The head of NATO forces in Afghanistan warned yesterday that the military effort needs more money and more troops for a year-long push that he believes will defeat the Taliban.
While NATO troops had frustrated the Taliban's plans to mount a winter campaign for the first time, it had been "against the odds" and the result of "exceptionally skilled and brave fighting," General David Richards said.
It had been achieved with fewer troops than were required, he said. "I am concerned that NATO nations will assume the same level of risk in 2007, believing they can get away with it. They might, but it's a dangerous assumption to believe the same ingredients will exist this year as they did last. And anyway a stabilized situation is not a good enough aim. We should and can win in Afghanistan but we need to put more military effort into the country. ... We must apply ourselves more energetically for one more year in order to win."
In a wide-ranging interview before he leaves Kabul next month, Richards said that the west must stop trying to impose western solutions on an Islamic society at a very early stage of development.
Afghani President Hamid Karzai must step up the country's efforts in order to root out corruption, Richards said.
Richards also believes that relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan governments need to be improved.
"Currently they are passing in the night and the climate is not good," he said.
Civilian agencies, including Britain's international development department, must also speed up reconstruction efforts, he said.
NATO countries responsible for security in different areas of Afghanistan must also avoid the risk of treating their operations in isolation, rather than as part of an overall plan covering the country, he said.
Richards said the defeat of Taliban forces in a battle last September in which 1,000 of their fighters were killed had changed the tide of the conflict, but added that ordinary Afghans "need to have faith in the prowess of the side they back."
He added: "They just will not take the risk of backing the wrong side."
The general commands 31,000 troops, including 5,000 British soldiers, which make up the NATO-led international security assistance force based in Kabul.
NATO commanders have been saying that is not enough and are urging governments to honor a longstanding promise to provide a 1,000-strong reserve battalion for Afghanistan.
Germany and France have been criticized for refusing to deploy their forces from the safer north and western provinces of Afghanistan to the more hostile south where the British, Canadians, US troops and Dutch are based.
But Richards said criticism of the two European allies was misplaced. "What I need is more troops, not the ability simply to redeploy existing troops," he said.
Richards said the military were "hugely frustrated."
They military was the first to admit that force alone could not solve the country's problems, but military commanders should be given more authority and money to "orchestrate the overall campaign, certainly while serious fighting continues," he said.
"Our civilian colleagues are not geared up to serve in such an environment and are certainly not trained to do so in the energetic manner that alone can deliver success, keeping pace with people's expectations," he said.
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