Afghanistan: Time not on our side, says general

Following a bad day for Nato in Afghanistan - nine international troops died in separate incidents on Thursday, including six Italians killed by a Taliban lorry bomb attack in Kabul (above) - senior military commanders and politicians from both sides of the Atlantic have rekindled the debate over how the war against the Taliban should progress.

Major General Nick Carter, who is due to take over command of the 45,000 British troops serving in Afghanistan, told the BBC's security correspondent Frank Gardner that his troops could make a difference in the next year but time was not on their side. "We can't be everywhere... [we've] got to focus on achievable objectives," he said.

General David Richards, the new head of the British army, told a Chatham House meeting that the British military needed to adapt to the demands of modern warfare – and the pressures of the recession.

"We cannot go back to operating as we might have done even 10 years ago when it was still tanks, fast jets, and fleet escorts that dominated the doctrine of our three services", Richards said. "The lexicon of today is non-kinetic effects teams, counter-IED, information dominance, counter-piracy, and cyber attack and defence."
 
With the tally of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan since 2001 now standing at 216, alongside 830 American dead, General David Petraeus spoke about the continuing importance of the mission. "While the situation unquestionably is, as General [Stanley] McChrystal has observed, serious, the mission is, as he has affirmed, still doable," Petraeus said during a lecture he gave in London. "In truth, it is, I think, accurate to observe that, as in Iraq in 2007, everything in Afghanistan is hard, and it is hard all the time."
 
The most radical suggestion comes from two senior LibDems, Nick Clegg and Paddy Ashdown, who wrote in the Guardian that British troops were currently only able to dominate an area large enough to increase their vulnerability to ambush and roadside bombs, but not large enough to carry out development initiatives.
 
They propose a plan "to concentrate our forces in future in the cities, so as to deepen the effect of the development process where it matters most, and then build out from there as force levels and resources allow".

Beyond that, Clegg and Ashdown suggest, "we may even have to consider Plan C, a modern version of the old policy of Lord Curzon, but run from Kabul instead of Calcutta, which would use airpower and special forces to prevent the Taliban ever again marching on Kabul or becoming a haven for al-Qaida, while we concentrate on the rest of the country outside the Pashtun belt."
 
Meanwhile, the heavily disputed presidential election may be heading for a second round of voting, after officials launched investigations into 10 per cent of the votes. Incumbent Hamid Karzai currently has 54.6 per cent, while his nearest challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, has 27.7 per cent.

If allegations of widespread fraud are proven, and President Karzai's tally falls below 50 per cent, there will be a run-off election between the two men in the third week of October - despite expectations of heavy snow and the possibility of Taliban attacks. ·