McChrystal clear: time to change tack in Afghanistan

The American general in charge of allied troops in Afghanistan is clear why they are failing. "A military force," he said on Monday, "culturally programmed to respond conventionally (and predictably) to insurgent attacks, is akin to the bull that repeatedly charges a matador's cape - only to tire and eventually be defeated by a much weaker opponent."

This analysis, with the allied forces as the tiring bull and the Taliban as the matador, comes from Gen Stanley McChrystal after his first 60 days in charge. Acknowledging the mistakes of the last eight years, he has called for a complete rethink of military strategy in Afghanistan. He wants to engage more with the Taliban, and has even suggested that 60 per cent of the problem would go away if their fighters were provided with jobs.

Whether or not McChrystal will call for an increase in troop numbers when he meets with President Barack Obama in Washington later this month remains to be seen.

But, in short, what he wants to do is to shift the majority of the 103,000 troops currently at his disposal to more heavily populated areas. And, as he discussed with Gordon Brown during a surprise visit by British PM to Afghanistan last weekend, he wants to put more emphasis on professionalising local soldiers and police.

Since taking over in Afghanistan after Gen David McKiernan was prematurely sacked in June, McChrystal has switched the emphasis away from hunting down insurgents and has concentrated instead on looking after Afghan civilians.

This hearts-and-minds approach is not the sort of military work with which McChrystal made his name. He gained his reputation as a brilliant and uncompromising military leader as the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), a secretive group of soldiers who worked with the intelligence agencies in Iraq, and killed a lot of terrorists.

There are many, Washington Post investigative reporter Bob Woodward included, who argue that the improvements in Iraq between 2007 and 2008 that were widely credited to General Petraeus and his surge, were in fact down to the covert operations organised by McChrystal to hunt down insurgents. George W Bush was certainly a fan; he said: "JSOC is awesome".

McChrystal was credited with some notable successes during that period in Iraq. His troops dragged Saddam Hussein out of a hole in the ground in December 2003; and they located Abu Masub al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, and then directed the air strike which killed him. McChrystal himself went into the hut they'd destroyed in order to identify al-Zarqawi's corpse.

But alongside his achievements, there have been controversies: he was in command of Camp Nama - nicknamed 'Nasty-Ass Military Area' - in Baghdad, where the Red Cross was not allowed to enter and where prisoners were reportedly abused on his watch. McChrystal was also the soldier who, in a Pentagon briefing shortly after the fall of Baghdad in 2003, said somewhat prematurely: "I would anticipate that the major combat engagements are over."

These are not the only blemishes on McChrystal's impressive record. He was also criticised for his role in the aftermath of the Pat Tillman friendly fire incident, when US military top brass initially failed to reveal that Tillman, an NFL professional who'd quit his football career to enlist in the US Army, had been killed by members of his own side in the mountains of Afghanistan.

But that's all history now as McChrystal tries to persuade both his Pentagon bosses and President Obama to see things his way. With US forces having just endured their worst monthly death toll in Afghanistan - 47 lost in August - and opinion polls showing Americans tiring of this war, he has a fight on his hands. ·