— The British general who has commanded NATO troops in southeastern Afghanistan for nearly a year is offering an upbeat assessment of the military situation and giving guarded encouragement to talks that may be taking place between the Karzai government and the Taliban.
"The fact of the matter is that this time last year, I sensed that we didn't have the initiative against the insurgency," Maj.-Gen. Nick Carter said Wednesday in his clapboard office at Kandahar Airfield.
As the result of a huge surge of U.S. and Afghan forces into the south in recent months, "we have the initiative and the insurgency doesn't," he said. "It provides opportunities to push forward the campaign on a range of lines.
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"This is about winning an argument. It is about persuading the Afghan people they are better off being with their government than with the insurgency. The forces of the government now have the initiative and the momentum."
While saying he had "no idea" if a report in Wednesday's Washington Post regarding secret talks between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the Taliban were true, the general said: "Essentially, counter-insurgency campaigns are all about politics, and part of that is that it is important for people to talk to each other. There needs to be a dialogue.
"On the other hand, one needs to recognize that sometimes, some people are irreconcilable and that means you have to apply different tactics."
A spokeswoman for Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said the country's "reconciliation and reintegration process" must be led by the Afghan government and that Canada supports Afghan efforts to "reach out to those who renounce violence, respect the Afghan constitution, and have no links with al-Qaida or other terrorist organizations."
Catherine Loubier added that while discussions can and should occur between Afghan officials and the Taliban, assurances must be made before any deals are struck.
"The minister of foreign affairs along with the international community and the government of Afghanistan have all said on a number of occasions that this conflict cannot be resolved by military means alone," she said.
"Efforts to bring lasting and durable peace to Afghanistan must involve dialogue with all parts of Afghan society."
In a remarkable statement, the general said he had "absolutely no evidence at all," that Pakistani fighters are involved in the war in Afghanistan. That's despite assertions from the White House and other NATO and diplomatic sources, including Canadians.
The general also said considerable success has been achieved recently in finding more homemade bombs and in protecting troops against them. But he said the thing most hampering the war effort is that there are still not enough Afghans involved in government.
"The biggest challenge for us is having Afghan leaders and civil servants who will step up to the plate in support of the population," said Carter, who returns to Britain early next month, to be replaced by an American two-star general.
"What has happened over the last seven or eight months is deliberate counter-insurgency operations, which have progressively spread the security effect outside the city as well as in the city," said Carter.
This involved "using all the levers that are available from force at one end of the spectrum to talking with people at the other," he said.
"You have to look at the situation on the ground before deciding which levers to use. What is going on Arghandab, Zhari and Panjwaii is that people are making a determination."
(source:gazette.com)
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