Posted on 09/11/2006 7:55:36 PM PDT by blam
We're on the way to defeating Taliban
By Patrick Bishop
(Filed: 12/09/2006)
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," said Lt Gen David Richards, commander of Nato's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which is helping the Afghan government to establish its authority.
"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 prophesies 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 morass.
This view has been coloured 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.
Gen 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 manoeuvre capability to move around Helmand in a more hard-hitting role".
Withdrawing from the platoon houses would award the Taliban a symbolic victory.
Gen 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 manoeuvre 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 organisation that is only reckoned to number 7,000 full- and part-time gunmen.
Gen 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 emphasised 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 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 there was only a small American military presence 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. There is concern 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.
Gen Richards is convinced that only a few per cent 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. Gen 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 Hamid Karzai, whom he meets regularly, told him: "General Richards, you think like an Afghan."
"I'm terribly proud of that," he said.
How will the Surrender Party spin this one?
But their turn will come eventually.
If you are a terrorist, you will soon have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
Excellent news just keeps coming in.
It takes a while for the truth to sink in that we are not leaving until the task is completed. We are not, despite every liberal effort to the contrary, going to cut and run. The more they are convinced of that, the more they are going to get on board with the program.
Thank you for posting this, blam.
I've read the same. I wonder what happened to the 'loitering' B-52's?
Its good to see NATO taking an active role here. The west as a whole is beginning to see the true nature of this wave of radical Islam and doing something about it. NATO is there in much higher numbers. Its a saturation technique used successfully in some parts of Vietnam.
The west must realize that the Islamic world is fighting this across national boundaries and the west must do the same to win and retain our standards of civilization.
As has always been the case, to change a society or culture entirely, it must be conquered, subjugated, integrated and assimilated, or that culture will fight for its very existence. There is an element of Islam which the world must be ridded of. I will never be convinced that the intentional murder of women and children is morally or religiously acceptable. Seeing the shattered remains of innocent people's bodies and lives is something that is instinctively disgusting. Any humans who feel differently are nothing more than wild rabid animals to me. There is nothing morally questionable about putting rabid animals down. It is never a pleasant thing to kill one of God's creatures, but it is sometimes necessary for sustaining life.
Good shooting Canucks and Tommys.
Doubtless ''inhumane'' will be featured frequently in their daily yapping points.
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