West 'running out of time' to build Afghan govt that can resist terrorists

Time is "running out" to create a stable Afghan government that can prevent the country falling back into the clutches of the Taliban and its terrorist allies, an authoritative report has said on the 10th anniversary of the start of the conflict.

Despite years of investment in lives and money, the future of Afghanistan "still hangs in the balance" after the Nato-led coalition of Western forces leaves, according to a Country Brief report released by Jane's, the defence publishers. "Ten years on, the stability of the region remains fragile and the suppression of terrorism has been limited," it said. With Nato's withdrawal three years away, it questions if the Afghan security forces and government will be strong enough to resist a resurgent Taliban.

Friday will mark a decade since the US launched its first salvos in the "War on Terror" by bombing Taliban positions in Afghanistan. The assault, launched three weeks after the September 11 attacks, overthrew the Taliban and ejected their al-Qaeda allies within weeks.

At the time, President George W Bush told Americans: "In the months ahead, our patience will be one of our strengths."

But the swift victory has been followed by a decade of war that has claimed the lives of 2,700 Nato troops including 382 Britons. Tens of thousands of Afghans have also died. The war has cost America more than $400?billion (pounds 254?billion) and Britain pounds 14?billion.

While Nato's military gains seem to have finally taken hold, the country is arguably more politically unstable now than it has been at any time since the offensive began, with the Haqqani network seeking to undermine the government with a series of assassinations. Only this week Afghan intelligence officials said that they had broken up a plot to kill President Hamid Karzai.

"Time is running out to leave Afghanistan in an acceptable shape that would justify the time, money, and lives spent in expanding the mission from counter-terrorism to state building," said Terry Pattar, a Jane's terrorism specialist.

The Jane's analysis suggests that there were "major doubts" over the ability of the Afghan government to maintain stability after Western countries pull out. America now had to "choose if they are going to back Karzai or find an alternative".

"Either way, there will have to be some form of rapprochement with elements of the Taliban if Afghanistan is not going to descend back into civil war." Jane's experts say that despite a Taliban promise that it would not harbour terrorist groups if it came back into power "a myriad of foreign jihadist groups" would be likely to relocate in Afghanistan after 2015.

"It remains far from clear whether the Taliban is capable of breaking all ties with its foreign allies and preventing them from using Afghanistan as a base for activities that threaten foreign states," said Jeremy Binnie, Jane's senior terrorism analyst.

However, future peace talks with the Taliban look uncertain after last month's assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani, President Karzai's peace envoy.

The Jane's analysis is backed up by the American Council on Foreign Relations. "We've done very well on the military side in the last couple years," said Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow. "We have not [done] nearly so well on the political side. And we're running out of time." Michael Semple, former deputy European Union envoy to Afghanistan, said he feared political chaos and continuing violence could lead to a new civil war after Nato forces pull out.

"They hoped they could stabilise Afghanistan by using military force to degrade the Taliban, while building up the capacity of the Afghan government and its armed forces.

"The idea was that Nato could then pull out leaving a weakened insurgency and a strengthened Afghan government capable of maintaining stability. But fewer and fewer Afghans seem convinced.

"If it does not work, the risk is probably not that of regime collapse but of a nasty persistent civil war after the Nato drawdown in 2014," he said. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph yesterday, Sir William Patey, Britain's ambassador to Afghanistan, said corruption was the biggest threat to a "viable" Afghan state. "It has only been in the last two or three years that we seriously got down to building up the Afghan national security forces. We are halfway through a six-year project of delivering Afghan security forces that are really capable of replacing our combat troops who will all have gone by 2015," he said.

Conservative MP Adam Holloway, a former Grenadier Guards officer, warned against pinning all hopes on an unpopular central government.

"The current strategy, it's not just that it won't work," he said. "It can't work. We have to allow the Afghans to come up with their own local political fixes and not impose a central government."

Negotiating a peace settlement with the Taliban was also unlikely to produce results, he cautioned. "We have this idea that we can make a deal with the Taliban," he said. "But I wouldn't have thought there's any danger of the Taliban wanting to make a deal."

The conflict has left hundreds of British families mourning the deaths of loved ones. Christine Bonner, lost her son, Cpl Darren "Daz" Bonner, in 2007 when an explosion hit a convoy in Helmand.

She said: "If it can be handed over to the Afghan people and be as it should be, then I can hold my head up and say 'Darren, I lost him and it changed our lives forever, but at least someone else has gained from it'."

General Sir David Richards, the head of Britain's Armed Forces, said on Thursday night that Nato was not trying to "create a Switzerland" in Afghanistan. "We're talking about a country that can look after itself," he said. "The reason it's important to us is because a stable Afghanistan is vital to our own long-term security."

By Thomas Harding, Rob Crilly and Dean Nelson