LONDON (AFP) — Paddy Ashdown, the senior diplomat whose candidacy as UN envoy to Afghanistan was vetoed by the country's president, outlined Wednesday the plan he had devised for Afghanistan had he got the job.
Writing in the Financial Times, Ashdown acknowledged that "defeat is now a real possibility" in the war-torn country where NATO troops are battling against an insurgency being waged by the Islamist Taliban militia that was thrown out of power around six years ago.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan includes about 43,000 troops, but commanders have been calling for another 7,500.
"What we lack above all is a strategy that all (including, crucially, the Afghan government and the international military) can buy into," the former international envoy to Bosnia-Hercegovina wrote.
He wrote that while increasing resources, in the form of more troops and aid, committed to the country was necessary, it was not the only thing that needed to be done, and listed three priorities: security, governance, and the rule of law.
"We (the international community) have to concentrate fiercely on the necessary and not to be distracted by the merely desirable," Ashdown wrote.
On security, he wrote that in addition to convincing ordinary Afghans their government could provide better security than the Taliban, the international community would have to provide "human security" -- electricity, the chance to get a job in a growing economy, effective governance and the rule of law.
He also advocated viewing security "from a political angle" by attempting to break up the Taliban by winning over moderates.
Ashdown wrote that international donors "should make improving governance the first, and if we can the only, priority for all future aid programmes" because until the Afghan government's institutions were strengthened, "we cannot ask them to do more".
The third priority was to link security and governance with a strengthened rule of law, underlining the importance of his point by writing: "Unless and until the rule of law is established there can be no safe democracy, no trusted government, no successful economy and no security for ordinary citizens."
"We have not lost in Afghanistan," Ashdown wrote.
"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."
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