British commander expects no clear Afghan victory: report

THE STANS

Afghanistan needs more than military action: defence minister
Military action alone will not solve Afghanistan's conflict, which must also be tackled on the political front, the defence minister said Sunday amid fresh talk about negotiations with Taliban. "The war that we are fighting now does not have only a military solution," Defence Minister Mohammad Rahim Wardak told reporters. "We have to fight it on different fronts, political, military and financial fronts," he said. Karzai last week called on fugitive militant leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, who is on a US "most wanted" list, to step forward for negotiations to end a seven-year-long insurgency that has paralysed post-Taliban reconstruction. He said he had been asking Saudi Arabia for two years to help engage the Taliban militia in peace talks. Wardak reiterated the Afghan government position that negotiations with Taliban were with the condition that the militants accept the post-Taliban constitution. "Anyone who wants to get to power should try political means and elections," he said. In September 2007, the Afghan president said for the first time that he was ready to talk to Mullah Omar after earlier saying that he wanted negotiations with lower-level militant leaders. Afghan and international efforts to defeat the Taliban on the battlefield have made little headway with the violence only mounting year on year, raising alarm in a country trying to rebuild after decades of war.

by Staff Writers
London (AFP) Oct 5, 2008
Britain's top military commander in Afghanistan said in an interview Sunday the public should not expect "decisive military victory" there, only the reduction of the insurgency to manageable levels.

Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, commander of 16 Air Assault Brigade, which has just completed its second tour in Afghanistan, told the Sunday Times that people should "lower their expectations" about how the conflict will end.

He also said Britons should prepare for a possible deal with the Taliban.

"We're not going to win this war. It's about reducing it to a manageable level of insurgency that's not a strategic threat and can be managed by the Afghan army," he told the newspaper.

Carleton-Smith said his forces had "taken the sting out of the Taliban for 2008" but said it would be "unrealistic and probably incredible" to think that the multinational forces in Afghanistan could rid the country of armed bands.

"We may well leave with there still being a low but steady ebb of rural insurgency... I don't think we should expect that when we go there won't be roaming bands of armed men in this part of the world," he said.

The brigadier added: "If the Taliban were prepared to sit on the other side of the table and talk about a political settlement, then that's precisely the sort of progress that concludes insurgencies like this.

"That shouldn't make people uncomfortable."

Britain has 7,800 troops in Afghanistan as part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and US-led operations.

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THE STANS

Suspected US missile kills 20 militants in Pakistan: officials

Miranshah, Pakistan (AFP) Oct 3, 2008
A suspected US missile destroyed a house in a Pakistan tribal region bordering Afghanistan Friday, killing around 20 Al-Qaeda-linked militants, mostly foreign nationals, officials said.

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