McChrystal sees Taliban role
By Matthew Green in Kabul
Published: January 24 2010 22:05 | Last updated: January 24 2010 22:05
General Stanley McChrystal, the Nato commander in Afghanistan, has raised the prospect that his troop surge will lead to a negotiated peace with the Taliban.
Gen McChrystal will urge his allies to renew their commitment to his strategy at a conference in London this week.
In a Financial Times interview, he acknowledged growing scepticism about the war, but said he was poised to make “very demonstrably positive” progress this year as a result of the arrival of an extra 30,000 US troops.
By using the reinforcements to create an arc of secure territory stretching from the Taliban’s southern heartlands to Kabul, Gen McChrystal aims to weaken the insurgency to the point where its leaders would accept some form of settlement with Afghanistan’s government.
“As a soldier, my personal feeling is that there’s been enough fighting,” he said. “What I think we do is try to shape conditions which allow people to come to a truly equitable solution to how the Afghan people are governed.”
Asked if he would be content to see Taliban leaders in a future government in Kabul, he said: “I think any Afghans can play a role if they focus on the future, and not the past.”
The remarks reveal the growing faith the US military is placing in the hope that a power-sharing arrangement can end the war, a possibility floated in Islamabad last week by Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, when he described the Taliban as part of Afghanistan’s “political fabric”.
A parliamentary election has been postponed from May to September, pleasing diplomats and domestic critics who want time to prevent a repeat of rampant fraud that marred the presidential vote last year.
Gen McChrystal’s position is particularly significant since his assessments have played a major role in shaping deliberations by Barack Obama, the US president, over Afghan policy.
The prospect that an eight-year war could end with some Taliban leaders in power represents a remarkable turnround in a campaign launched in part to punish the movement for allowing Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, to organise the September 11 2001 attacks on the US from Afghan territory.
But hopes for reconciliation between the Taliban and the government of Hamid Karzai, president, appear remote at a time when the insurgency is growing in scope and sophistication and when western resolve is faltering.
Gen McChrystal sees the London conference on Thursday as a key opportunity for allies to rally around his ambitious counter-insurgency strategy in spite of a 70 per cent rise in coalition casualties last year and doubts over the credibility of the Afghan government.
He hopes the conference will issue a strong statement backing his plan, which hinges on providing enough security to allow the Afghan state to grow. “I’d like everybody to walk out of London with a renewed commitment, and that commitment is to the right outcome for the Afghan people,” he said.
But the general warned that violence would rise as insurgents stepped up bombings to try to undermine his strategy.
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