Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Strategie differenti dividono UK e USA

Un articolo di AsiaTime sulla nuova presa di posizione della NATO in 
Afghanistan mette a nudo la crescente divisione tra Washington e Londra 
sulla strategia da adottare per uscire dallo stallo, senza ulteriori danni.
L'escalation proposta da McCain e Obama non piace a Gordon Brown che 
preferisce un dialogo coi taleban.
Un augurio per me a quest'ultimo, che i colloqui riescano a superare le 
difficolta`alla svelta.
G.
-----------------------------------------
Afghan talks widen US-UK rift
By Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - The beginning of political talks between the Afghan government 
and the Taliban, revealed by press accounts this week, is likely to deepen 
the rift that has just erupted in public between the United States and 
Britain over the US commitment to an escalation of the war in Afghanistan.
According to a French diplomatic cable leaked to a French magazine last 
week, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government is looking for an exit 
strategy from Afghanistan rather than an endless war, and it sees a US 
escalation of the war as an alternative to a political settlement rather 
than as supporting such an outcome.
The first meetings between the two sides were held in Saudi Arabia in the 
presence of Saudi King Abdullah from September 24
to 27, as reported by CNN's Nic Robertson from London on Tuesday. Eleven 
Taliban delegates, two Afghan government officials and a representative of 
independent former mujahideen commander Gulfadin Hekmatyar participated in 
the meetings, according to Robertson.
Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith of the British command in Afghanistan 
enthusiastically welcomed such talks. He was quoted by The Sunday Times of 
London as saying, "We want to change the nature of the debate from one where 
disputes are settled through the barrel of the gun to one where it is done 
through negotiations."
If the Taliban were prepared to talk about a political settlement, said 
Carleton-Smith, "that's precisely the sort of the progress that concludes 
insurgencies like this."
The George W Bush administration, however, was evidently taken by surprise 
by news of the Afghan peace talks and decidedly cool toward them. One US 
official told The Washington Times that it was unclear that the meetings in 
Saudi Arabia presage government peace talks with the Taliban. The 
implication was that the administration would not welcome such talks.
A US defense official in Afghanistan told the paper the Bush administration 
was "surprised" it had not been informed about the meeting in advance by the 
Afghan government.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, on his way to discuss Afghanistan with North 
Atlantic Treaty Organization defense ministers in Budapest, made it clear 
that the Bush administration supports talks only for the purposes of 
attracting individual leaders to leave the Taliban and join the government. 
"What is important is detaching those who are reconcilable and who are 
willing to be part of the future of the country from those who are 
irreconcilable,"he said.
Gates said he drew line at talks with the head of the Taliban, Mullah 
Mohammad Omar.
However, representatives of the Taliban leader are apparently involved in 
the talks, and President Hamid Karzai is committed to going well beyond the 
tactic of appealing to individual Taliban figures.
Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak said in a news conference on 
October 4 that resolution of the conflict required a "political settlement 
with the Taliban". He added that such a settlement would come only "after 
Taliban's acceptance of the Afghan constitution and the peaceful rotation of 
power by democratic means."
The Afghan talks come against the backdrop of a Bush administration decision 
to send 8,000 more US troops to Afghanistan next year, and the expressed 
desire of the US commander, General David D McKiernan, for yet another 
15,000 combat and support troops. Both Democratic candidate Barack Obama and 
Republican candidate John McCain have said they would increase US troop 
strength in Afghanistan.
Obama has said he would send troops now scheduled to remain in Iraq until 
next summer to Afghanistan as an urgent priority, whereas McCain has not 
said when or how he would increase the troop level.
Such a US troop increase is exactly what the British fear, however. The 
British ambassador in Afghanistan, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, was quoted in a 
diplomatic cable leaked to the French investigative magazine Le Canard 
Enchaine last week as telling the French deputy ambassador that the US 
presidential candidates "must be dissuaded from getting further bogged down 
in Afghanistan".
In the French diplomatic report of the September 2 conversation, 
Cowper-Coles is reported as saying that an increase in foreign troop 
strength in Afghanistan would only exacerbate the overall political problem 
in Afghanistan.
The report has the ambassador saying that such an increase "would identify 
us even more strongly as an occupation force and would multiply the targets" 
for the insurgents.
Cowper-Coles is quoted as saying foreign forces are the "lifeline"of the 
Afghan regime and that additional forces would "slow down and complicate a 
possible emergence from the crisis".
In an obvious reference to the intention to rely on higher levels of 
military force, Cowper-Coles said US strategy in Afghanistan "is destined to 
fail".
Cowper-Coles is reported to have put much of the blame for the deterioration 
of the situation in Afghanistan on the Karzai government. "The security 
situation is getting worse,"the report quoted him as saying. "So is 
corruption, and the government had lost all trust."
The report makes it clear that the British want to withdraw all their troops 
from Afghanistan within five to 10 years. Cowper-Coles is said to have 
suggested that the only way to do so is through the emergence of what he 
called an "acceptable dictator".
The British foreign office has denied that the report reflected the policy 
of the government itself. Nevertheless, statements by Brigadier 
Carleton-Smith, the senior British commander in Afghanistan, last week, 
underlined the gulf between US and British views on Afghanistan.
"We're not going to win this war," said Carleton-Smith, according to The 
Sunday Times of London on September 28. Carleton-Smith, commander of an air 
assault brigade, has completed two tours in Afghanistan. He suggested that 
foreign troops would and should leave Afghanistan without having defeated 
the insurgency. "We may leave with there still being a low but steady ebb of 
rural insurgency," he said.
Like Cowper-Coles, Carleton-Smith suggested that the real problem for the 
coalition was not military but political. "This struggle is more down to the 
credibility of the Afghan government than the threat from the Taliban," he 
said.
When Gordon Brown replaced Tony Blair as British prime minister in June 
2007, British officials concluded that the Taliban were too deeply rooted to 
be defeated militarily, according to a report in The Guardian last October. 
The Brown government decided to pursue a strategy of courting "moderate" 
Taliban leaders and fighters who were believed to be motivated more by 
tribal obligation than jihadi ideology.
That idea was in line with US strategy. Now, however, both Karzai and the 
British have moved beyond that to a policy of negotiating directly and 
officially with the Taliban. For the British it appears to be part of an 
exit strategy that is not shared by Washington.
Defense Secretary Gates responded to Carleton-Smith's remarks Tuesday by 
reiterating the official US view that additional forces are needed in 
Afghanistan and implying that the British's officer's views are "defeatist". 
Gates said there "certainly is no reason to be defeatist or to underestimate 
the opportunity to be successful in the long run".

