UK:THE BRITISH government yesterday risked fuelling a rift with its US allies and some members of the Afghan government by supporting a statement by a senior military commander suggesting that the war against the Taliban cannot be won.
A spokesman said the UK's ministry of defence "did not have a problem" with warning the UK public not to expect a "decisive military victory" and to prepare instead for a possible deal with the Taliban.
"Our ministers have said before that the combat in Afghanistan is not about winning or losing. We have always said it is about improving infrastructure and making sure that the Afghanistan army and police can take over security. We are also looking for a political settlement," the spokesman said.
In an interview with the Sunday Times, the UK's commander in Helmand province, Brig Mark Carleton-Smith, said his forces had "taken the sting out of the Taliban for 2008" but it was necessary to "lower expectations".
"We are not going to win this war," he told the newspaper. "It's about reducing it to a manageable level of insurgency that's not a strategic threat and can be managed by the Afghan army."
Nato commanders and diplomats have been saying for some time that the Taliban insurgency cannot be defeated by military means alone and that negotiations with the militants will ultimately be needed to bring an end to the conflict.
But the brigadier's statement airs a view on the subject at a time when there are signs of policy rifts developing among the allies.
The US, which has stepped up its efforts on Afghanistan in recent months, is sceptical about any idea of negotiating with the Taliban.
"We all agree on the need for the people of Afghanistan to come together if they are going to succeed in creating a lasting and viable state," Gordon Johndroe, a White House spokesman, said.
"It remains to be seen if some in the Taliban will really renounce violence and extremism and play a constructive role in Afghanistan."
Asked about the brigadier's comments, he said: "We plan on winning in Afghanistan. It's going to be tough and going to take some time, but we will eventually succeed."
Despite the worries among Washington's European allies over whether the conflict with the Taliban can ever be won, US president George Bush and both the Republican and Democratic presidential contenders favour sending more troops to Afghanistan. Afghanistan's defence minister yesterday expressed his disappointment at the commander's statements, maintaining the insurgency had to be defeated. "I think this is the personal opinion of the commander," Abdul Rahim Wardak said.
"The main objective of the Afghan government and the whole international community is that we have to [win] this war on terror and be successful," he said.
British defence chiefs have been saying privately that the conflict with the Taliban has reached stalemate. They also express increasing frustration with the weakness and corruption of President Hamid Karzai's government in Kabul.
Britain denied a claim that it believes the military campaign in Afghanistan is doomed to failure after French weekly Le Canard Enchaine reported that Sherard Cowper-Coles, Britain's ambassador to Kabul, told a French official that foreign troops added to the country's problems. The newspaper said that Mr Cowper-Coles had said Afghanistan might best be "governed by an acceptable dictator", that the American strategy was "destined to fail", and the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan was "part of the problem, not the solution".
The French foreign ministry said the newspaper report did not "correspond at all with what we hear from our British counterparts in our discussions on Afghanistan".
A foreign office official was reported to have described the claim that Mr Cowper-Coles advocated a dictatorship in Afghanistan as "utter nonsense", and that the comments attributed to the ambassador were likely to have been a distortion of what he had said in the meeting.
After months of indecision and attacking western diplomats and military officials for approaching Taliban forces and their local commanders, Mr Karzai said last week he had asked the king of Saudi Arabia to mediate in talks. He invited Taliban leader Mullah Omar, now based in Pakistan, to return and make peace. - (Financial Times/Guardian service)