KABUL: The war in Afghanistan cannot be won militarily and success is only possible through political means including dialogue between all relevant parties, the United Nation’s top official in the country said yesterday.
His comments come after Britain’s military commander in Afghanistan said the war could not be won and that the goal was to reduce the insurgency to a level where it was no longer a strategic threat and could be dealt with by the Afghan Army. Brig. Mark Carleton-Smith said if the Taleban were willing to talk, that might be “precisely the sort of progress” needed to end the insurgency.
“I’ve always said to those that talk about the military surge ... what we need most of all is a political surge, more political energy,” Kai Eide, the UN special envoy to Afghanistan, told a news conference in Kabul.
“We all know that we cannot win it militarily. It has to be won through political means. That means political engagement.” Eide said success depended on speaking with all sides in the conflict. “If you want to have relevant results, you must speak to those who are relevant. If you want to have results that matter, you must speak to those who matter,” he said.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, whose country has 2,500 troops fighting in southern Afghanistan, said completely defeating the Taleban insurgency was not realistic.
“The realistic objective is to build up the Afghan forces so they can manage their own security,” he told reporters in Ottawa.
The British ambassador to Kabul said a troop surge would only create more targets for the Taliban. The comments were made to a French colleague who sent a telegram to Paris, which was leaked and published in Le Canard Enchaine newspaper last week.
But the US general commanding NATO forces said last month he needed three more brigades - possibly around 15,000 troops - on top of an extra 4,000 soldiers due to arrive in January.
Faced with the persistent reluctance of some of its European allies to send more troops to Afghanistan or allow them to fight once there, the United States has asked Japan and NATO countries to help foot the $17-billion bill to build up the Afghan Army.
“The faster we get the (Afghan Army) to the size and strength they need to be, the less they depend on us for providing security,” said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell.
The Afghan Defense Ministry says the cost of one foreign soldier in Afghanistan is equal to more than 60 Afghan troops.
More foreign troops have been killed in Afghanistan already this year than in any entire year since US-led and Afghan forces toppled the Taleban after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.
As casualties mount, so have Western calls for negotiations with the militants to bring an end to the conflict.
But the Taleban have repeatedly rejected the idea of talks unless all 70,000 foreign troops leave the country.
“As we said before, as long as the invader forces are in Afghanistan, we won’t participate in any negotiations,” Taleban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousuf told the Pakistan-based Afghan news agency, AIP, yesterday.
Meanwhile, attacks and clashes across troubled Afghanistan have left more than two dozen people dead, including a cook and his 12-year-old son allegedly shot dead by Taleban, authorities said yesterday.
The man, a cook for a district government in the central province of Ghazni, and his child were shot several times late Sunday after Taleban militants had accused them of spying for the government, an Afghan official said.
The killing was in Andar district, said the area’s chief, Abdul Rahim Daisiwal. The area has seen several deadly attacks by militants linked to the extremist Taleban, who were in government between 1996 and 2001.
The Afghan Defense Ministry said separately its soldiers had killed three militants elsewhere in Ghazni.
In the neighboring province of Zabul, 11 Taleban insurgents were killed in an Afghan and international military operation overnight, Daychopan district chief Fazil Bary said.
Three more Taleban and six Afghan guards were killed in fighting in Wardak province, adjoining Kabul, after the rebels had attacked a convoy supplying logistics to international troops on Sunday, a government official said.
