UK 'misleadingly optimistic' over Afghan war, says former envoy
IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency
London, Nov 10, IRNA -- Britain's former special envoy to Afghanistan has called for political leaders to challenge some of the “very optimistic military advice” they get on the situation in Afghanistan.
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, who left the Foreign Office last month after being replaced in Kabul, accused the military of submitting misleading reports on the state of the war, entering its tenth year.
'I think it is a question of politicians and civilian officials having the confidence to question some of the very optimistic military advice they get,” Cowper-Coles said.
'I am not in any way blaming the military. You could not have a serious military unless they were incurably optimistic. But I saw over my three-and-half years papers that went to ministers which were misleadingly optimistic,” he told MPs.
Officials and ministers who challenged the report, he said were accused of being “defeatist or disloyal in some way,' he said when giving evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday.
The former envoy was suddenly suspended from his post of shadowing his American counterpart, Richard Holbrooke, in June after clashing with senior NATO and US officials over his insistence that the military-driven counter-insurgency effort was headed for failure.
No official reason was given for his suspension. At the time, the Foreign Office said he was expected to be back at his post by autumn but in September he was replaced.
Speaking in public for the first time since leaving, Cowper-Coles told the parliamentary committee that civilian leaders in the UK and America needed to wrest control of policy in Afghanistan from the military, who had 'distorted an understanding of the problem.'
Part of the problem, he suggested was the Afghan government that British and US troops were fighting to uphold. He said it was less popular among much of the population in the south of the country than the Taliban.
'They are violent. They are unpleasant. But for many Pashtuns, in my view, they are a less bad alternative, a fairer, more predictable alternative than a corrupt and predatory government,' the former envoy said.
On Monday, Britain’s new military chief cast doubt on whether the UK would be able to start a limited withdrawal of its 10,000 troops deployed in Afghanistan next year, saying NATO will remain there for as long as it takes.
'We are in a demanding part of Afghanistan and therefore, inevitably, we're going to be shouldering the burden at least through next year,” the Chief of Defence Staff General Sir David Richards said.
Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged that British troops would end combat operations in Afghanistan by 2015.
After meeting US President Barack Obama in July, Cameron suggested that a limited withdrawal could begin in 2011.
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Islamic Republic News Agency/IRNA NewsCode: 30067670
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