WASHINGTON — The U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan failed to follow through as it should have after ousting the government in 2001, said the NATO commander in the country. For an Ally with only 10,000 troops in the field in Afganistan and Iraq, they sure know all the answers.
The mistake — adopting "a peacetime approach" too early — set the stage for this year's deadly Taliban resurgence, British Gen. David Richards told Pentagon reporters Tuesday.
You Brits did such a good job in Basra!
He said the international community has six months to correct the problem before losing Afghan support. "The Taliban were defeated. .... And it looked all pretty hunky-dory," Richard said of the environment at the end of 2001. "We thought it was all done ... and didn't treat it as aggressively as ... with the benefit of hindsight, we should have done."
Progress made on security, rebuilding and good government didn't meet Afghan expectations, and this year the "Taliban exploited ... this sense of frustration amongst the people," Richards said in a televised conference from Afghanistan.
| Not a word about the Afghan people lifting some of the load on rebuilding and goverance ... |
Five years later, NATO forces, along with Afghan Army and police forces, are planning a series of operations throughout the country this winter to do road building and other reconstruction projects in more secure areas and bolster security to prepare for reconstruction in the less secure areas, Richards said. If there is not measurable improvement in six months, he said, Afghans may choose "the rotten future offered by the Taliban" rather than the hopeful future that the coalition offered but didn't deliver.