Nato admits Afghan operation ‘unsuccessful’

[Naveed Yaseen]

BRATISLAVA: Nato nations acknowledged on Friday that operation in Afghanistan was not working and agreed that they needed a new approach to seize the initiative from Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Nato defence ministers, meeting in Bratislava, Slovakia, backed a plan to shift towards a full-fledged counter-insurgency strategy, but they did not say how they planned to make it work, or commit troops to the move. However, US Defence Secretary Roberts Gates indicated that a number of his European allies appeared ready to provide more resources to carry out the plan, drawn up by the top commander in Afghanistan, US General Stanley McChrystal.

“It does not solve the problems in Afghanistan just to hunt down and kill individual terrorists,” Nato Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters. “What we need is a much broader strategy, which stabilises the whole Afghan society,” he said.

“I have noted a broad support from all ministers on this counter-insurgency approach, but let me stress, without discussing the resource implications of these recommendations,” he added. McChrystal’s strategy puts protection of the Afghan civilians at the epicentre of the military action, forcing the fighters to come to the military alliance and its partners.

Gates said: “There were a number of allies, who have indicated they were thinking about or moving towards increasing their military or their civilian contributions or both, and I found that very heartening.”

Nato leads a force of some 70,000 troops drawn from 43 nations, whose aim has been to foster security, democracy reconstruction in a country wracked by more than 30 years of war, while the US forces separately try to root out al-Qaeda. But the Taliban and other networks hold the initiative, eight years after the Taliban were ousted from power.

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