NATO Cannot Defeat Taliban By Force
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--Official says alliance failing in Afghanistan as Blair admits Iraq is a 'disaster'--

By Declan Walsh in Kabul and Richard Norton-Taylor
Saturday November 18, 2006
The Guardian

Nato "cannot win" the fight against the Taliban alone and will have to train Afghan forces to do the job, the UN's top official in the country warned yesterday.

"At the moment Nato has a very optimistic assessment. They think they can win the war," warned Tom Koenigs, the diplomat heading the UN mission in Afghanistan. "But there is no quick fix."

In forthright comments which highlight divisions between international partners as Nato battles to quell insurgency, Mr Koenigs said that training the fledgling Afghan national army to defeat the Taliban was crucial. "They [the ANA] can win. But against an insurgency like that, international troops cannot win."

...British commanders have argued that UK troops should be withdrawn from Iraq to allow the military to focus on Afghanistan. But Nato commanders on the ground have pleaded for 2,000 more troops, helicopters and armoured vehicles, to little effect. Last night Nato secretary-general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said countries should lift restrictions on what their troops could do."My plea to governments would be: 'Please help us in lifting those caveats as much as possible ... because in Afghanistan it is a problem."

...Attacks have increased fourfold this year and 3,700 people have died, mostly in the south. The US has made 2,000 air strikes since June, against 88 in Iraq.

...Nato commanders maintain the Taliban have been on the "back foot" since Operation Medusa, a battle which killed more than 1,000 insurgents in Kandahar in September, and talk of gaining "psycho logical ascendancy". However, Mr Koenigs said any claim of victory was premature. "You can't resolve it by killing the Taliban. You have to win people over. That is done with good governance, decent police, diplomacy with Pakistan, and development," he said. Otherwise the Taliban would regroup in Pakistani refugee camps and madrasas and return in greater numbers next spring.

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