Afghanistan amid concern despite a further erosion of popular support for French troops being present there.
At the last NATO summit meeting in April, President Nicolas Sarkozy announced that he would send an additional 700 French soldiers to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan, bringing the total to about 3,000. He was criticized by the Socialist opposition for being too close to the Bush administration, criticisms that grew louder after the deaths of 10 French soldiers in a Taliban ambush in August.
The attacks were the most for France since the 1983 bombing of a barracks in Beirut killed 58 French paratroopers.
In his cable to Paris, Fitou quoted the British ambassador as saying that the reinforcement of military troops "would have perverse effects: it would identify us even more strongly as an occupation force and would multiply the targets" for the insurgents.
The cable also quoted the British envoy as saying that despite public statements to the contrary, "the insurgency, although still incapable of a military victory, has the capacity to make life more and more difficult, including in the capital."
Acknowledging that there is no option other than supporting the United States in Afghanistan, the ambassador reportedly added, "But we must tell them that we want to be part of a winning strategy, not a losing one."
The U.S. strategy, he is quoted as saying, "is destined to fail."
I think the problem is that NATO forces use the same tactic as Soviets did: Camp inside the cities (with occasional trips outside) and leave the country side to rebels, only they have even less support than the Soviets among the local population.
I've always thought Afghanistan is going to be a more difficult war to win than Iraq.
The Iraqis are used to better than a sumbhuman standard of living, enough to where something like representative government means something to them. Even if it took a long time the idea is something that appeals to a large number of Iraqis. In Iraq...they still had something to lose, because things could still get worse plus they remembered when things were better.
The Afghanis OTOH could care less. They've been in one of the world's top 3 holes for nearly 2 decades now and their population having one of shortest average life expectancies on earth, the majority of them can't even remember the last time their country wasn't a hole...survival is their goal.
Representative government means nothing to them really. They don't really have much of a concept of it or how it could improve their lives.
It's going to take decades to get the Afghanis back on their feet as just a typical 3rd world society. These people truly don't give a , and since they have no concept of things getting better and things can't get any worse...this is going to take a mass cultural change to pull off. Nothing will get begin to get better there until the fighting stops.
Afghanistan needs to be a world project, and since none of it's bordering neighbors particularly want to see it get stronger as a Democracy and can fund guerilla warfare for pennies on the dollar...that could be a while.
And once it does they really have nothing to build an economy on.
Afghanistan is going to be a real to truly turn around...it's surrounded by weeds after all.
They need education bigtime there.
While I agree with this statement, It's a bad solution. For such a dictator to stabilize the country he (a woman is pretty much out of the question) would have to rule with a violence, that would make the western world cringe....
Within 5 to 10 years, the only "realistic" way to unite is for it to be "governed by an acceptable dictator," the cable said, adding that "we should think of preparing our public opinion" about such an outcome.
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