 Asiatimes, del resto e' disfattista
fino a due mesi fa era la tua fonte preferita...LOL

 Am.
#_Marasca guerrafondaia sottospirito, i tuoi stupori son tutti anestetizzati 
da un overdose di grappa...
Quella di Carleton-Smith e`l'unica soluzione possibile.
Io toglierei Karzai subito.
G. 

 difficolta`alla svelta.
Secondo me hai ragione, anzi, il concetto andrebbe esteso. Per esempio, 
in Sicilia una soluzione strettamente poliziesco-militare contro la 
mafia è impossibile, bisogna intervenire socialmente, le infiltrazioni 
sono troppe, la manovalanza è sempre disponibile... le ragioni le 
conosciamo tutti.
Sull'esempio da te proposto per l'Afghanistan, quindi, bisognerebbe 
ritirare *subito* tutte le forze di polizia e carabinieri (abbiamo detto 
che una soluzione poliziesca non esiste, quindi sono inutili, no?) e poi 
sedersi al tavolo delle trattative, senza pregiudizi, con i clan. Senza 
un'iniziativa di questo genere, la lotta alla mafia non finirà mai.
-- 
http://inminoranza.blogspot.com

 sedersi al tavolo delle trattative, senza pregiudizi, con i clan
Euge', ma vivi sulla Luna o sei nato in Italia? Lo stato tratta da
sempre con la mafia....

 Forse e' un po' diverso, mezzasega.
povero ingenuo, che non sa che stato italiano e mafia trattano da
sempre, quando la mafia non è direttamente ai vertici, come adesso...

 sedersi al tavolo delle trattative, senza pregiudizi, con i clan
* Euge', ma vivi sulla Luna o sei nato in Italia? Lo stato tratta da
* sempre con la mafia....
In alcuni casi lo Stato e' anche la mafia... e.g. Mr Andreotti, Craxi, 
etc... la lista e' lunga...
K 

 :)
Infatti, you have just received the kiss of death...
K 

 G.
io non vedrei la questione in questi termini. Se è vero che ci sono state 
delle imcomprensioni, nonostante credo che si sia comunque diffusa 
l'opinione che serva un'azione diplomatica nei confronti dei talebani, 
azione che innanzitutto li allontani dai loro spalleggiatori esteri. Nessuno 
vuole ritirarsi dall'Afganistan, semplicemente la sola azione militare 
scollegata da quella che è la realtà del potere locale (che poi può fare 
leva su una popolazione che potenzialmente può andare ad ingrossare le file 
talebane) non basta a pacificare l'Afganistan. Tutta qua.