THE COMMANDER of US forces in Afghanistan yesterday set out his plans for winning the war against the Taliban in a report officials said would stress the need to protect Afghan civilians and build the country’s security forces.
Gen Stanley McChrystal’s confidential report, handed yesterday to his superiors in US Central Command, sets the scene for big decisions by president Barack Obama on how broad a strategy to pursue in Afghanistan and how many more troops to commit.
Diplomats added that his emerging strategy might not necessarily require a big increase in foreign combat troops, since it would focus more on guarding Afghan cities and training Afghan police and army.
“How much can he achieve simply by redirecting troops he’s already got?” said one western diplomat. “There’s a good chance that we will end up with more troops, but not necessarily that they will be fighting.”
The report follows a spate of bad news from the country, including the heaviest US death tolls to date in the months of July and August, and an admission by Gen Mike Mullen, head of the US chiefs of staff, that the situation was deteriorating. Polls have also indicated a slim majority of US citizens oppose the war.
“The situation in Afghanistan is serious but success is achievable and demands a revised implementation strategy, commitment and resolve,” Gen McChrystal said yesterday in a statement issued by Nato in Kabul.
He said his review aims to implement Mr Obama’s objective of reducing the “capability and will” of insurgents and to support the growth of Afghan security forces and improve governance. But widespread allegations of fraud could undermine the legitimacy of the next government.
The latest batch of election results released yesterday gave Afghan president Hamid Karzai, 45.8 per cent of the vote compared to 33.2 per cent for Abdullah Abdullah, his nearest rival. Mr Karzai needs to win 50 per cent of the vote to avoid a run-off.
Gen McChrystal said the situation was “serious” but the eight-year-old war could still be won.
US defence secretary Robert Gates said any recommendation for more forces would have to address his concerns that the foreign military presence in Afghanistan could become too large and be seen by Afghans as a hostile occupying force.
“Clearly, I want to address those issues and we will have to look at the availability of forces, we’ll have to look at costs. There are a lot of different things that we’ll have to look at,” he told reporters.
“While there’s a lot of gloom and doom going around . . . I think we have some assets in place and some developments that hold promise,” Mr Gates said on a visit to a Lockheed Martin factory in Fort Worth, Texas.
A top counter-insurgency expert said yesterday that Afghanistan’s government must fight corruption and quickly deliver services to Afghans because Taliban militants are filling gaps and winning support.
The Taliban were already running courts, hospitals and even an ombudsman in parallel to the government, making a real difference to local people, said David Kilcullen, a senior adviser to Gen McChrystal. “A government that is losing to a counter-insurgency isn’t being outfought, it is being out-governed. And that’s what’s happening in Afghanistan,” he told Australia’s National Press Club.
Meanwhile, two US service members were killed yesterday in separate bomb attacks in the south of the country. Two British soldiers were also killed in a separate explosion in southern Afghanistan, the UK ministry of defence said yesterday. Both soldiers were from the Black Watch regiment.
– (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009, Additional reporting: Reuters)