By NNN-Bernama
Melbourne : Australian Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon has warned that the war in Afghanistan will be lost unless NATO and its allies change their tactics, The Australian newspaper reports.
Fitzgibbon’s blunt warning was delivered to a closed-door meeting in Scotland of eight defence ministers from the United States, Australia and six other NATO nations with military forces in Afghanistan, the newspaper adds.
It says his comments reflect the classified intelligence assessments presented to Australia’s former John Howard government in recent months and which have painted a bleak picture of the military situation facing NATO and its allies as they battle Taliban forces in Afghanistan.
Howard’s Liberal coalition was defeated last month in the general election.
“The previous government would have us believe that good progress is being made in Afghanistan . The reality is quite a different one,” Fitzgibbon told The Australian soon after returning from the meeting in Edinburgh.
“We are winning the battles and not the war, in my view. We have been very successful in clearing areas of the Taliban but it’s having no real strategic effect.”
The Australian Labor Party came to power with a promise to withdraw Australia’s combat troops from Iraq but to continue the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
NATO and its allies have about 33,000 troops in Afghanistan. Australia ‘s military contribution now totals about 1,000 troops, including Special Forces and Royal Australian Air Force personnel, mostly stationed in Oruzgan province.
Fitzgibbon has ruled out raising Australia’s military commitment in the absence of a greater contribution from NATO member countries to the International Security Force in Afghanistan but he also signalled that Australia would be prepared to consider a larger military commitment if NATO members bolstered their own forces.
At Friday’s meeting of defence ministers representing countries with military forces in southern Afghanistan, Fitzgibbon also expressed frustration at the lack of a coherent strategy that could underpin the successful rehabilitation of Afghanistan as a nation state.
“You will struggle to get unanimity on what the objectives are in Afghanistan at the present time,” he told The Australian.
At Fitzgibbon’s urging, NATO, led by the US and with input from Australia, will now draw up a new military blueprint for the next 12 months of the campaign, the newspaper says. The blueprint will have a sharp focus on southern Afghanistan, where the fierecest fighting is taking place.