NATO Commander Says Western Forces Are Winning in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan — Whatever doubts are being entertained at home about the war in Afghanistan, the Briton driving the NATO-led campaign is adamant that the good guys are winning.“The governor of Kandahar came up to me the other day with a huge grin on his face and hugged me,” the commander of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force, which is helping the Afghan government to establish its authority, Lieutenant General David Richards, said.“He said there is no longer any doubt down in the south that NATO can fight and win. We’ve just inflicted on the Taliban the biggest single loss of life since 2001.“I believe that we are in the process of establishing psychological ascendancy over them and reassuring the vast majority of the population who want us and the Afghan government to succeed, but were uncertain about which side might win, that it is going to be us.”His 100-watt optimism is in bright contrast to the gloomy prophecies that Britain and its allies are now fighting pitched battles with the resurgent Taliban, principally in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand, and are heading into a military quagmire.This view has been colored by reports of beleaguered British forces marooned in isolated “platoon houses” in the north of Helmand suffering daily attacks from the Taliban. The British were apparently persuaded to take up fixed positions by the provincial governor in order to protect his local administrators.General Richards, 53, who took charge of the 21,000-strong ISAF at the end of July, makes it clear that the tactic was not of his making. “The platoon houses were occupied before I took command of this operation,” he said.“I’m not going to be critical, but they are only one tactic. They have some benefits, but they happened before I took command.”The sole seeming advantage is that the platoon houses have acted as magnets to the insurgents who have taken heavy losses trying to take them. The disadvantage “is that we lacked sufficient maneuver capability to move around Helmand in a more hard-hitting role.”Withdrawing from the platoon houses would award the Taliban a symbolic victory.General Richards is now in the process of swapping British for Afghan troops who are fighting alongside the ISAF forces.“That means that our better trained and more mobile troops can be used in conjunction with the Afghan army to defeat the Taliban if they attack the platoon houses.“At the moment, the Afghan army is not trained to the degree where they can maneuver around the place, and when our troops are attacked, they aren’t in a position to come and help us. But if we put them in there, we are in a position to come and help them.”The insurgent body count is certainly rising sharply. NATO announced yesterday that so far more than 500 had died in the first nine days of Operation Medusa, led by Canadian forces to drive fighters out of an area where they were threatening the crucial city of Kandahar. That is a heavy blow to an organization that is only reckoned to number 7,000 full- and part-time gunmen.General Richards is regarded as a rising star of his military generation, who has seen the sharp end of soldiering, notably in Sierra Leone in 2000, yet is adept in the cerebral aspects of command. He knows that killing alone does not win wars.“I emphasized from the outset that this would be a hard-edged military operation,” he said. “However, that must be combined with improvements in governance, which is an Afghan government responsibility, and reconstruction and development work, which is primarily an international community responsibility.”In the five years after the defeat of the Taliban, as punishment for refusing to surrender Osama bin Laden after the September 11, 2001, attacks, “the great reconstruction and development effort wasn’t undertaken with the sense of urgency that was required,” he said. The result was a vacuum of authority and security that the Taliban has slowly been filling. In that time, only a small American military presence was established in the south.“The great thing about NATO is that we’re there in much bigger numbers than they ever were, and if we get it right, we can provide sufficient security this time to allow much more energetic and highly visible reconstruction and development to take place.”The question is whether British development agencies will be up to the challenge once the fighting stops. Concern exists in NATO circles at the slow progress the Department for International Development, which is meant to be leading the reconstruction in Helmand, is making in establishing a presence there.General Richards is convinced that only a few percent of the southern population actively support the Taliban. The majority oppose it or are sitting on the fence until it becomes clear who is going to come out on top.Opium is a vital part of the local economy, and this year has seen a bumper harvest. General Richards agrees that the “drug problem has to be dealt with” but is an advocate of the softly-softly approach.“We’ve got to persuade the farmers that we’re not targeting them,” he said. “They are the last people we want to alienate.”Eradicating the poppy fields would collapse the local economy overnight. The right approach, he believes, is to develop alternative livelihoods, which would lure the narco-barons into less stressful, legal commercial activities — a strategy that he predicts could take 25 years to work.In the meantime, a reserve of 1,000 men would help him get on with the immediate job. “It’s not because we’re in a particularly shaky position but because I want to ram home the advantage now while we’ve got it. That means that the reconstruction, development, and governance that I must bring in simultaneously, if at all possible, should start happening.”Afghanistan is notoriously a graveyard for British military reputations. The ISAF commander is determined that his name will not be added to the list and has adapted his approach to the terrain. The other day, President Karzai, whom he meets regularly, told him: “General Richards, you think like an Afghan.”“I’m terribly proud of that,” he said.

NATO Commander Says Western Forces Are Winning in Afghanistan

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