By IRNA
London : Former High Representative to Bosnia Paddy Ashdown Wednesday called for a new Nato strategy in Afghanistan, not a “disconnected collection of unco-ordinated tactics.”
Ashdown, who was rejected for the post as the UN’s special envoy in Afghanistan by President Hamid Karzai, warned that the transatlantic alliance will lose if it does not start doing things differently.
“With fighting in Afghanistan now entering its seventh year, no agreed international strategy, public support on both sides of the Atlantic crumbling, Nato in disarray and widening insecurity in Afghanistan, defeat is now a real possibility,” he said.
The British peer, who was also former leader of the Liberal Democrats, said the consequences for both Afghanistan and its allies would be “appalling.”
“Global terrorism would have won back its old haven and created a new one over the border in a mortally weakened Pakistan; our domestic security threat would be gravely increased and a new instability would be added to the world’s most unstable region.”
In an article published in the Financial Times, Ashdown said the British Foreign Secretary David Miliband was right to say that withdrawal is not an option, but warned that “neither is continuing as we are.”
Increasing resources in Afghanistan is clearly necessary, but it is not sufficient, even if everyone pulled their weight, he said. “We would still find it very difficult to turn the tide, which is now running increasingly strongly against us,” he added.
The former high representative to Bosnia, who also served as a British military officer, said that Nato above all lacks a strategy, including, crucially, what the Afghan government and the international military can buy into.
He proposed a three point plan drawn up in anticipation of becoming the UN envoy, including the first priority of security and convincing ordinary Afghans that their government can provide them with better security than the Taliban.
The second priority was strengthening the mechanisms of the Afghan government by starting at the bottom and work with the grain of the country’s tribal structure.
The third, linking the two, was to strengthen the rule of law, from the judiciary, to the police, to the security structures, to the penal code.
“We have not lost in Afghanistan,” Ashdown said. “But we will lose if we do not start doing things differently. What we need is a strategy, not a disconnected collection of unco-ordinated tactics,” he warned.