China Perspective
US needs Afghan plan with regional players: Experts
(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-09-16 13:51
LONDON: The United States needs a more cunning strategy on Afghanistan, with Russia, Iran, China and others brought into the policy debate if it is to achieve long-term success, a leading think-tank said yesterday.
Launching its annual review of world affairs, the International Institute for Strategic Studies argued that, amid declining public support for the war in both the United States and Europe, more combat troops on the ground coupled with aid and political reform was not a sufficient strategy.
"A more cunning regional strategy is also necessary," John Chipman, the head of the IISS, said at the unveiling of the 2009 Strategic Survey in London.
"Measuring the balance between the continued application of military force and the negotation of political compromises... will be one of many complex tasks confronting the coalition in Afghanistan.
"But even that task can only be performed if Russia, Central Asia, India, Iran and China are brought into the debates and policymaking in a stronger fashion," he said.
'Coalitions of the relevant'
Chipman referred repeatedly to the need to create "coalitions of the relevant", groups of countries with vested interests working jointly on issues in a way that cuts across traditional alliances, such as NATO, without isolating them.
The US is currently pursuing a "surge"-style strategy in Afghanistan, similar to that which showed success in Iraq, with up to 30,000 more troops being sent to the country this year, lifting the US military presence to 68,000.
At the same time, voices are emerging in Europe and the US questioning whether that strategy is right even before it has been fully implemented. In the US, some Democrats are having second thoughts about President Barack Obama's full-throttle approach to the conflict.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former US national security adviser, said at the weekend that while troops on the ground were needed for security, there was a natural limit.
Helping Afghanistan "requires a commitment of some element of force which is currently present in Afghanistan, but it does not require a force that would be driven by the objective of achieving effective military control of all Afghanistan," he said at a weekend conference in Geneva.
Election concerns
Meanwhile, the European Union is pushing for an investigation into "all fraud allegations" during Afghanistan's elections, Germany's foreign minister said yesterday.
The call by Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier comes on the same day as UN monitors in Kabul ordered a recount from about 10 percent of Afghan polling stations because of suspicious totals.
The 27-nation EU has already backed off its initial positive assessment of the Afghan elections. The bloc fears that doubts about the Afghan regime's electoral legitimacy would make it even more difficult to justify spending billions in EU aid and military help for Afghanistan to taxpayers at home.
Reuters
