Richards: We knew from the outset that this was going to be a combat operation, and prepared accordingly. There are more Apache attack helicopters in the south today than there were under the U.S. Coalition. The Taliban recognize that 2006 is a crunch year. If they don’t succeed this year, then their chance of success, with 36 nations joining forces with the government, [grows slim]. This year is their last chance.
First of all, I would say that there’s been more happening than your question has intimated. Because the U.S. was successfully concentrating on the counter-Taliban operation in the east, the south was relatively ignored. There was effort there, but there were only about 150 people, say, in Helmand. You can only do so much with 150 people. With the British presence in Helmand at around 4,000 [at the end of this month] and with other nations contributing to that presence, that’s bound to enable us to emphasize different things, such as reconstruction and development.
First of all, I don’t recognize quite such the scathing picture that you created, but there’s something to it. [After 30 years of fighting,] Afghanistan has lost two generations of middle-class talent. Instead of being critical of this, we should work hard at developing the capacity that is required to turn the country around. The Afghans know best how Afghanistan works. What we need to do is adopt the “keep it simple” approach, focusing on the essentials of the economy as it is today, rather than how we’d wish it to be in 25 years’ time.
Arrogance is probably not the right word. But I think there was a risk, two years ago, that people thought it was a done deal. And what this year has shown is that we still need to put a lot of effort into Afghanistan. What we really need is a Marshall Plan [of a type] that the United States demonstrated so graphically in the post-WWII era. If we could do that, this country is definitely for turning. We will win, but with a lot more effort over a shorter time frame we would save money and win faster.
